Digital Commerce Meets Digital...

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1 You know you’ve got to crush the digital experience, especially if you’re engaged in digital commerce. It’s all anybody in the business world talks about. The digital experience has gone from being an intriguing notion to being a key commerce initiative that goes by it’s own shorthand moniker — DX — just like the hottest celebrity couples do. No doubt, it’s time to get serious. That’s why we initiated an extensive global research project into the marriage of digital commerce and digital experience, with our network of partners and industry experts. We set out in these conversations to come up with a helpful analysis of the key challenges facing the digital commerce industry and lay out the crucial future trends that will shape the field in the years to come. Digital commerce is in the midst of (yet another) revolution and things are moving faster than ever. While all this excitement means new possibilities, it also comes with the challenge of figuring out just how to proceed. Customer expectations can shift in an instant and businesses’ ability to adapt to market trends will determine their level of success. Industry Experts Reveal Secrets to DX Success in Today’s E-commerce Environment Digital Commerce Meets Digital Experience. Customers now have a “digital existence,” manifested in a growing web of connections that spans channels and devices. The new benchmark for customers’ expectations of their digital experience is their last ‘great experience.’ Organizations need to be capable of adapting to both changing customer expectations and market conditions. Gartner Digital Commerce Technologies Primer for 2016 THE INDUSTRY TODAY

Transcript of Digital Commerce Meets Digital...

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You know you’ve got to crush the digital experience, especially if you’re engaged in digital commerce. It’s all anybody in the business world talks about. The digital experience has gone from being an intriguing notion to being a key commerce initiative that goes by it’s own shorthand moniker — DX — just like the hottest celebrity couples do. No doubt, it’s time to get serious. That’s why we initiated an extensive global research project into the marriage of digital commerce and digital experience, with our network of partners and industry experts. We set out in these conversations to come up with a helpful analysis of the key challenges facing the digital commerce industry and lay out the crucial future trends that will shape the field in the years to come.

Digital commerce is in the midst of (yet another) revolution and things are moving faster than ever. While all this excitement means new possibilities, it also comes with the challenge of figuring out just how to proceed. Customer expectations can shift in an instant and businesses’ ability to adapt to market trends will determine their level of success.

Industry Experts Reveal Secrets to DX Success in Today’s E-commerce Environment

Digital Commerce Meets Digital Experience.

Customers now have a “digital existence,” manifested in a growing web of connections that spans channels and devices. The new benchmark for customers’ expectations of their digital experience is their last ‘great experience.’ Organizations need to be capable of adapting to both changing customer expectations and market conditions.

Gartner Digital Commerce Technologies Primer for 2016

THE INDUSTRYTODAY

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1 The challenge of being consistent Creating a consistent customer experience across all touchpoints and understanding and remembering a customer’s interactions across those touchpoints remains a major challenge for retailers. Consider something as basic as the ability, or inability, to save a customer’s shopping basket across all digital channels and devices, once a customer has logged in.

According to Peter van Reijmersdal, CEO of Osudio,

Many retailers still have gaps in their cross-touchpoint experience. For instance, consider the problem with not saving recent searches and additions to shopping carts across devices and channels, even when a customer is logged on. Why wouldn’t a consumer expect to see items he or she placed in a basket on a mobile device, show up when they sign in on a smartphone, tablet or mobile app? That kind of inconsistency makes it difficult to keep a customer engaged throughout the entire customer lifecycle — researching, buying, seeking support — when they are using multiple devices — which they almost always are.

2 Rising expectations

Keeping up with surge of mobile and new digital devices being used by consumers is a challenge in itself. A 2016 Global Web Index survey found that mobile devices have virtually caught up with laptops and desktops when itcome to the devices consumers use to make online purchases. In the fourth quarter of 2016, 53 percent of internet users surveyed said they’d bought something using their smartphones. During that same period, 58 percent of respondents said they had purchasedan item online using a laptop or desktop.

Says Dirk Hörig, CEO and co-founder of Commercetools:

The focus for retailers should not only be on the conversation or enabling sales on a particular device (smartphone, tablet etc.), but more on the influence their digital assets and presence have on overall sales (includ-ing those that are completed in store). In fact, Deloitte Digital determined that in 2016, 56 cents of every dollar spent in physical retail stores was influenced by digital content. That was up from 14 cents only three years earlier.

