What Is a Digital Platform Category?
by Lumavate | Last Updated: Dec 1, 2023
What Is a Digital Platform Category?
A Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is a type of software that streamlines the way a business interacts with its audience. More specifically, it is software that lets users create and manage the digital experiences of those users. This includes any type of digital interaction on any digital screen that relates to connecting with the company, such as websites, landing pages, digital product guides, apps, microsites, and more. A DXP enables marketing teams to manage that connection across the entire customer journey.
Most of the time, a DXP lets users build out the front-end design of the digital experience, which is the initial interaction or front-line “touch” of the company with their audience. Some DXPs, like Lumavate, go further in allowing users to create the entire digital experience without using any code. To do that, they have all of the tools necessary to build up the digital experience in one platform, including content management capabilities that let users create, manage, and reuse content. The content could include images, documents, videos, text, and more.
The DXP may only offer Content Management Systems (CMS) functionality, while others go further to offer full Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions. Lumavate offers this more enhanced, comprehensive solution that encompasses all necessary tools into one Digital Experience Platform. Users can then tap into these digital platforms for marketing at every level.
What Are Digital Platforms Used For?
There are many uses of digital platforms, but they tend to focus on several core goals: to streamline operations and engage with customers. A digital platform can be used to enhance connections, engagement, brand reputation, and overall communication with customers and clients in various formats.
There are many types of digital platforms available today, though not all are the same in what they offer or how they are designed to be used. These digital platforms are available in numerous categories, such as the following, all with the goal of creating some type of digital experience:
E-commerce
Content creation
Business collaboration
Learning
Social media
CRM
Messaging and more
Most of the time, these companies offering a digital platform will do so as a software as a service (SaaS) model, and they are hosted in the cloud. The SaaS model enables organizations to easily put in place the digital platform without high costs and to continuously have access to and manage it over time. Being in the Cloud also enables organizations to have access anywhere, improving functionality while also enhancing the security of the product.
What Are the Benefits of Online Platforms?
Users have options when it comes to selecting an online platform. In some cases, you may feel that building a custom solution is ideal, but there are several core benefits to using an online digital platform purchased from a third party instead.
One of the most important benefits of using a third-party digital platform is that it is often a fraction of the cost. Most of the time, the SaaS model will include the purchase of an annual subscription with various tiers of options and features to select from to ensure a good fit for the product to the user’s needs. These overall costs pale in comparison to the cost of building and maintaining a custom-built solution. The benefits of digital platforms are not limited significantly through third-party models either, making it a high cost to pay for a model built for your business.
A second benefit is that most SaaS digital platforms are improving on a consistent basis. They are less static and more commonly growing, expanding, innovating, and simply improving. This allows the platform to continuously gain functionality and continue to remain as modern and powerful as the first day. As you consider the advantages and disadvantages of digital platforms, consider the cost and time it would take to continuously invest in these upgrades for your custom-built site. Updates, by comparison, from a third-party product may be made every other week in some cases.
A third benefit is speed-to-market. Online platforms are ready-to-go and can be modernized, updated, and customized to fit the business’s needs quickly. This allows for faster implementation and launching than could be done through a customized solution.
What Are Examples of Digital Platforms?
As you compare your options to narrow down the digital platform company you plan to use, note that there are numerous examples of such platforms today. Some of them include Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, Liferay, Acquia, Optimizely, and many others.
Each one of the companies on this list of digital platforms is a bit different from the next, but all allow for the ability of business users to build digital experiences for their clients and marketing goals. Yet, many of them require users to have more technical resources available to get started, including some insight into how to use the various tools available.
The goal of this tool is to build a digital experience that fits your company. Products like Adobe Experience Manager allow you to do that. However, this platform, for example, requires technical resources and often outside consultants for the initial implementation. The result here is that it takes more specialized help and support, higher costs, and, in some cases, more time to get the solution up and ready to go.
Other products, like Lumavate’s DXP solution, are designed significantly differently. It is designed to allow the user – without any additional resources – to set up the digital experience within minutes. Anyone within the company’s marketing team can accomplish this. Lumavate’s DXP solution often offers key features needed for the process, including a Content Management System (CMS) or a Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution. This allows for versatility without complexity.
In many ways, Lumavate stands out from this list of digital platforms because it offers substantially more functionality than most DXPs. That’s due to the platform’s comprehensive tools and resources. Lumavate’s built-in functionality includes:
Product Information Management (PIM) solution;
Form Builder;
More than 40 out-of-the-box integrations.
With these types of solutions, marketing teams do not experience limitations in their ability to make the digital platform work for their company’s specific needs and objectives. Core here is that the Lumavate DXP makes it possible for companies to have all of the tools and specifications they need to create a custom-like experience without the cost and delays that come from custom-built digital experiences. This allows Lumavate to stand out among such models on the market today.