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You’re not just implementing a CMS — you’re building a customer experience culture

Your initial ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Manager launch is just the beginning. As you expand the rollout, activate new features, and develop new customer experiences, your organization will rise to new levels of digital maturity and expertise — benefiting your customers and your business.

Follow these best practices for long-term customer experience success

1. Don’t try to do everything at once. You’ll be more successful if you deploy a set of core features for a subset of your websites and teams, and then expand the rollout to include other teams and additional capabilities.
2. Start with a base layer of features that includes content management, analytics, and personalization. Customers expect digital experiences to be relevant to them. Make sure your first phase includes at least some basic analytics and targeting capabilities, along with the core content management functions.
3. Make a plan for how you’ll collect feedback from the initial teams who will use the system. After launch, you should also pay attention to the adoption and usage data in Experience Manager. You need to find out whether people are following the new workflows as intended. If they’re aren’t, you need to know what they’re doing and why.
4. Create a master list of features you want to add after the initial launch. This list will include capabilities in Experience Manager that you aren’t ready to activate in the first phase, as well as features in other ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ or third-party solutions that you’d like to integrate. The list should also include custom features you want to develop and experiences you want to build. As you’re planning for the next phases, prioritize the items on your list based on their value, the level of effort required, and your business goals.
5. Define a cadence for ongoing development of new features. Many companies do enhancements in small batches, on a relatively fluid biweekly cycle. But if you have a highly seasonal business model, it might work better to do bigger batches that get you ready for your peak season.
6. Re-assess your KPIs on a regular basis. Your list of three KPIs will evolve over time, based on shifting business goals, feedback from your executive team, and other factors. Every time you add a new feature to your master list, be sure to include performance indicators for it. As you activate new features, you might decide an indicator for a new feature deserves to be one of your KPIs.
7. Optimize early, often, and always. Right after your initial launch, start reporting on your KPIs. If you’re falling short on a particular KPI, consider all the things you could do to impact it and then experiment to see what works. If you’re over-achieving on another KPI, set the bar a little higher. Remember that optimization is about more than A/B testing. It’s about building a customer experience culture and increasing the digital sophistication of your whole organization.

You've completed the onboarding process for your ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Manager implementation — but we’re here with you every step of the way. Continue to learn more about ÃÛ¶¹ÊÓƵ Experience Manager with our Experience League learning modules and expert community.