Product Experience Strategy

A product experience strategy helps manufacturers drive online and in-person customer engagement with their products. It provides the steps needed to craft product experiences that are impactful and valuable to the growth of the business. 

In this guide, we’ll help you understand what product experiences are and how to develop a product experience strategy that improves customer experience.

What Are Product Experiences?

To begin, let’s ask an important question: what is meant by product experience? The product experience is simply a customer’s experience interacting with a product. This typically includes both the physical product and any digital experiences related to the product that provide product information.

The product experience spans a customer’s entire journey with the product. The product journey often starts from initial awareness and continues through the long-term usage of the product. Your strategy needs to include every potential product experience that a customer will have through the entirety of their relationship with your company.

Product Experience Examples

Product experiences come in a variety of formats and styles. Some common examples of product experiences include use cases like product catalogs, QR codes on products to easily share product manuals and parts, trade show booths, product registration links, maintenance tracking, product recommendations, and more. 

Below are four examples that illustrate how product experiences extend beyond the physical product itself to encompass every interaction, sensory aspect, and emotional connection associated with the brand and its offerings.

1. The unboxing experience sets an important tone. A well-designed product package presents not just the product but what the product represents, the ideals a customer holds, and delivers on the brand promise. A carefully designed unboxing experience aids the new customer through the initial setup, is an intuitive and seamless process, and delights the customer. Consider the experience of opening a blister-packaged toy. The frustration of cutting it with scissors and trying not to cut your hand. Compare that to the elegant experience of unboxing a new smartphone.

2. Bringing a brand and product to life with an in-store display allows customers to assess its features and functionality. In-store and in-aisle experiences need to provide shoppers with quick information that aids them in making a quick purchasing decision.

3. The user interface and content recommendation of your streaming services give you a tailored viewing experience. The product in this case is arguably not just the individual shows, but rather the ability to search, sort, save, and discover a variety of shows.

4. Potential buyers read customer reviews to gain insights into real-world experiences and user satisfaction. Many manufacturers highlight customer reviews on their eCommerce channels. Displaying a variety of reviews, those that span from the effusive brand advocate to the neutral buyer, down to the unsatisfied customer, give shoppers confidence in the review's authenticity. Brands that respond to negative reviews in a public format demonstrate their commitment to customer satisfaction.

Digital Product Experiences

A digital product experience is a digital experience that is related to a physical product that helps support the customer in their journey. It helps connect the customer to the product via a digital interaction, such as a website, microsite, landing page, online form, or web app. 

Most product interactions in today’s business environment will occur online or through digital channels. Some examples of digital product experiences include how-to videos, interactive product tours, social media posts highlighting a product's features and benefits, digital product catalogs, and other online activities.

What Is the Role of Product Experience?

Product experience plays an important role in the development of a long-term strategy and your customer relationships. The purpose of product experience is to ensure that customers have a positive experience with your product through every step of the customer journey.

The first product experiences come in during the awareness and consideration stages of the customer journey, as your audience understands they have a problem and begins to search for a solution. From there, your product experiences guide customers through the purchase of the product and any onboarding or training that needs to take place. A great product experience strategy will also go beyond the product purchase and continue through the long-term usage of the product and any repurchase or expansion options that are available to customers.

To achieve this, manufacturing brands need to have a product experience strategy that outlines all of the potential customer interactions that a customer will have with the product through each step of the customer journey. The strategy needs to outline all potential and observed interactions that occur in the customer journey.

Examples of customer interactions that should be included in the strategy, encompass things like how the customer will interact with the product and what they should be feeling during each product interaction. It should also include what content the customer should receive during the interaction, along with what format that content is in and what the overall message is. Every product experience strategy should define the ultimate goal of the interaction and how it ties into the next step of the customer journey.

A positive product experience throughout the entire customer journey will create several favorable outcomes, including driving increased user acquisition, onboarding, product adoption, conversion, retention, and overall revenue for the business. This is sometimes called a PX strategy. 

What is PX strategy? It’s an abbreviation for product experience and is another way to refer to your overarching strategy that directs all product experience interactions.