Furthermore, Forrester says the trend is clear.

driving a full digital transformation over all channels, including (but not limited to) digital is the biggest challenge” for their retail customers.

IT leaders should work with their peers in commerce, sales, marketing and customer service roles to closely integrate the digital commerce experience with all customer-facing channels.

Gartner Digital Commerce Vendor Guide, 2016.

By 2020, Forrester expects that the Web will impact 55 percent of all retail purchases in the US, up from 49 percent today.

The State of the Digital Store, Forrester Research Inc., 2016.

Our customers are struggling with all these new touchpoints and new formats for content delivery that continue to pop up, and most of all with their customers hopping back and forth between them, still expecting the same user experience and look and feel across the board.

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For retailers with physical locations, there is the added challenge of meeting customer expectations for buy online and pick up in store, in an efficient way that actually makes money. That is why many are researching and planning improvements to their technology and systems

– including distributed order management systems. They want better management of order and inventory across their entire operation so they can fulfill orders in whatever way customers want them fulfilled — ship to store, ship from store, order online, pickup in store.

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60%

59%

“When shopping in a store, assume the sales associatesare equipped with a mobile device. What would you expect them to be able to do for you?”

Look up product information

Check additional store inventory

Look up inventory in nearby store

Provide basic info such as return policiers or warranty

Reserve products for me to pick up at a nearby store

Perform a checkout for me

Look up trend recommendations and product reviews

Look up my past purchases and make product reccomendations

Know that i’ve entered the store and greet me personally

Base: 4,556 US online adults (18+)(MULTIPLE RESPONSES ACCEPTED)

Note: not all response options shownSource: Forrester’s North American Consumer Technographics® Retail Survey, 2015

55%

47%

45%

37%

24%

18%

13%

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3 Pressure on B2B CompaniesTraditionally, B2B has been lagging behind more inno-vative B2C organizations. That’s why it’s wise for B2B enterprises to look at the lessons learned by the leaders in the B2C space — for instance adopting customer journey mapping. Adopting such B2C practices will not doubt play a key role in shifting the mindset of B2B organizations. Gartner Research predicts that

Critical Capabilities for Digital Commerce,Gartner Research Inc., 2016.

For B2B organizations, the analysts foresee significant business uptake with this trend:

Industry Vision: Commerce that Comes to You, Gartner Research Inc., 2016. Gartner calls this vision of digital commerce ‘commerce that comes to you’. Shifting to consumer-friendly B2B sites could put a huge strain on IT departments, which need to start supporting new operating models and integrating new technologies into existing production and supply systems. And, as if

to underscore that analysis, Gartner acknowledges that 70 percent of survey participants say that their organizations cannot keep up with the pace of change in digital commerce. Peter Zwyssig, CEO of foryouandyourcustomers, says:

The temptation is to gather a number of disparate tools and solutions, each with its own owner and home in the organization, leading to chaos, paralysis and confusion.

by 2018, 70 percent of e-commerce will move from B2C and B2B models to models that focus on the individual customer experience.

By 2018, companies that consumerize their B2B digital commerce sites will gain market share and see revenue increase up to 25 percent.

The biggest challenge in digital com-merce is to empower the organization to interlink and orchestrate all channels to create great customer experiences across all channels, without creating too much complexity for the organization.

By 2018, more than 50 percent of commerce sites will integrate technologies from more than 15 vendors to deliver a digital customer experience.

Gartner Digital Commerce Vendor Guide, 2016.

COMPANIES TO WATCH

BASED ON RESPONSESOF OUR TECH PARTNERS

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As part of our research, we asked industry experts to name the areas of digital commerce that will have the biggest effect on business success or failure in the coming years.

In general, these topics can be grouped in three main categories:

1 Omnichannel Content & CommerceDigital commerce professionals need to create mean-ingful engagement with consumers in every channel. Developing and serving the right content for the right place and time increases brand awareness and creates a consistent customer experience across channels. It also maximizes the customer understanding that can be gathered from cross-channel analytics.

2 Internal Alignment & Maturity

Businesses need to be aligned in terms of internal oper-ations. In other words, different units need to work with the same understanding and goals in mind and every-body needs to stay on top of changes in the market — or in consumer behavior — and be ready to react. Such alignment requires a unified approach rather than a system of siloed data and piecemeal analytics. In fact, Gartner says a lack of alignment is one of the three main barriers to a successful digital commerce project, according to “How to Develop a Digital Com-merce Strategy,” 2015.

