What is Digital Experience?

Understanding digital experience

Digital experience represents all the online interactions a user has with a brand or organization. These experiences extend across websites, mobile applications, social media platforms, customer portals, e-commerce systems, and various other digital touchpoints. Unlike traditional customer experiences, digital experiences are technology-driven, allowing for personalization at scale, data-driven insights, and real-time engagement.

The concept of digital experience has evolved significantly over the past decade. What began as simple website interactions have become sophisticated, omnichannel journeys that seamlessly connect physical and digital worlds. Modern digital experiences leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced analytics to create intelligent, relevant, and highly personalized interactions that anticipate customer needs and preferences.

The importance of digital experience to business

Digital experience has become a cornerstone of business strategy across industries for several compelling reasons. First, customer expectations have fundamentally shifted in the digital age. Today's consumers demand seamless, personalized experiences across all touchpoints and channels. Organizations that fail to meet these expectations risk losing customers to competitors who prioritize digital excellence.

Second, exceptional digital experiences drive measurable business outcomes. Research consistently shows that companies delivering superior digital experiences enjoy higher customer satisfaction rates, increased loyalty, greater customer lifetime value, and stronger revenue growth. According to IDC research^[1], 60% of Fortune 500 firms will use generative AI to drive ROI by 2027, largely through digital experience management initiatives.

Third, digital experiences are valuable sources of customer data and insights. Each interaction generates information that organizations can analyze to better understand customer behaviors, preferences, and pain points. These insights enable continuous improvement of products, services, and the overall customer journey.

Finally, well-designed digital experiences reduce operational costs while improving efficiency. Self-service capabilities, automated processes, and AI-powered interactions allow organizations to serve customers effectively while optimizing resource allocation and reducing manual intervention.

Core elements of effective digital experience

Personalization and relevance

Personalization stands at the heart of exceptional digital experiences. Modern consumers expect organizations to understand their unique preferences, behaviors, and needs, and deliver tailored content and interactions accordingly. Effective personalization goes beyond simply addressing customers by name. It involves dynamically adapting the entire experience based on individual user profiles, previous interactions, and real-time behavior.

Relevance complements personalization by ensuring that digital experiences deliver value in the specific context of each customer interaction. This means providing the right information, offers, or functionality at the right moment in the customer journey. Relevance requires a deep understanding of customer intent and the ability to anticipate needs before they're explicitly expressed.

Omnichannel consistency

Today's customers interact with organizations across multiple channels and devices, often within a single customer journey. Effective digital experiences maintain consistency across these touchpoints while optimizing the unique characteristics of each channel. This omnichannel approach ensures that customers can begin an interaction on one device and seamlessly continue it on another, with full context preservation and minimal friction.

Achieving omnichannel consistency requires integrated systems, unified customer data, and coordinated experience design across web, mobile, social, email, messaging, and physical touchpoints. When successfully implemented, omnichannel experiences create a cohesive brand impression and reduce customer effort throughout the journey.

Intelligence and automation

Intelligence-driven digital experiences leverage data and analytics to understand user intent, predict needs, and automate appropriate responses. Artificial intelligence and machine learning enable organizations to process vast amounts of customer data to identify patterns, segment audiences with precision, and create increasingly sophisticated personalization models.

Automation enhances digital experiences by streamlining processes, reducing response times, and enabling scale without compromising quality. From automated content recommendations to AI-powered chatbots, intelligent automation allows organizations to deliver timely, relevant experiences while optimizing operational efficiency.

Accessibility and inclusivity

Truly effective digital experiences are accessible to all users, including those with disabilities or who face other barriers to traditional interaction models. Inclusive design ensures that digital experiences accommodate diverse needs, preferences, and contexts of use, creating equal access for the widest possible audience.

Accessibility considerations include support for assistive technologies, alternative input methods, readable content, and intuitive navigation. Beyond compliance with legal requirements, accessible digital experiences demonstrate organizational values and open access to larger customer segments.

The dual nature of digital experience

Digital experience comprises two interconnected elements that work together to create value for both customers and organizations:

Delivering the experience

This aspect focuses on the tools, technologies, and strategies required to deliver relevant, personalized digital experiences to the right person, through the right channel, at the right time. It encompasses content management systems, digital asset management platforms, personalization engines, and delivery channels that collectively enable the creation and distribution of engaging customer experiences.

Delivering effective experiences requires organizations to master content strategy, user experience design, channel optimization, and technology integration. The goal is to create seamless interactions that feel natural, intuitive, and valuable from the customer's perspective, regardless of the underlying complexity.