Product Experience vs. Customer Experience

As you craft your product experience strategy, it’s important to note that product experience is different from customer experience. Customer experience is a much wider umbrella term that considers how customers view the company as a whole, not just the products themselves. A product experience, on the other hand, is only about the ways customers view a product and its features. The total product experience is just a part of the larger customer experience.

What Is a Product Experience Strategy?

Now let’s answer the most important question: what is product strategy? A product experience strategy is the overarching strategy used for all product experiences across the entire customer journey. As mentioned earlier, it typically involves mapping out the entire product experience from start to finish and includes every potential interaction that a customer will have with the product. It also defines specific steps such as:

• What happens during every interaction with a product

• How the customer responds to each interaction with a product

• The product experience strategy example for every interaction

• How to guide the customer to the next step of the strategy

• What the end goal of the interaction is and how the interaction ends positively

What Is Product Experience Management?

To enact a product experience strategy, you need the support of Product Experience Management (PXM). Product experience management is the process of delivering a compelling and accurate product experience. This means in all product experiences the product-related content is always accurate and relevant to the applicable use case.

For example, a product experience for showcasing all of your product offerings such as a product catalog should provide vastly different information than a digital product experience aimed at educating a buyer in-aisle on which product to purchase. Every different interaction or touch point that a customer has with your product should have its own use case and product experiences to guide the interaction in the direction your strategy has mapped out.

The product experience has to take into account the key questions about the product interactions, such as:

• Who is accessing the product information?

• What are the goals of the customer at that moment?

• How will the customer access the product information?

• How can the experience of interacting with the product be more delightful for customers?

At the end of the day, manufacturers need to think about product experience management as an extension of customer experience. A majority of the interactions customers have with a manufacturing brand are product-related, not generalized to the brand as a whole. The goal of product experience strategy should be to provide every customer with a personalized product experience throughout their entire customer journey.

The Benefits of a Product Experience Strategy

Creating a product strategy example and ensuring that the example can be implemented and managed correctly is essential to the success and long-term growth of the business. When you can craft a great product management strategy, you receive numerous benefits, including

Shortened Time-to-Market

Most software solutions allow you to easily add and manage your product information with no IT or development required. This shortens the time it takes to bring a product to market since each project passes through fewer hands before a launch.

Brand Consistency

A Product experience strategy ensures that all of your product experiences include brand-approved digital assets that are stored in a central location.

Accurate Product Information

You can also take advantage of a centralized location for all of your product data and related assets. This ensures you’re always using the most up-to-date information through all of your product experiences.

Improved Customer Experience

Every customer wants a personalized experience. With a PXM, you can easily tailor the product experience to match the needs of each specific customer and meet them where they’re at in the customer journey.

Create Data-Driven Digital Experiences for Your Products

Utilize real-time product information to create data-driven digital experiences to showcase your products and boost your future strategy planning.

Increase Sales

Accelerate your revenue growth by driving increased conversions, recommending relevant products to customers, and promoting related parts and accessories to increase your sales.

Empower Collaboration and Increase Productivity Across Your Business

Using a software solution to manage your product data and digital assets allows multiple users within your business to update this content at any time. When you use a platform like Lumavate, any updates made to this content are automatically updated in any related digital experiences.

What Is PXM?

A PXM platform is a third-party software solution that typically includes a Product Information Management (PIM) solution and Digital Asset Management (DAM) functionally. A PIM solution allows you to centralize and manage your product data in a single location. A DAM allows you to manage and store all of your digital assets such as images, documents, video, and other related files.

Some PXM platforms, such as Lumavate, also include a Digital Experience Platform (DXP). A DXP allows you to easily create any type of digital experience typically without using any code or advanced development. This is an important functionality for your product experience strategy because most product-related experiences are digital. As such, marketers need an easy way to create digital product experiences for specific use cases such as product catalogs or events that automatically pull from data in your PIM and include applicable product content and assets from the DAM.

