Why choose a DXP over a CMS?
Owen Windsor, Symbiote’s Managing Director, gives you the lowdown on the difference between a CMS and a DXP.
The short story
In short: a content management system (CMS) manages content for your website. A digital experience platform (DXP) adds sales and marketing functions and metrics.
When would you need a CMS?
A content management system (CMS) enables you to create, organise and share information on a website. It’s a relatively basic system for sharing content that doesn’t change very often, and doesn’t take an active role in guiding or connecting with site visitors.
When would a DXP be better for you?
A digital experience platform (DXP) uses a CMS and adds active sales and marketing functions to help you see how people use your site and create relationships with your customers by giving them personalised information and solving their problems in a way they prefer. Some DXPs also let people who use your site to customise it so it shows them the info they want.
Most DXPs are user-friendly and easy to maintain, so your organisation’s team can see how people use your site and make your content more and more useful over time, offering customers relevant things, talking to them with live chat or an AI bot, letting them compare items, share and learn.
A DXP offers customers a richer experience, as opposed to a website that shows each customer exactly the same website and leaves them to work out how to navigate through it.
To sum things up
Simply put, if you’re publishing information to the web that doesn’t change much, a CMS will be fine. If you want to incorporate marketing to engage site visitors, you want a DXP.