Arc XP: 2021 year in review

Arc XP, a division of The Washington Post, has grown rapidly in 2021, further establishing itself as an industry-leading, cloud-based digital experience platform. The platform now powers more than 1,900 sites around the world, reaching over 1.5 billion unique users each month. In its seventh year in the market, Arc XP serves an even greater variety of clients and industries, expanding its services to major enterprise brands, publishers and broadcasters. This tremendous growth is the result of a strategic evolution and continuous innovation.

EVOLVING THE BUSINESS

In April, the platform rebranded as Arc XP, reflecting Arc’s evolution into a modern digital experience platform (DXP) that provides an end-to-end solution for media organizations and enterprise brands across industries.

Arc XP has long prioritized speed to market and can quickly stand up new client sites in as little as 12 weeks. The global news and entertainment organization Metro World News is a recent example, successfully completing its media platform migration to Arc XP and launch of www.metroworldnews.com, the first of 19 redesigned sites, in less than 45 days.

“With Arc XP’s success across industries, businesses and products, the company is achieving more than ever and has cemented itself as the go-to digital experience platform for top enterprise companies, retail brands and media organizations around the world,” said Scot Gillespie, CTO and GM of Arc XP. “As we continue to innovate and expand as a company, we are dedicated to strengthening our offerings to ensure the best possible experience and outcome for our clients.”

POWERING THE GROWTH OF CLIENTS ACROSS THE GLOBE

2021 saw Arc XP expand into five new countries and two new regions to now support clients in 28 countries across North, Central and South America, Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Arc XP continues to deliver results for a growing customer base in Latin America. El Financiero, an economy and business news platform in Mexico, saw a significant increase in readership after migrating to Arc XP—up 18.2% month over month and 44.2% year over year—and rose to Mexico’s top five most visited media sites following two months of record-breaking traffic.

“The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to accelerate our digital transformation process; we already had recognition and preference of our readers in print, but we needed to deliver a better product to our digital users. Through Arc XP’s platform, we achieved in one semester the growth that would have taken us two years,” said Manuel Arroyo, President of El Financiero.

SERVING MORE INDUSTRIES THAN EVER

Continuing to grow its support of enterprise clients, Arc XP expanded to five new industries this year: real estate, gaming, financial services, sports and entertainment, and automotive. This underscores Arc XP’s ability to the meet the unique digital needs of brands.

Arc XP entered the financial services industry with CoinDesk, who selected the digital experience platform for its elasticity and ability to seamlessly support their global growth, its strong schema, and ability to structure CoinDesk’s content in a manner that allows them to swiftly query, update, transform and distribute it to an expanding stable of applications and platform.

When announcing the partnership, Mina Azimov, Chief Product Officer at CoinDesk, stated, “CoinDesk has seen exponential audience growth as crypto interest has become increasingly more mainstream. We went from 2.5 million unique visitors per month to more than 30 million. So we felt it’s time to give that audience more reasons to be engaged by giving them a fuller experience. We’re thrilled to work with Arc XP for our new site launching in beta.”

By migrating to Arc XP and launching a redesigned site to drive performance and SEO, CoinDesk is now able to deliver the up-to-the-minute news and information its users are looking for in the constantly changing digital currency market quickly and efficiently with an experience that supports all its audiences long-term.

EXPANDING TO FULFILL THE FULL RANGE OF DIGITAL NEEDS

When it came to releasing new features, integrations and products, 2021 was a record year for Arc XP, highlighting its commitment to providing the capabilities and tools clients need to succeed today, and deliver the extensibility that will enable them to meet their future goals. Most notable is the launch of the company’s eCommerce platform, Arc Commerce, built to meet the desire of marketers to use storytelling to build deeper consumer relationships and drive omnichannel revenue goals.

The debut of Arc XP’s eCommerce platform was celebrated by Washington Post owner and Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos: “Congratulations to Arc XP on the launch of its eCommerce tools. This is an area of growth and investment for the team, and they have created a high-performance, flexible platform that combines content and commerce together into one seamless experience.”

The Golden State Warriors and the Chase Center were the first customers to leverage Arc Commerce to launch their new hospitality marketplace, SuiteXchange. In a short amount of time, Arc XP, in collaboration with the Golden State Warriors, built a scalable secondary suite exchange marketplace from concept to launch, allowing venues to easily realize new revenue streams with minimum effort and overhead.

Brandon Schneider, President and COO of the Golden State Warriors, said “Arc XP’s digital experience platform provides us with all of the tools and capabilities to seamlessly get this new initiative off the ground, and the ability to quickly scale this business as we partner with other teams and venues.” A venue can be fully onboarded onto the platform in four weeks time, enabling their suite owners to list and resell suites for events they cannot attend. And in just a few minutes, a suite owner can log onto the platform and list their suite, which can be securely purchased through Arc XP’s integration with Stripe.

For all the successes 2021 has brought, the future is bright for Arc XP and its clients.

“Our foundation as a premier digital experience platform has never been stronger,” said Miki King, President of Arc XP. “Looking at the year ahead, we are excited to expand into additional industries and regions around the world, bringing future clients the tools to innovate rapidly with our newest technologies and robust suite offerings.”