Experience-Based Commerce: Zero Friction. Total Engagement.

There is no doubt about it: customers choose to visit your digital assets because of the quality of the experience more than the quality of the product or service. It’s a new world, and powerful experiences change the way we interact, entertain, work, and relate to the world around us. In simple terms, this commerce model is built around the consumer rather than products or processes; this model can transcend boundaries and create new ways to connect. Experience can be its own product.

The world’s biggest taxi company owns exactly zero taxis. The largest provider of rooms for travelers in the world owns no hotels. Uber, Airbnb, Rent the Runway, Birchbox, and the Dollar Shave Club all sell experiences first — not products.

Consumers face infinite choices and assume they have access to a wide range of prices from global retailers like Amazon and Alibaba. With pretty much anything being available at any time, experience becomes the only true differentiator, providing a pathway to an emotional connection with the consumer like never before. And, because of this, those experiences must be compelling, personal, efficient, engaging — and everywhere.

To create offerings that are in exactly the right places and occur at the perfect times for your customers, producing sensations and emotions that compel them to buy whatever it is that you have to sell, you must have technology in place, make some changes to the nature of your organization, and approach the entire concept of commerce with a fresh outlook and new standards and methods.

Become an Experience-Led Business.
If you aren’t yet up to speed with this new way of thinking, here are some tips to help you get started!

1. Know Your Audience Well.
You must understand the actual characteristics shared by various segments of your customer base and map out how they experience your brand at every touchpoint and on every channel. Audiences exist naturally, but it’s up to you to identify them. You’ll find them among existing customers by using a data-management platform (DMP) that lets you explore different variables and parse groupings of customers who behave in similar ways. The customer profiles you create will be the keys to creating personalized messages and experiences.

2. Map Out Appropriate Experiences.
With your audience profiles in hand, you can create targeted campaigns throughout all your channels. You are creating expansive strategies using deep demographics that reach your audiences wherever they may be. Lenovo (a PC manufacturer) uses the Lenovo Index for Scoring Audiences (LISA) in conjunction with analytics software to predict when a website visitor will make a purchase. They then deliver the content that’s most likely to meet that customer’s needs based on that score. With regard to LISA, Lenovo’s senior manager of global business intelligence, Ashish Braganza, says, “It’s almost 90% accurate—and with the Adobe Target solution, it’s actionable in real time.”

3. Use Audience Profiles to Find New Customers.
You can now purchase audiences through third-party providers based on specific understandings of who your current customers are. This increases the likelihood that your new audiences will become new customers. Since 2014, Under Armour has acquired several popular fitness apps and combined them to form UA Record. With 120 million users, this is now the world’s largest platform for listening to and learning from consumers. And, the company is just beginning to explore the vast insights from this source for its current and future customers.

4. Create Personalized Web Experiences.
Companies that create personalized experiences see a 19 percent increase in sales as well as increased loyalty and customer retention. But, the personalization has to be authentic and relevant, or your customer will reject it as superficial and annoying. You need solid automation and access to the right data, so you can offer the right product or service at the right time based on your customer’s actual needs — not guesses.

5. Truly Understand Your Multiple Channels.
Are you observing four different customers — one using a smartphone, one a tablet, one a laptop, and another a desktop — or the same customer on four different devices? You must be able to obtain a single view of each customer to have a 360º view. To develop and nurture a brand evangelist, your customer must receive consistent experiences across all devices and through every interaction with your brand. To accomplish this, you must link technology, data, teams, and workflows to create seamless experiences across all channels. Tell a single story with all your content.

6. Mobile Must Link All Your Experiences.
Mobile now accounts for 50 to 70 percent of all consumer interactions with brands. Consumers who engage with some form of digital technology before and during visits to brick-and-mortar stores are 40 percent more likely to convert. No device is more personal than a mobile phone, and it opens the door for intelligent contextual marketing in which mobile is viewed as a behavior rather than a separate channel or technology.

7. Let Your Products Become Touchpoints.
We already have refrigerators that know when you are running low on milk. Determine how your products can improve your customers’ lives and engage them. The Internet of Things offers the potential for even more data and insights about customers and the real problems they face in their daily lives. The key will be to think about consumers first, using technology to address those problems — not just to show off a shiny new toy.

8. Build Emotional Connections With Compelling Content.
Immersive, interactive content that resonates with your customers’ lifestyles, needs, and aspirations is vital. The goal should be to tell a single story, woven together using the strengths of each channel. Brands must instill a perception of increased value — a content-driven experience rather than a commerce-driven one. This is where experience is elevated, becoming a product in its own right.

9. Make Shopping Effortless.
Let your customers buy from anywhere — shoppable media, blogs, lookbooks, videos, and any other lifestyle content you provide. Every step the customer has to take to get from product to purchase is an obstacle that will cost you sales. For example, until recently, customers who viewed products of interest in videos would have to close the video and begin searching for the product, often costing brands conversions as customers became distracted. Shoppable media breaks down barriers and eliminates obstacles to closing the sale, allowing consumers to view product details and buy buttons in nontraditional shopping channels. Now, customers can be connected to product pages simply by hovering over or clicking on the video that featured the product of interest, reducing risk for brands and delivering seamless experiences for customers.

10. Manage Your Digital Assets.
Some large brands manage photographs of 20,000 products a day. Asset and content management systems can ease the burden, centralizing elements of content — video, audio, images, text — where they can be easily managed and deployed as needed across all brand communications and adapted to each use or device.

11. Know Where Your Customers Are.
Use the abundance of analytical data available to learn how your customers are engaging with your brand as well as how you can make experiences better — ultimately, making each interaction more memorable than the last. Once you learn about their wants, needs, and frustrations, you can implement data-driven solutions and measure the results.

12. Constantly Measure, Adjust, and Try Again.
Why are people bouncing from your site? Why is your app going unused? Why are your videos only being watched partway? Answers to all these questions are waiting for you as you develop a culture of experimentation, testing and adjusting constantly without guesswork. You can know for a fact how consumers experience their relationships with your business. When data comes out of the shadows, when you use this new understanding to inform future decisions, you move from what Forrester calls a “system of record” to a “system of engagement.”

Final Thoughts
The key is to start where you are and move forward to create compelling, personal, omnipresent, and engaging experiences that delight and satisfy your customers, turning them into brand ambassadors. There is no more business as usual — experience is the currency of a new age.

See more about how to use experience as commerce with the new Adobe report, The Path of Experience.

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