XM Knowledge Base
Author: Will Webster
Subject Matter Expert: Karen Goldstein
What is digital product experience?
Digital product experience (DPX) is what drives your customers’ perceptions of product design, features, and functions, influencing their digital purchase and usage behavior.
Think of digital product experience as the sum of all the moments that shape how customers feel about what you’ve created – from the first time they see it to the moment they decide to keep using it, or not.
It includes the visual appeal of your product, its user experience, and even the emotional response they have while using it. Every touchpoint, whether it’s a seamless setup process or a frustrating bug or glitch, contributes to digital product experience.
At its core, a strong digital product experience isn’t just about having a well-designed product; it’s about creating an experience that resonates with your customers. It’s about understanding their needs, anticipating their challenges, and crafting a journey that not only meets their expectations but exceeds them.
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Why is digital product experience important?
In a world where 95% of new products fail, the brands that succeed do so by creating and maintaining robust, market-ready products.
What sets these successful 5% apart? They understand the importance of creating a great digital product experience.
In today’s ultra-competitive online market, digital product experience is more than just a nice-to-have – it’s a key differentiator.
It’s not enough to simply offer a product that works; you need to offer a product that resonates with your customers on a deeper level. A well-crafted digital product experience can turn a one-time buyer into a loyal customer who advocates for your brand. A poor experience can quickly drive customers straight to your competitors.
Is the product intuitive to use? Does it solve their problem effectively? How does it make our users feel?
Teams that ask and answer these questions see stronger customer loyalty, higher lifetime value, and a more positive brand reputation in return.
A great digital product experience doesn’t just lead to higher customer satisfaction – it drives business success.
Digital product experience vs. user experience vs. customer experience
When discussing product experience, you’ll often hear terms like “user experience” and “customer experience” thrown into the mix. While there’s plenty of overlap between these concepts, they each have distinct roles. Understanding the differences – and where they overlap – is key.
User experience (UX) goes a step deeper than DPX, focusing specifically on the usability of your product or system, such as an app or website. UX is concerned with how intuitive and enjoyable these interactions are, directly impacting the overall product experience.
Customer experience (CX) takes the broadest view, going far beyond your product alone. It encompasses your entire customer journey – from marketing and sales to customer service and beyond. CX includes DPX and UX but also covers the entire journey, from the first brand touchpoint to customer support.
These experiences are deeply intertwined. A seamless user experience enhances the product experience, making the product more satisfying to use, and a strong DPX makes a huge contribution to a great customer experience.
Ultimately, while DPX, UX, and CX focus on different levels of customer interaction, they all work together to shape the overall perception of your brand.
The key components of digital product experience
A great digital product experience is the result of multiple factors working together seamlessly. Understanding these key components will help you develop a product that not only meets customer needs but also exceeds their expectations.
Product usability and user experience
Usability is the cornerstone of any successful digital product experience.
It’s about how easy and intuitive your product is for users to navigate and interact with. A strong UX involves clear navigation, responsive design and an overall flow that feels natural to users – ensuring that your customers can achieve their goals with minimal effort and frustration.
When usability is prioritized, it enhances the overall digital product experience, making the product more enjoyable and accessible.
Product features and functionality
The tangible elements that solve problems, meet needs and match expectations, the features and functionality of your product are what create value to your customer. And both should be delivered in the right combination.
A well-designed product offers features that are not only useful, but also align with what your target audience truly wants. Its functionality should be reliable and consistent, ensuring that the product performs as expected under all conditions.
Product content and information
Content and information are often overlooked but are vital components of the digital product experience. This includes everything from in-app guidance and tips, to helpful documentation and support resources.
Great product content and information can be the difference between your users understanding how to use your product effectively and maximizing its potential or not. The right information at the right time empowers users and enhances their confidence in your product.
Product analytics and customer feedback
It’s really important to understand that digital product experience doesn’t end when the product is in the hands of your customer. Continuous improvement is key, and this is where product analytics and customer feedback come into play.
By analyzing how existing customers interact with your product – what they love, where they struggle and how they use different features – you gain valuable insights into areas that need attention, or new features altogether. By regularly collecting and acting on customer feedback, you gain the insights needed to refine your digital product experience over time, ensuring it stays aligned with customer needs and expectations.
How product teams optimize the digital product experience
The best products are built and maintained with the understanding that optimizing digital product experience is an ongoing effort – one that requires a blend of data-driven insights, customer feedback and regular collaboration.
Let’s delve a bit deeper into the strategies great product managers and teams adopt to continuously optimize the digital product experience.
They leverage product analytics to understand user behavior
One of the most effective ways to optimize digital product experience is by leveraging product analytics.
Product analytics tools provide deep insights into how users interact with your product, helping you understand what features they use most, where they drop off and how they navigate through the product.
By analyzing this data, product teams can identify patterns, uncover pain points and understand what truly matters to users – pointing you in the direction of where to make the right improvements. Note that while this is true for digital products, it may not necessarily be true about physical products.
They continuously gather and act on customer data through research survey software
While analytics give you quantitative insights, customer surveys and feedback provide the qualitative data needed to understand the “why” behind user behavior.
Here research survey software is key – empowering product and customer success teams to continuously gather customer feedback on various aspects of the product, from usability to feature preferences.
If you want to refine your digital product experience, it’s not enough to simply collect feedback – you need to prioritize and make changes based on what customers are telling you.
They collaborate cross-functionally
Optimizing digital product experience is not the responsibility of a single team; it requires collaboration across the various departments involved in the product and customer lifecycle – including design, development, marketing and your customer success team.
