steps to evaluate your digital experience

Improving the digital experience of your brand can help you to attract and retain customers, and increase revenue. In order to do this, you need to understand how your customers interact with your brand as well as where digital channels fall in the purchasing cycle. This will allow you to identify the gaps in your experience and determine which martech tools and internal structures are best suited to address them.

Here are some steps that all businesses can take to improve the digital experience.

You can start by assessing your current digital experience

“To create a digital experience that is best in class, you must first understand the needs and challenges of your customers,” said Alp Mimiaroglu, Director of Marketing for Sysco, a wholesale food distributor, at The MarTech Conference.

Some purchases can be made entirely online, while others may require the involvement of sales agents or offline interaction with customers. Assess the importance of digital experiences in meeting the needs of customers throughout their journey.

Some B2B transactions can be completely digital. While most B2B sales are done by live salespeople, others can be made entirely online. A restaurant chain, for example, might buy tinfoil and other basic materials in their stores using a self-service digital system. The restaurant chain could buy a small amount and try it out before buying more for the business.

Mimaroglu stated that “[this example] requires only digital touchpoints to encourage the customer into purchasing.” They don’t require sales intervention, offline or a demonstration. They will buy based only on an email, web site, a special, or a referral.

Other purchases may require a combination of digital interaction and live sales engagement. A customer may require a demonstration or an in person sales call.

Mimaroglu suggests shadowing an experienced or new member of a sales team to get a full understanding of the extent of engagement online and off.

Gaining insight from the field, and observing how your customers interact with the digital touchpoints of your company will allow you to identify areas for improvement and set the stage for long-term success.

Dig deep: What’s a Digital Experience Platform (DXP)?

Plan your digital touchpoints

Identify the key stages of the customer journey in order to build a consistent experience for the entire lifecycle of the customer.

New Customers The stage in the customer journey that you are at depends on whether it is a new customer, or one who has come from a rival company.

Mimaroglu explained that if the customer is not a competitor you will have more time to make sure everything goes smoothly. If they are coming from a rival, you’re going to have less time, especially if there is no contract, because they will churn fast.

Purchases. Ensure that the digital experience at this stage includes the right recommendations and an easy-to use ecommerce platform if applicable.

Retention. Are there enough offers and calls to action for existing customers to keep them purchasing? There are places where customers can ask for service online or connect with a sales representative or service representative. This is an opportunity for your business to increase revenue and keep the customer from going to a competitor.

This is an example of the various digital touchpoints that Home Depot uses, arranged by channel.

When mapping the digital experience, it is important to consider which touchpoints will be personalized. You can deliver personalization to the touchpoints that you choose using your martech stack, internal architecture and other factors.

Find gaps in your digital experience

Mimaroglu said that to find gaps in customer experience, you should start with what you can manage directly — resources, headcount and vendors. “That’s a good place to start for quick wins.”

Are you able to put the right budget and teams in place? You can start looking at new martech to improve your digital experience. Are you using the resources and tools that you have?

Mimaroglu says that after assessing what internal resources are already being used, you can look at longer-term options like cross-functional aligning, cross-channel orchestration, and partnering with other teams to create a consistent customer experience.

Planning in the long-term across IT and Engineering will identify capabilities that you haven’t done before as well as those you want to improve.

Build and improve your martech stack

Mimaroglu cautioned that improving your martech stack does not necessarily mean chasing after a “shiny” object or a solution.

He said: “Yes, you can purchase marketing technologies that will improve your digital experience. But if you don’t use your martech stack correctly, your digital experience won’t fully be optimized.”

The time and effort required to purchase and implement a new solution should be considered by organizations, particularly if the solution is cross-functional. Other teams will need to adopt it and coordinate its usage.

Start with strategy – what are the benefits and goals of a better digital experience? You should then look for tech solutions to help you achieve your goals.

On a longer term, you should work with IT to determine the technical requirements for longer-term capabilities. Maybe your company does not have an all-in-one ecommerce solution. Build a roadmap for martech to achieve that goal.

Mimaroglu warned that the roadmap should not be influenced by martech vendors or consultants. Your organization should lay out the martech road.

He said that you should think strategically and hire experts to help you make the best purchases for your martech stack.

5: Implement with an end-to-end architecture

To build the best digital experience you need the right end to end architecture. This will support all touchpoints, and make the experience consistent.

The martech stack is not the only thing that matters. It’s also about how your entire organization is interconnected.

Mimaroglu asked, “How does data architecture work?” How are the integrations?” Mimaroglu asked. How is the wiring? How do I orchestrate across channels? How will I personalize my orchestration?

He continued, “Or else there will be gaps and disconnections as customers are touched by different teams and applications.” The end-to-end architectural design enables a best-in class digital experience.

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