The Difference Between PXM Platforms and Standalone PIM Solutions

Not all solutions are the same. A big difference occurs between a full PXM platform and a standalone PIM solution. A PIM allows you to centralize and manage your product data while a PXM Platform has much more robust functionality such as a PIM, DAM, and sometimes even a DXP with solutions like Lumavate. While PIM functionality is critical for every manufacturer, it’s best to invest in a solution that has broader PXM capabilities to guide future strategy planning.

Use Cases for Product Experience Management Software

There are multiple ways to use the product data and digital assets stored in a PXM Platform. Some of the most common use cases are:

• Product Catalogs: Digital catalogs with up-to-date and searchable product features.

• Websites: Consolidated tech stacks and sites built entirely on the PXM.

• Packaging and Labeling: QR codes and NFC tags to provide product information like videos or manuals.

• Sales Resources: Tools and resources to enable your sales team to sell more effectively.

• Brand Portals: Customized brand portals to share assets with team members, agencies, channel partners, and other third parties.

• Product Sheets: Dynamic product data sheets, spec sheets, and other documents.

• Events: In-person events and digital assets work together to enhance the product experience and drive sales.

• Campaigns: Template campaigns for product launches, seasonal promotions, and other marketing campaigns.

• Channel Partners: Real-time information sharing with channel partners to provide details on product offerings.

How to Create a Product Experience

The first step of creating a product experience is to make sure that all of your product data is in a PIM and all of your digital assets are stored in a DAM. A solution like Lumavate offers you functionality for both of these tools right out of the box.

The next step is creating digital product experiences for every moment in the customer journey. Some strategies will include product experiences for their customers, partners like retailers, dealers, and distributors, and even internal employees and teams.

How Do You Create a Good Product Experience?

What is a good product experience? The most important aspect of a product experience is its relevance to the customer based on where they are in the customer journey. That includes the questions listed above, like how The customer is accessing the experience, what their current goals are, and more.

For example, if a customer is trying to sort through your overwhelming product catalog, then they need an easy way to answer a few questions and get a list of recommended products that you are confident will meet their needs. In this situation, the customer likely wants detailed product information. However, if the customer is in a store aisle trying to compare two similar products, they likely only need high-level differences between the two products to make a choice.

How to Evaluate Product Experience Strategies

Every product strategy framework should be regularly evaluated to determine whether it needs improvement or if it is achieving the goals initially set in the planning process. Your company’s overall product experience requires both a quantitative and qualitative approach. It’s critical to measure customer satisfaction scores, retention rates, market share, and other statistics from a quantitative perspective.

From a qualitative perspective, you should conduct customer interviews, obtain product feedback, and compare your product experience to your competitors. It’s also extremely helpful to map out your entire product experience in the strategy so you have a better idea of where potential pitfalls are occurring. That allows you to easily make improvements to your strategy and develop stronger plans for the future.

What Is a Product Experience Team?

A product experience team is a collection of people in various roles that are collectively responsible for the overall product experience. Regardless of how team members are structured, they are ultimately accountable for developing and implementing the product experience strategy and ensuring customers have an overall positive product experience throughout the entire customer journey.

This team will focus on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as customer acquisition, product adoption, customer satisfaction scores, ongoing product usage, product feedback, product repurchase, expansion sales to other products from the brand, and retention. It’s also important to note that whether the team is standalone or made up of people with other roles, it will also require cross-functional work to ensure an exceptional product experience is created and implemented. The team often owns the PXM Software for the business and is responsible for its development and usage, as well as budgeting for the tools.

What Does a Product Experience Manager Do?

A product experience manager is the person who is responsible for the overall product experience for one or more products. This means the product experience manager is ultimately the individual in the organization accountable for the product experience even though the actual product experience strategy and implementation is cross-functional.

Some companies may have a full-time individual dedicated to this role, or it may be a component of a product manager’s role. Typically, this role is seen as an expert on the product experience and customer expectations for the product experience. The product experience manager guides the product experience strategy development, implementation, management, and evaluation. They are also responsible for the success of the strategy after the evaluation periods have ended.