Each team brings a unique perspective and input that is essential to creating a holistic digital product experience: designers focus on usability, developers on functionality, marketers on positioning and success teams on customer needs.
By working together, these teams can ensure that every aspect of the digital product experience is cohesive and aligned with overall business goals. And how do you create the required level of collaboration? Above all else, regular cross-functional meetings and dedicated communications channels are key.
Real-world examples of companies optimizing digital product experience
To truly understand the impact of optimizing digital product experience, it’s helpful to look at how some of the world’s leading companies have leveraged it to build their success.
Here are two companies that have made huge strides through a strong digital product experience focus.
How Slack improved onboarding with product analytics
Like almost every tech company, Slack faced the challenge of ensuring new users quickly understood how to maximize value from its platform. To tackle this, the now workplace communications leader leveraged product analytics to analyze its user onboarding process with new users.
By tracking user engagement metrics – including number of messages sent and channels created – measuring how long it took new users to complete critical actions, and identifying where people struggled or dropped off during the setup process, Slack was able to understand knowledge gaps and pain points.
With this understanding, Slack simplified steps, improved its guidance and offered targeted in-app tips based on user behavior – leading to a smoother, more intuitive onboarding process, which not only improved user engagement but also increased overall product adoption rates.
How IKEA increased conversions with user feedback
Global furniture and home goods giant, IKEA, has long been known for its customer-centric approach. Central to this is its focus on an optimal digital product experience, rooted in regularly gathering and acting on user feedback.
One area where this approach has significantly paid off is in IKEA’s online shopping experience. IKEA found that many customers weren’t making large purchases online due to uncertainties about how the furniture would look and fit in their homes. Hearing this feedback, IKEA introduced its augmented reality tool in 2017, the IKEA Place app, which allowed potential customers to visualize how a piece of furniture would look in their space using their smartphone.
By directly addressing concerns – and creating a more engaging shopping experience to boot – IKEA saw an increase in online conversions, with more customers feeling assured to complete their purchases.
How to start optimizing your digital product experience
Embarking on the journey to optimize your digital product experience can seem daunting, but by following a step-by-step approach you can ensure that your efforts are both focused and effective.
Here’s our three-step guide to help your team get started.
1) Audit your current digital product experience
The first step in optimizing your digital product experience is to understand where you currently stand.
Conduct a thorough audit of your existing digital product experience by gathering data on user interactions, customer feedback and performance metrics. Look at key touchpoints in the user journey – such as onboarding, feature usage and support interactions – identifying where users might be facing problems.
The goal here is to build a holistic view of how users perceive and interact with your product. So, consider gaining both quantitative data (like usage analytics and conversion rates) and qualitative insights (customer feedback and support tickets).
2) Define your digital product experience goals and KPIs
Once you have a solid understanding of your current digital product experience, the next step is to define clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) to keep your efforts on track.
Think about the specific outcomes you want to achieve. Your goals could include improving user retention, reducing the volume of support tickets or enhancing overall customer satisfaction.
Always make sure that your KPIs are measurable and directly tied to your goals. For example, if your goal is to improve user retention, a relevant KPI might be the percentage of users who continue using the product after 30 days.
3) Implement a digital product experience optimization process
With your goals and KPIs in place, it’s time to implement a structured process for optimizing your digital product experience.
Start by prioritizing the areas identified in your audit that require the most attention. You could develop a roadmap that outlines specific actions to address these areas, such as redesigning a feature, improving the onboarding flow or enhancing in-app guidance.
As you implement changes, use a combination of A/B testing, user feedback and analytics to assess the impact of your work. This iterative approach allows you to make data-driven decisions and refine your strategies based on real-world results.
Remember, optimizing digital product experience is not a one-time task but an ongoing process. That means regularly revisiting your audit, goals and KPIs to make sure that your product continues to meet and exceed user expectations.
Tools for delivering a great digital product experience
Building a great digital product experience requires not just a strong strategy but also the right tools to bring that strategy to life. The most effective tools empower teams to gather insights, manage feedback and streamline processes, ensuring that every aspect of the digital product experience is optimized.
Here are some essential tools that play a crucial role in delivering a top-tier digital product experience.
Customer analytics software
Understanding your customers is the foundation of a great digital product experience, helping you make informed decisions that enhance usability, increase engagement and foster loyalty.
Customer analytics software provides deep insights into how users interact with your product, what drives their behavior and where they encounter challenges. It’s essential for identifying trends, predicting future behaviors and tailoring your digital product experience to meet evolving customer needs.
Panel management software
To continuously improve your digital product experience, you need a reliable way to gather feedback from your target audience. And to get high-quality feedback when you need it, you need to recruit, manage and engage a diverse group of participants.
Panel management software streamlines the process of building and maintaining a research panel, making it easier to conduct surveys, gather insights and validate new product ideas. By using panel management software, teams can ensure that they’re always in tune with customer preferences and can quickly adapt to changes in the market.
Automate UX feedback workflows
Collecting user feedback is critical, but managing it efficiently is just as important. By automating UX feedback workflows, teams can seamlessly gather, analyze and act on user feedback throughout the product development lifecycle.
By automating this process, you can integrate feedback into your existing workflows in real time – ensuring that valuable user insights are not only collected but also put into action quickly, and empowering your team to make continuous improvements to your digital product experience.
Discover how Qualtrics can get you there and watch our demo of Qualtrics® Strategic UX.
Free eBook: The Digital Experience Playbook