In a technology-centric society, we are seeing more and more business sectors move to a digital space. Apps and websites that accomplish the same thing as and eventually replace brick and mortar establishments are on the rise. Consumers enjoy the accessibility and flexibility of a more digital world. Therefore, it is up to businesses to ensure that they are creating the best digital experience possible. While there is a lot of conversation around user experience and customer experience and the platforms that can help you understand how users feel about those things, it’s high time to have a conversation about digital experience platforms – what they are and how they can benefit your business.
In this article, we will take a closer look at what digital experience is, what digital experience platforms do, and how you can leverage them, in addition to leveraging user experience and customer experience research tools.
What is digital experience?
Digital experience is defined as the interaction between a user and a brand, business, or organization through digital means. This means that anytime a customer logs on to your website or launches your mobile app, they are having a digital experience. Unlike customer experience, where every interaction with a business or brand is considered, digital experience only includes user interaction through digital channels. Here is a very short list of what that might include:
- Chatbot interactions
- Form submissions
- General navigation
- Button click
While this is non-exhaustive, a lot of these types of interactions are crucial to how a user views your brand. If your platform has broken buttons or forms that don’t work, customers are less likely to want to continue working with your brand or business. So, how do we fix this? How do we uncover these problems within our digital experience, so we can fix them? The answer is digital experience platforms, of course!
What are digital experience platforms?
Digital experience platforms are are a collection of products that help businesses deliver high quality digital experience to their users. These platforms shed light on user journeys and pain points, and help businesses determine exactly what part of their platform is causing a bottleneck in revenue growth.
Digital experience platforms can include tools that highlight usability, customer experience, website analytics, and other key insights that influence business decisions. The information gathered through these tools are used to help UX researchers and designers, marketers, product developers, and the like in improving the site or app accordingly.
In short, digital experience platforms are about illuminating the user’s entire journey and experience with various aspects of your digital product. By making use of them, businesses are better able to cater their digital platforms to their target users and customers. This leads to revenue growth and higher conversions.
What’s the difference between digital experience platforms and UX research tools?
So how are digital experience platforms different from UX research tools like usability testing? Great question! UX research tools can be a part of these platforms. However, they are a holistic way to approach designing and developing digital products and services. Which means that UX research tools are simply a piece of the larger puzzle. While both tools are excellent for improving your conversions and revenue, UX research only gives you part of the picture. DXPs give a much broader view of your product.
Leverage digital experience platforms for your business
Of course, understanding that these platforms exist and what they do means nothing if you don’t actually leverage them for the benefit of your business. So how do you do that?
Digital experience is a fairly new concept, so the research on this topic is a bit limited. However, as the digital space continues to grow and evolve, it is predicted that digital experience platforms will corner a major portion of the market in less than ten yeas. As well, those using them are seeing a return on investment of 100-250%. Therefore, it’s a good idea to get your business on the digital experience train now. That way, you will see exponential growth in revenue early on.
Conclusion
In conclusion, as the world continues to shift more to a digital space, we need to leverage tools that give us insights on how our customers interact with and feel about our digital experience. Making digital experience platforms a key tool in your arsenal will help you elevate your business in a major way.
Tim Rotolo
Shruti Goli