THE LIST:Lack of business alignment: Digital commerce is never an IT-only project. It requires support from a number of business units that include sales, marketing, operations and customer service. In-volve other business units early in the process and align digital commerce with business goals, such as driving business growth or transforming the way the company will ensure good results.

Neglect of customer experience: While technology plays an important role in the success of digital commerce, a digital project’s success goes well beyond the technology and should be designed from the customer’s perspective. Investing in customer-experience design during the planning stage will lead to better performance of the digital commerce service.

Most important topics

OMNI CHANNEL

IT FLEXIBILITY& AGILITY

IT FLEXIBILITY& AGILITY

ALIGNING INTERNAL PROCESSES

DATA-DRIVENCOMMERCE & ROI

INCREASING DIGITALCOMPETENCIES

In the near future we will see more commerce done through chat-bot, visual search and established mobile device applications such as Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and so on. Additionally, we will see more mi-croservices that allow solutions to be nimble, rapidly deployed, system-lev-el A/B tested and highly governed by

data and metrics.

Mike Ensor, Practice Director of Digital Transformation Services at Dev9.

KEYTRENDS

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Unresponsive to changing conditions: Digital commerce projects are ongoing concerns. They need to be continuously tracked, analyzed and adjusted for refinements. Customer expectations and company goals, project objectives, KPIs and scope may change as the business evolves. A strategy that quickly responds to business and market changes will enable the company to stay ahead of the competition in digital commerce.

When you consider the level of maturity of an organization, it becomes clear that one of the biggest challenges for an enterprise with a low level of digital maturity is the inability to move quickly to meet customer experience needs, marketplace demands and business growth requirements.

3 Data-Driven Commerce & ROIYou can’t make the right choices about your digital com-merce environment when you don’t know what works and what doesn’t. And yet, the urgency for optimization is clear:

Don’t despair. There are several approaches that companies can take to tackle the above challenges quickly. Based on our (and our partners’) extensive experience, we’ve prioritized the order in which we suggest you address them — starting with the very foundation: the business itself.

(1) Digital Maturity Reaching your goals for your online enterprise isn’t going to be easy. Why do you think they call it “work?” But organizations that are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses are much better equipped to handle the challenges than organizations that ignore their weak spots. According to Peter Zwyssig, one of the most important challenges facing fouryouandyourcustomers’ clients centers on speed. Specifically, how do they improve their multi-channel presence and develop their business (both internal and external), their products and channels faster than their competitors. Maturity is the key here. You might want to launch the world’s most amazing campaign, but if the rest of the organization is not ready for that, things will be tough.

Assessing the digital maturity of your business is a crucial first step to transforming your digital commerce environment. In general, digital maturity consists of two main parts: Maturity of the tools and systemsWe will cover this in more detail later in the chapter,but it mostly deals with being able to adjust to ever-changing demands. Maturity of the people and processesPeople should be aware of what they are doing and if that is working. This depends on things like culture, knowledge, and the company goals.

While 65 percent of merchants do report gradually improving conversion rates (orders divided by sessions) overall, the truth is that 59 percent of e-commerce retailers surveyed still have conversion rates under 3 percent, a figure that has held steady for over a decade.

Forrester, 2016

Transforming to a leading-edge solution within a suitable time frame is the biggest challenge for clients when it comes to digital commerce environments.

Fraser Davidson, CTO of Javelin Group.