The ability to deliver the experience

This element encompasses the infrastructure, capabilities, and processes that empower employees to create, manage, analyze, and continuously improve digital experiences. It includes tools for content creation, workflow management, performance analytics, and customer insights that enable teams to work efficiently and make data-driven decisions.

Organizations must invest in both employee-facing systems and customer-facing experiences to achieve digital experience excellence. When internal teams have the right tools, data, and processes, they can more effectively respond to customer needs, adapt to changing market conditions, and innovate at a competitive pace.

Digital experience management (DXM)

Digital experience management refers to the strategic approach and technology framework used to create, deliver, optimize, and measure digital experiences across channels and touchpoints. DXM platforms integrate various technologies—including content management, digital asset management, personalization, analytics, generative AI capabilities, and more, to provide a comprehensive solution for managing the entire digital experience lifecycle.

Effective digital experience management addresses several critical business needs. It breaks down organizational silos by providing a unified approach to customer experience across departments and functions. It enables personalization at scale by connecting customer data with content and delivery systems. And it provides actionable insights through integrated analytics and reporting capabilities that measure experience performance.

Modern DXM platforms are increasingly adopting composable, modular architectures that allow organizations to select and integrate specific capabilities based on their unique requirements. This approach provides flexibility, scalability, and the ability to evolve the digital experience stack over time as business needs and technologies change.

Key capabilities for digital experience success

Content management and optimization

Content remains the foundation of digital experiences, making content management a critical capability for experience delivery. Modern content management systems support structured content models, reusable components, and multichannel publishing to maximize efficiency and consistency across touchpoints.

Content optimization leverages data and testing to refine messaging, design, and functionality based on actual user behavior. A/B testing, multivariate testing, and AI-powered content recommendations help organizations continuously improve performance and relevance.

Digital asset management

Rich media assets—including images, videos, animations, and interactive elements—play an increasingly important role in building engaging digital experiences. Digital asset management (DAM) systems centralize the storage, organization, and distribution of these assets, ensuring brand consistency and operational efficiency.

Advanced DAM capabilities include AI-powered tagging and search, automated content transformation for different channels, and integrated workflows for asset creation and approval. These features help organizations scale their content operations while maintaining quality and governance.

Customer data and insights

Understanding customer behaviors, preferences, and journeys requires robust data collection, integration, and analysis capabilities. Customer data solutions unify information from multiple sources to create comprehensive profiles that power personalization and segmentation.

Analytics tools transform raw data into actionable insights about customer journeys, content performance, and business outcomes. These insights enable continuous optimization and inform strategic decisions about experience investments.

Journey orchestration

Customer journeys rarely follow linear paths, making journey orchestration essential for delivering coherent experiences across touchpoints. Journey orchestration technologies map customer pathways, identify moments of opportunity, and coordinate appropriate responses across channels.

Advanced orchestration capabilities include real-time event processing, predictive next-best-actions, and adaptive journeys that evolve based on customer behavior and context. These features help organizations move beyond static, predefined experiences to dynamic, responsive customer journeys.

Multi-channel messaging and communications

Effective digital experiences often incorporate proactive communications through email, SMS, push notifications, messaging apps, and other channels. Integrated messaging platforms enable coordinated outreach based on customer preferences and journey context.

Centralized messaging capabilities ensure consistent brand voice, regulatory compliance, and optimal timing across channels. They also provide unified analytics to measure communication effectiveness and refine strategies over time.

How OpenText solutions enable digital experience excellence

OpenText Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive suite of integrated customer experience technologies designed to address the full spectrum of digital experience requirements. As a leading provider in the digital experience space, OpenText combines powerful capabilities with flexibility and scalability to support organizations at every stage of digital maturity.

OpenText Experience Aviator

OpenText Experience Aviator revolutionizes digital experience creation by bringing generative AI and image AI capabilities to the Experience Cloud ecosystem. This innovative solution helps organizations create unique, contextual content that covers all customer journey touchpoints while maintaining data privacy and security.

Experience Aviator puts powerful AI assistants at content creators' fingertips, enabling them to auto-generate contextual and relevant content for customer communications, rich media, and images. By incorporating GenAI, image AI, and content analysis, Experience Aviator removes friction, provides creative inspiration, and makes content smarter throughout the customer experience development process.

Key benefits of Experience Aviator include:

Accelerated content creation and efficiency

Content authors can create new material or improve existing content for greater simplicity, understanding, and empathy with customers. AI performs a range of analyses, including rich media analysis, content summaries, and readability scores, enabling authoring teams to speak with one brand voice and improve engagement while operating at enterprise scale.

