Narrative commerce
The next step is to develop a site that facilitates narrative commerce . With narrative commerce, you as a company tell a story about the product you are selling. Standard e-commerce platforms do not support narrative commerce, because they are not designed to handle large amounts of content. Retailers who want to use narrative commerce will therefore need to add a content management system (CMS) to their technology mix. With a CMS, you can publish content on microsites, landing pages and blogs. A potential disadvantage of this approach is a fragmented customer journey, where visitors are tossed back and forth between content and commerce pages. This can lead to problems when you also want to add the possibility of personalization.
Experience commerce: DXP + Commerce
The biggest leap that online retailers can make in the area of customer experience is to implement a digital experience platform (DXP). A DXP combines all elements of content and commerce by creating a seamless customer experience across all channels and systems. Content is no longer limited to certain parts of the site, but is embedded in the entire customer experience – on every device. In addition, a good DXP is able to personalize both content and product grids , so that the visitor of both only sees what is relevant to him.
More flexibility
As a bonus, a DXP offers much more flexibility, because it can be integrated with other platforms through APIs. This way, you can easily add new (micro)services to the platform. This allows you to innovate quickly. The separation provided by the APIs also makes it much easier to adapt existing services, allowing your IT team to optimize and iterate without interruption.
Of course, implementing a full DXP is not for everyone. Since you need the necessary technical skills to put this powerful technology to work for you, in practice it is mainly larger organizations that do this.
So let's first take a look at what you need to consider before deciding to invest in a DXP.
The graph below shows the different stages of content italy telegram data marketing maturity . Many companies get stuck in phase 3, where it seems as if the initial investment is not paying off. There is usually no clear reason for this. However, a dive into the analytics often shows that visitors get lost and do not return to the page where you want them to be. And – more importantly – where they want to be. This quickly leads to the assumption that content is detrimental to conversion, while in reality the problem lies somewhere else. Because content and commerce are completely separated, you have created a dead end in the customer journey.
Companies that have restructured their approach (for example, by making their content shoppable or by using advanced personalization of content and products) have been shown to be more successful. They understand that it takes time to figure out what works and what doesn’t, but at the same time remain committed to their customers and the experiences they have.
2. Be prepared for tomorrow: commerce that comes to you
Another reason to take a long-term view of this topic is found in a recent Gartner study , which states that "by 2020, approximately 25 percent of leading online retailers will have implemented first-generation commerce that comes to you technology.