GETTING TO DIGITAL COMMERCE DX SUCCESS

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COMPANY

HIPPO

GAP

CRO

SS-C

HANN

EL H

ARMONIZA

TION

BUSINESS GOALSCULTURE

AG

ILIT

Y

INTEROPERABILITY

FROM ANALYTICS TO ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS

FROM

CO

NTEN

T TO RELEVA

NT EN

GAGEM

ENTS

5 LEVELS1. UNAWARE

2. OPPORTUNISTIC

3. ENTERPRISE

4. TRANSFORMATIVE

5. DISRUPTIVE

COMPANY

HIPPO

GAP

DIGITALEXPERIENCEMATURITY

MODEL

The BloomReach Digital Experience Maturity Model

BloomReach has developed Digital Experience Maturity Model designed to help businesses assess their most pressing needs in digital, using a set of core criteria, combined with relevant industry insights. The model groups all the different aspects of maturity into a single overview where the most important aspects are represented. First, there are the business goals and culture. These two elements are internally focused. They deal primarily with the maturity of the people and processes. The maturity of tools and systems are covered by three aspects called agility, interoperability and cross-channel harmonization. These aspects combined, support the two main measurements of maturity in digital experience: the transition from content to relevant engagements and transition from analytics to actionable insights. From Content to Relevant EngagementsWe’re living in the age of the customer. Customers demand personalization without realizing they are demanding it. They also expect companies to anticipate their needs and offer them what they’re looking for, sometimes before they even know what that is. To deliver content and engagement that reacts to this state of things and proactively anticipates the customer’s needs and accelerates the buyer’s decision process, mar-keters must invest in buyer-journey mapping, content marketing and relevant engagements. Marketers

who rely only on push messaging will struggle to deliver results; marketers who create valuable content and stories that attract audiences, on the other hand, will build valuable relationships with customers and generate positive business outcomes. In short, enterprises must build experiences that impress consumers when they are seeking inspiration, convert them when they are ready to act and retain them once they have acted, so they return to act again. And crucially, all this needs to be done quickly — and with the help of continuously learning machines.

Alexander Garkisch, Director of Business Development & Strategic Marketing at Contentserv, points out:

The ultimate goal of digital transformation in marketing is the direct and yet predomi-nantly automated communication with the customers across all touchpoints. The content platform is an important core competence here, which keeps the content ready and so granular-ly and cleanly attributed, that it’s passed on to the right person, at the right time, and across the right channels.

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From Analytics to Actionable InsightsToday, most marketing measurement programs focus on the consumption and engagement of particular content assets channel-by-channel. Marketers who want to tell a story of the strategic value of content and its improved management, however, need to demonstrate its lifelong utility. Customer insights will inform business strategy and this is why investing in insights is so critical.

As Alejandro Canadas, Delivery Director at VassIT, puts it:

Let’s take a look at how putting the right solutions in place can help support this transition.

Maturity of Tools & SystemsKnowing your digital maturity allows you to grow on your own terms. Imagine you are an IT manager, responsible for finding the right solution for a certain set of require-ments. Traditionally, the process of finding the right tools centered on the questions: Should I find everything I need in a large and expensive suite? Or should I select best-of-breed products that each individually conquer the array of challenges I face?

Good questions, as far as they go. But we are living in the age of platforms. Unlike traditional suites, effective platforms offer the best of both worlds: They provide a comprehensive array of solutions to a wide array of problems. But they are also open, flexible and able to integrate seamlessly with solutions already in place and those that offer answers to questions that might be unique to a given enterprise.

Unlike suites, platforms can be offered as a subscription service. So, just as software as a service (SaaS) offers the kind of flexibility needed to thrive in the age of digital disruption, platform as a service (PaaS) provides

the nimbleness needed to react to changing business and market forces. Chances are your marketing department is looking for things only offered by very specialized products or by large, expensive suites. Let’s look at these two options separately: Consider the suite approach. One could argue that purchasing a suite containing all the cutting-edge tools imaginable means you have everything you will ever need. However, our research shows that quite often a lot of the features are not even used. So, what does this do for the ROI in that case? The PaaS model protects enterprises (and those who manage them) from a technology trap identified by Gartner Research.

PaaS also checks the box on Forrester Research’s caution:

Using big data to gain insights into customer behavior, with a view to using this information for a personalized experience, even for ‘anonymous’ users, is the key capability that is going to become crucially important for digital commerce businesses in the near future.

Software vendors will refactor their ancient architectures or be left behind. The old world of closed, proprietary stacks is dead software walking. In the age of the customer, where business responsiveness trumps technology coherence and the cycle times of improvement are measured in days, not years, [...]

Avoid overbuying and having a more-complex solution than necessary.Critical Capabilities for Digital Commerce, Gartner Research Inc., 2016.

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The platform + best-of-breed approach:Pick an integrated solution that is open and agile

The platform + best-of-breed approach starts with the customer. It is a digital-first, customer-first model that features one platform completely dedicated to creating a digital customer experience that attracts, engages and retains customers, while also encouraging them to be advocates for content, products and brands.