Enhanced data privacy and security

Rather than exposing proprietary data to public domain large language models, Experience Aviator brings vetted LLMs to organizations' private data sets. OpenText Private Cloud customers can experiment in sandbox environments to explore new use cases while ensuring their data remains secure.

Transformative customer communications

Experience Aviator helps businesses create engaging interactions and deliver relevant communications that increase customer satisfaction, efficiency, and growth. Organizations can generate personalized, empathetic content at scale, leverage natural language chat for authoring in various writing styles, and auto-generate contextually relevant content that maintains brand consistency while engaging targeted audiences.

According to Boston Consulting Group research, 70 percent of CMOs reported their organizations already use generative AI, with another 19 percent testing it.^[2] Three key areas where marketing leaders are exploring AI applications include personalization, content creation, and market segmentation—all capabilities supported by Experience Aviator.

OpenText Web CMS (TeamSite)

OpenText Web CMS (TeamSite) provides the foundation for creating and managing personalized web experiences across customer channels. This web content management system uniquely combines marketing and developer tools within a single interface, enabling effective collaboration between technical and non-technical teams.

With Experience Aviator integration, OpenText Web CMS enables content creators to tap into the power of generative AI for both text and images, making it possible to efficiently repurpose longform content. The system provides relevant content suggestions through indexing, metadata analysis, and automatic tagging, significantly streamlining the content creation process.

OpenText Web CMS supports hybrid headless architecture, allowing developers to work with preferred tools like React while marketers use intuitive interfaces for content authoring, testing, and publishing. This approach delivers the flexibility and performance modern digital experiences require without compromising on scale, security, or compliance.

OpenText Digital Asset Management (DAM)

OpenText Digital Asset Management provides centralized control of rich media assets throughout their lifecycle, from creation and distribution to eventual retirement. With Experience Aviator integration, OpenText DAM enables users to generate inspirational images using textual descriptions that can be sent to creative teams for digital media production.

This seamless workflow integration tracks AI-generated assets via metadata for efficient management, including options for deleting or watermarking at the end of workflow processes. The system also leverages machine learning for brand recognition by identifying outdated content or logos, ensuring brand consistency while improving operational efficiency.

By establishing a unified digital library for marketing, branding, commerce, and other content types, OpenText DAM ensures brand consistency while improving operational efficiency. Organizations benefit from secure, controlled access to assets across teams and reduced time spent locating and preparing media for use across channels.

OpenText Core Messaging and OpenText Communications

OpenText Core Messaging brings together email, SMS, WhatsApp, push notifications, voice, and fax channels into a single, cloud-based messaging platform. This unified approach eliminates siloed communication services and enables consistent, coordinated outreach on customers' preferred channels.

With Experience Aviator integration, OpenText Communications dramatically improves the productivity of marketing, service, and support teams by leveraging large language models to automate work. From authoring and creation to auto-generated web pages and assets, the system enables teams to create personalized, empathetic content at scale while maintaining brand consistency and regulatory compliance.

The platform supports both individual communications and large-scale enterprise messaging, making it suitable for personalized customer conversations as well as broad event-triggered notifications. By centralizing messaging capabilities, organizations can improve visibility, ensure compliance, and measure effectiveness across channels.

OpenText Customer Data

OpenText Customer Data enables organizations to deliver contextually relevant experiences by providing a common view of customer profiles and audience data across touchpoints. This capability forms the foundation for personalization initiatives, helping businesses understand customer preferences and behaviors at a granular level.

With comprehensive customer data management, organizations can improve relevance, increase engagement, and build stronger customer relationships through tailored interactions that reflect individual needs and interests.

OpenText Core Journey

OpenText Core Journey provides omnichannel customer journey management capabilities that extend across web experiences, communications, messaging, and contact centers. This solution helps organizations break down operational silos by aggregating customer data from multiple touchpoints to produce comprehensive analysis and insights.

With journey orchestration capabilities, organizations can coordinate experiences throughout the customer lifecycle, from initial acquisition through retention and loyalty. This approach ensures consistent, coherent experiences regardless of which channels customers use to engage with the brand.

Benefits of investing in digital experience

Accelerated digital transformation

Comprehensive digital experience platforms help organizations break down technology and business silos that often impede transformation efforts. By implementing a composable digital experience platform, businesses can modernize incrementally, augmenting existing technology stacks with new capabilities as needs evolve.

This approach allows organizations to transform at an appropriate pace, balancing immediate business requirements with long-term strategic goals. Rather than undertaking high-risk replacement projects, companies can evolve their digital capabilities progressively while maintaining business continuity.

