Composable digital experience platforms offer brands the flexibility to meet customers’ needs

This article originally appeared in Digital Commerce 360′s 2022 Retail Leaders in U.S. Ecommerce report.

As customer acquisition costs spike, brands are placing greater emphasis on building long-term customer engagement and loyalty. Creating these relationships involves a strong content experience strategy that engages customers over time and across multiple channels. To succeed, brands must think beyond the promotion calendar and use a content mix that meets customers where they are — moving them up the relationship funnel and ultimately back down the checkout funnel. Digital Commerce 360 spoke with Ryan Gladstone, director of product management at Arc XP, about how brands can leverage tools to create and deliver these types of shopping experiences at scale.

What emerging ecommerce trends should brands have on their radars?

RG: I’m keeping a close eye on video, particularly live video. While a few brands in the U.S. have deployed live shopping experiences in ways that break through the noise overall, video’s potential remains unrealized due to challenges with both talent and technology.

Live video, particularly live shopping, requires skills not yet commonly employed on marketing teams. Increasingly, boutique agencies are popping up to support this talent need. On the technology side, brands need to make investments so that they own more of the video experience and have insight into the data. It’s difficult to test and learn if you’re outsourcing most, if not all, of the experience to a social platform that gives you limited analytics in return.

What are the biggest hurdles brands face staying competitive and how can they overcome these challenges?

RG: The biggest complaint we hear from brands is that their marketing teams are unequipped with the right tools to keep up with changing customer and market behaviors. Many brands are on a monolithic digital platform that they have undermaintained, making what should be basic strategies difficult, if not impossible, to implement. To meet evolving consumer expectations, these brands need to be more agile, which requires modern technology.

Composable digital experience platforms, such as Arc XP, enable brands to bring in their preferred point solutions for a best-in-class stack and adjust their vendor mix easily as conditions change. This flexibility allows brands to make continuous improvements and hone their approach to meet consumer trends.

How can brands start the process of implementing a composable digital experience platform?

RG: They could partner with a digital experience platform provider, such as Arc XP. We give brands the tools they need to create and deliver experiences at scale without having to choose between performance and marketer empowerment. Arc XP’s no-code page-building experience allows marketers to create standout experiences without relying on the development team every step of the way. Natively integrated task management capabilities allow for close collaboration within the digital experience platform, which streamlines the experience and requires less switching between tools.

Arc XP also serves as a good partner for developers because of the modern technologies and robust out-of-the-box components that solve the mundane tasks, allowing developers to optimize developer resources and focus on creating more interesting and differentiated experiences.

What should brands do as their next step?

RG: Talk with your marketers about how they are shifting to address the changes in consumer behaviors and bringing new campaigns and experiences to life. If their answers start with a sigh and end with a 20-step process, you’ll know it’s time to provide them with a platform that will remove the barriers and enable them to succeed.