The approach puts the customer at the center ofa business model that relies on a marketing platformto run and measure campaigns, a commerce platform to handle transactions and a digital experience platform at the core that uses machine-learning and human expertise to guide consumers from discovery to engagement to action and carry them through retention and loyalty.

The DXP includes a data layer, a real-time experience layer and an analytics layer. Those pillars provide visitors with personal and relevant discovery through site search and navigation. The arrangement allows the platform to offer information and products that fulfill a visitor’s needs in a particular moment. And the system provides actionable insights to the enterprise so that humans can team up with machines to build a constantly improving experience for each individual consumer.

A platform approach differs from a traditional suite strategy in that the platform is open, meaning it allows enterprises to add services through APIs as needed for each enterprise’s unique relationship with its consum-ers. An open and agile DXP allows for the differences in digital maturity that we discussed earlier.

Those on the less mature end of the digital spectrum can start small, choosing to integrate into existing systems modules that provide the best return on investment. Enterprises that are more mature — and the most mature — can choose best-of-breed solutions to augment the power of a unified digital ex-perience platform. The open architecture makes room to seamlessly select the best of breed tools covering the alphabet soup of CRM (customer relationship management),

ERP (enterprise resource planning), DMP (digital marketing platform), DAM (digital asset management, PIM (product information management) and the like.

It’s a way for businesses to add their secret sauce to a platform that does the heavy lifting when it comes to creating a customer experience that builds traffic, increases conversion and engenders loyalty. As any organization matures, its requirements might very well change. Maybe the market changes. Maybe a new technology comes along. It might even be that one of the new technologies might be invaluable for you and your business. Rather than having to wait for the supplier of a suite (and the following upgrade), the open nature of the digital experience platform al-lows you to quickly innovate by adding new services and applications to the mix.

Let’s walk through the elements needed to make a “best of breed” digital experience platform + best-of-breed strategy a success in your organization.

The digital landscape of the future will be a flexible and open architecture basedon an API structure without any legacydependency.John de Koning, Managing Director at Incentro

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Customer AcquisitionCustomer Journey Stage: DiscoveryTraditionally the domain of the large Marketing Cloud vendors, in this stage of the customer journey it is essential to capture key visitor data and optimize the content served to these visitors in order to drive engagement with the digital experience. The Digital Experience Platform at this stage drives higher rates of traffic and customer acquisition by aggregating 3rd party profile and visit data across these stacks to deliver targeted content through advertising, social, and email channels, tied to optimized landing pages and microsites.

Experience & PersonalizationCustomer Journey Stage: InspirationIn the second part of the customer journey and the middle of the marketing funnel, it’s crucial for the customer to receive an experience that helps him or her find what they are looking for. At this stage they need the digital commerce environment to flex and adapt to them in real time. Here, the role of the DX platform is to track real-time customer analytics across Web and mobile touchpoints to progressively profile, segment, target, and optimize both content resources and overall experience to drive higher rates of customer engagement and conversion.

Transaction & DatabaseCustomer Journey Stage: ConversionIn the transaction stage, the crucial element of the customer experience is the continuation of the easy, personalized experience and the sustained continuity of the one-to-one brand-to-customer relationship. This stage of the customer journey is the traditional world of Commerce Cloud. These transactional experiences historically are typically separate and distinct from the content experiences driven by traditional Marketing Clouds, with corresponding loss of context and continuity in customer profile and customer experience. The Digital Experience Platform unifies digital marketing, digital merchandising, and digital commerce for a seamless, personalized display of product, services, and promotions to best match consumer intent to drive higher rates of transaction, upsell, and revenue.

Authentication & Portal Customer Journey Stage: LoyaltyTraditionally the domain of enterprise portals, the post-transaction, authenticated customer experience lies at the back-end of the customer journey. Typically outside the direct control of CMOs and digital marketers, the authenticated customer portal is a primary point

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DIGITALEXPERIENCE SOLUTION

LANDSCAPE

CUSTOMER JOURNEY

STAG

E

LOYALTY

CUSTOMER JOURNEY STAGE

CONVERSION

CUSTOMER JO

URNEY STAG

E

INSPIRATION

CUSTOMER JOURNEY STAGEDISCOVERY

CU

STO

MER

JO

URNE

Y ST

AGE

ADVO

CACY

CUSTOMERACQUISITIONCUSTOMER

ACQUISITION

COMMUNITY& SELF-HELP

EXPERIENCE &PERSONALIZATION

TRANSACTION & DATABASE

AUTENTICATION& PORTAL

This figure is an overview

of the “Digital Experience”

landscape for commerce

businesses. This shows

the way that the Digital

Experience Platform

supports the end-to-end

customer lifecycle through

integration with the key

technologies employed

by the large-scale digital

commerce business.