Enhanced customer loyalty and lifetime value

Relevant, engaging digital experiences delivered through the right channels at the right times cultivate stronger customer relationships and drive loyalty. When organizations consistently meet or exceed customer expectations across touchpoints, they create emotional connections that transcend transactional relationships.

The result is increased customer lifetime value, as satisfied customers tend to purchase more frequently, explore additional product categories, and advocate for brands within their networks. These behavioral changes directly impact revenue growth and competitive positioning.

Operational optimization

Digital experience technologies incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities that can automate and streamline operations across marketing, customer service, and communications functions. These efficiency gains reduce manual effort, minimize errors, and accelerate time-to-market for new initiatives.

By optimizing operations through technology, organizations can redirect human resources toward higher-value activities like strategy, creativity, and relationship building. This shift improves both employee satisfaction and business outcomes.

Consistent multi-experiences

Effective digital experience management ensures consistency across the entire customer lifecycle, from acquisition to retention, regardless of which channels or touchpoints customers use. This consistency builds trust, reduces cognitive load for customers, and reinforces brand positioning.

The ability to deliver cohesive experiences across web, mobile, social, email, messaging, and physical environments has become increasingly important as customer journeys become more complex and non-linear.

Actionable customer insights

Digital experience platforms generate valuable data about customer behaviors, preferences, and emotional responses to different interactions. These insights enable continuous improvement of experiences, communications, and overall customer journeys.

By understanding what works and what doesn't at a granular level, organizations can make informed decisions about experience design, content strategy, and technology investments. This data-driven approach ensures that digital experience efforts align with actual customer needs rather than internal assumptions.

Digital experience trends and future directions

AI-powered personalization and content creation

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming personalization capabilities, moving beyond simple rules-based approaches to sophisticated predictive models. AI-powered systems can identify patterns in customer behavior, anticipate needs, and dynamically adjust experiences in real-time based on individual contexts.

The emergence of generative AI specifically for customer experiences has become a game-changer for marketing and customer service teams. Boston Consulting Group research indicates that 70 percent of CMOs report their organizations already use generative AI, with another 19 percent testing it. These leaders are exploring AI applications in personalization, content creation, and market segmentation to break through market noise and stand out from competitors.

IDC research predicts that 60% of Fortune 500 firms will use generative AI to drive ROI by 2027, with digital experience management being a primary application area. This trend reflects the growing recognition that AI can dramatically improve the relevance and effectiveness of digital experiences while delivering measurable business outcomes.

Generative AI tools like OpenText Experience Aviator are transforming how organizations create content for customer communications. By using AI to generate contextually relevant content, businesses can dramatically accelerate production timelines, turning weeks of effort into days and days of work into minutes. Organizations can leverage these capabilities for natural language authoring, intelligent content creation at scale, and image generation while maintaining brand consistency and regulatory compliance.

Composable architecture

The digital experience technology landscape is increasingly embracing composable, modular approaches that allow organizations to assemble customized solutions from interoperable components. This architectural shift provides greater flexibility, faster innovation, and reduced vendor lock-in compared to monolithic platforms.

Composable digital experience platforms enable organizations to select best-of-breed capabilities for specific functions while maintaining integration and coherence across the experience stack. This approach helps businesses adapt more quickly to changing requirements and emerging technologies.

Unified employee experiences

Organizations recognize that exceptional customer experiences depend on empowered employees with access to the right tools, information, and insights. This realization is driving investment in unified employee experiences that bring together applications, data, tasks, and dashboards in personalized workspaces.

By improving the employee experience, organizations can enhance productivity, reduce turnover, and ultimately deliver better customer experiences through more engaged and effective staff.

Hybrid physical-digital experiences

The boundaries between physical and digital experiences continue to blur, creating opportunities for innovative hybrid approaches. Technologies like augmented reality, QR codes, location-based services, and IoT connectivity enable seamless transitions between online and offline interactions.

Organizations that successfully integrate physical and digital touchpoints can create distinctive, memorable experiences that leverage the strengths of each domain while providing consistent brand engagement across contexts.

The road ahead: digital experience is a strategic business imperative

Digital experience has evolved from a marketing consideration to a strategic business imperative that impacts customer acquisition, retention, loyalty, and overall competitive positioning. As customer expectations continue to rise and digital technologies advance, organizations must develop comprehensive approaches to creating, delivering, and optimizing experiences across channels and touchpoints.

By investing in the right combination of technologies, processes, and skills—and selecting partners with proven expertise in digital experience management—businesses can transform customer interactions into significant competitive advantages. The organizations that succeed will be those that genuinely understand their customers' needs and preferences, then consistently deliver relevant, personalized, and engaging experiences at every stage of the relationship.