By Harikrishna Kundariya, Co-founder, and Director of eSparkBiz

Digital experience platforms (DXPs) are changing the way organisations can design and manage enjoyable, engaging online experiences for every customer. Activities including content management, personalisation, data analysis and more aggregate into coherent user experiences across web, applications and social media. 

The expectations around engaging digital experiences have never been this large, and DXPs have become pivotal in software development between developers and marketers, rapidly adding to the potential toolset for software creation. In this blog, we explore the rise of DXPs, what is in a DXP, and how they are changing the way software development is being done today.

What Are Digital Experience Platforms?

Digital experience platforms are software tools that enable businesses to manage and deliver personalised experiences across all online touchpoints. It includes their website, mobile applications, and social media platforms. DXPs combine content, user data and technology in powerful ways to design engaging user journeys. 

DXPs facilitate workflows and enhance customer experience. Because more and more people meet their needs using a digital platform, DXPs will play a leading role in keeping pace with the competitive software development landscape.

Why Are DXPs Gaining Popularity?

The demand for seamless, customised online journeys is increasing the use of Digital Experience Platforms in software development services. Customers want engagements that are quick and personalised across every engagement point, like websites or applications. 

Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) enable this by giving businesses the means to manage content, observe user behaviour, and produce personalised experiences without involving complex coding. DXPs act as platforms for both developers and marketers. 

The platforms also enable strategies that remain consistent across websites, embedded apps and social media. DXPs reduce the number of different tools used, allowing the teams to be effective and efficient. 

For example, a DXP will cover all work on a website, all email campaigns and reporting on users in one platform. As businesses strive to create great user experiences in efficient ways, DXPs are leaning toward becoming the go-to platforms for building connected, dynamic digital ecosystems.

Key Benefits of DXPs in Software Development

Streamlined Development Processes: Digital Experience Platforms simplify complicated development tasks by bringing together content management, personalisation, and data tools. This helps developers build powerful apps quickly, while marketers easily manage the content, all while saving time by using fewer tools in development process. 

Enhanced Scalability: DXPs have flexible designs that fit well into business needs. It allows developers to easily extend apps’ capabilities without developing separate apps. It helps to maintain brand and online experiences across platforms as businesses grow, and customers’ expectations grow over time.

Data-Driven Insights: DXPs use real-time data tools to help both developers and marketers monitor and make quick decisions based on user behaviour. It is like having the product displays change to reflect what users like, creating rewarding online experiences for all users.

Improves Teamwork Collaboration: DXPs enable connectivity between technical teams and creative teams, as developers can remain focused on building products, while marketers can control all content and personalisation features. The software creates a true sense of team, and delivers excellent & consistent online experiences through all platforms for users.

How DXPs Differ from Traditional CMS

The Role of AI in DXPs

• Custom User Experiences: AI in DXPs analyses user data to deliver personalised content quickly, like suggesting products based on what people look at. This keeps customers happy while AI gives them unique experiences online without requiring everyday developers to do much work. 
• Automatic Tasks: AI automates boring things like building content or running tests on apps. This allows developers to work on the big picture, and marketers to launch campaigns faster, meaning work has become easier, faster, and better experiences for users are created every time one builds an online experience.
• Better Customer Help: AI chatbots in DXPs support answering questions quickly, keeping users happy, while reducing work for security teams at the same time. It makes businesses capable of providing help and support 24/7, across many online platforms, without needing extra staff in the future.
• Improved Performance: AI tools in DXPs help find problems and suggest solutions, helping developers to make apps faster and reliable without relying on coding. It keeps one’s online experience bug-free and seamless, constantly meeting what customers want and expect every single day.

Challenges in Adopting DXPs

• Challenging System Interfaces: Integrating DXPs with legacy systems can be complicated. It requires a lot of developer time to get them to work together. As older platforms may not easily connect with new tools, they unnecessarily slow down projects and increase business costs daily. 
• Staying Compliant: Though DXPs are used to identify private customer information. They require robust compliance policies, similar to what GDPR requires, so developers have to configure a platform to maintain personal information security. It ensures experiences are responsive across platforms, which is much harder than it sounds.
• Expensive: Particularly, the sophisticated DXPs can be very expensive, which causes businesses to be extremely cautious about spending, as licenses and custom work can quickly stretch any budget. It means companies need to assess their long-term benefits against the potential for significant upfront use of DXPs consistently.
• Training Teams: Teams that aren’t technical will need training which takes time to get used to using DXP tools properly.  It may take extra time and effort, for instance, marketers need to learn new systems of working to manage content, personalisation, etc., which may mean it slows down colleagues on new projects, day to day.

Conclusion

Software development is evolving, as Digital Experience Platforms enable the delivery of a personalised digital cross-channel experience. A DXP delivers integrated content, Artificial Intelligence, and low-code rapid application development tools. It streamlines the work of developers as well as marketers. Digital experience platforms will fuel innovation and engagement as the technology advances. Are you ready to harness the power of Digital Experience Platforms for your digital strategy? Start checking out these powerful platforms!

About author

Harikrishna Kundariya, is a marketer, developer, IoT, Cloud & AWS savvy, co-founder, and Director of eSparkBiz, a Software Development Company. His 14+ years of experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new start-ups based on IoT and SaaS applications.