(2) Building a performing, true omnichannel platform

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of interaction to provide assistance to known customers for accessing additional services to best maintain and deepen the customer relationship. Here, the DXP takes the crucial role of real-time aggregation of trans-actional services and customer data for purposes of 1:1 targeting of content, products, and services across both Web and mobile apps.

Community & Self-helpAdvocacyThe final step in the customer journey, this is the tradi-tional domain of community platforms. This experience is about driving deep customer engagement through community participation, dialog and resources. While this has typically been outside the control of marketing, the DX platform can break down and harness this separate silo of data and interactions that is essential for cultivating and nurturing loyalty, and represents an additional starting point for driving ongoing Discoveryand Inspiration of new prospects through customer advocacy.

Building your Best-of-Breed Solution When working to combine marketing and e-commerce to optimize the digital customer experience, opting for a best-of-breed approach tends to be the optimal

solution for agile businesses. This means combining a marketing platform and your digital commerce solutions with a powerful Digital Experience platform that is open and compatible with a host of outside solutions. As you may already know, BloomReach is a solution that provides a very powerful toolkit that can support all the different channels that are part of the digital commerce experience. The BloomReach DXP starts with a headless content management system, in which the content repository is independent of the delivery message. A change in content in any channel is reflected in all channels, providing enterprises with a crucial competitive advantage. Add to that powerful content system, an approach to merchandising and customer relationships that relies on a powerful machine learning system, which under-stands customers, content and demand. The system relies on the combination of powerful algorithms and the invaluable experience and intuition of retail and content experts to provide each visitor exactly what he or she wants in the moment — all at scale. One of the most important strengths of BloomReach is its interoperability. Any piece of content that is shown on a digital site could come from virtually anywhere. This means product information can be retrieved from the e-commerce solution in real-time, creating a very lightweight but powerful way to integrate e-commerce solutions in one of the other channels.

Because BloomReach is built

using open standards and

APIs, it allows you to add

any product that fits your

needs to create a customized

solution for your business.

Looking back at the maturity

model, this is where you will

get the most value. It allows

you to right-size your solution

based on your digital maturity,

making sure you have exactly

the tools you need to go along

with your digital experience

platform to achieve the best

results.

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(3) Data-Driven Commerce & ROIIn most cases you will probably have clearly defined metrics and processes in place that allow you to measure the effectiveness of your online business. And when opting for a platform + best-of-breed approach, you should realize that gathering insights from data across solutions is key. Relying on an open digital experience platform as the foundation of your system is a crucial step in achieving those sorts of insights. That said, this chapter will focus more on the specific content-driven commerce challenges, rather than business intelligence in general. The first important thing to understand is that content-driven commerce is not cheap. Creating valuable content requires time and effort, which can be quite an investment. All of which makes it more crucial to have both the means to get maximum value from your content and a way to measure whether or not this investment is actually delivering the value you want. Measuring and analyzing content performance is hugely important to maintaining a competitive digital presence for your business. Not only does it help you identify potential problems, it can also give you valuable insight into things that do work. It can help you identify certain audiences and tailor content specifically to them.

Listen to Jeroen Verdonk, Head of Corporate Development at Bynder:

A DXP which includes an advanced content perfor-mance platform that can draw information from multiple channels and sources makes it possible to measure the effectiveness of content across all channels from one central hub. Such a platform can show trends and insights that combine visitor information with statistics on content performance.

We hear three common themes among e-commerce customers: how to decrease content creation costs, increase operationalefficiency (do more with less), and how to improve brand compliance and consistency. In order to create phenomenal digital customer experiences, content is still very much at the heart of that. Content marketing initiatives are no longer about just creating effective and great content in a silo — they require content to be iterative and marketers and other customer experience staff to constantlymeasure the impact and value of content-drivenexperiences.

THE TOP 5 STEPS YOU CAN TAKE NOWTO WIN IN DIGITAL COMMERCE

Define meaningful KPIs, not just conversion:When measuring the effectiveness of your efforts, it is very helpful to have multiple KPIs that actually tell you something about the visitor and their behavior. Obviously, conversion is an important KPI in any digital commerce environment. But variables like time spent on the site, number of visits before conversion and even the type of content visitors are consuming can also provide valuable insights in the overall journey and the visitor’s willingness to convert.

Example: Customers looking at the cancellation page of a telecommunications company might be existing customers looking to cancel. But by looking at the overall journey you could potentially identify if they looked at the store pages as well. It could be that visitors are concerned about their ability to cancel easily, but are still willing to sign up and buy.

Measure content effectiveness, not just page views:Measuring is a very logical next step. When we know the KPIs that are important, we can start looking at

1.

2.

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the actual content that contributes to them. That means looking beyond just visits to the store pages and really diving into the content that visitors consumed. Did they read the FAQ on payment options? Did they read the reviews on product X? Did they click the banner that said “Cancel Whenever?” The data you’ll collect that way provides insight into which content works. It’s the sort of data you need to be able to experiment with content and see how it helps your KPIs.

Start small:As with all things, you will need to get started somewhere. And starting small is always much easier. Don’t go for perfection immediately — be flexible and willing to learn. For example: measuring content effectiveness is a very powerful tool, but it will take some time before things will be ironed out. So start by tagging content or investigating the data you have. That will provide some insight. With those insights, you can start making assumptions and testing them out. Being agile and patient will definitely pay off in the long term.

Think short-term and long-term:You should not be afraid to experiment and try out alternative solutions. The main lesson to keep in mind here is that nothing is ever finished. In other words, if you test out a new way of creating your campaign landing pages, you should also think about the long-term consequences of this structure. In some cases you might want to add the new solution to the existing infrastructure, while in others you might want to take the lessons learned and implement those in the existing platform.

Pick the most valuable audience for which to personalize:Just because you could personalize everything on your site for everyone in the universe does not mean you should. While one-to-one personalization is talked about as the gold standard — and is highly desirable in many cases — think of personalization as a continuum. In some cases segmentation and targeting is the wiser choice. It’s always helpful to try to weigh out the costs versusthe benefits. In the example mentioned earlier, we talked about the fact that people looking at cancellation options might be potential customers. It could be very interesting to try and convince those in this group to become a customer, but you should consider the bigger picture as well. If this is just 0.5 percent of the people on the site, you would probably be better off identifying a bigger audience. If it is 30 percent, things are very different.

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The organizations that arethe real leaders are those which do not fear making mistakes by making ‘wrong’ decisions. The leading companies are the ones which just start with implementing their digital strategy along all customer touchpoints. And while doing so they ignore concerns such as ‘We can’t do that,’ and ‘We always did it this way.’ Leaders are companies that break these barriers and start acting and learning instead of just planning and discussing challenges and potential problems.

Alexander Neuhausen, Principal Analyst at diva-e

CONCLUSIONDigital tools and technology can help you build a great digital experience, creating a platform + best-of-breed solution that combines content and commerce. A carefully considered content performance strategy is the next most important step towards creating a digital commerce environment that converts. With an advanced enterprise digital expe-rience platform, you can combine the two, building a supporting environment for executing a flexible content strategy that leads to digital commerce success now and in the future.

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About BloomReach

BloomReach is a Silicon Valley firm that brings businesses the first open and intelligent Digital Experience Platform (DXP). BloomReach drives customer experience to accelerate the path to conversion, increase revenue, and generate customer loyalty. In 2016, BloomReach acquired the Amsterdam-based content management software company Hippo.

With applications for content management, site search, page management, SEO optimization and role-based analytics, BloomReach is a central location for all players who manage customer experience to come together and intelligently drive business outcomes. BloomReach’s Web Relevance Engine (WRE) algorithmically understands content and users, matching demand and intent data from across the web. BloomReach’s industry-leading tools unlock the powerful creativity of humans to improve omnichannel customer experiences at scale. Together, our users and our intelligent tools generate millions of dollars of proven incremental sales.

BloomReach’s portfolio of customers include: Neiman Marcus, Staples, REI, Mailchimp, and Autodesk. Created in 2009, BloomReach is headquartered in Mountain View, CA with offices worldwide and is backed by investment firms Bain Capital Ventures, Battery Ventures, NEA, Salesforce Ventures and Lightspeed Ventures.

For more information visit bloomreach.com