Digital experience composition (DXC) is an emerging technology that orchestrates digital experiences as modular pieces, allowing them to be composed and assembled in different ways. According to Gartner, DXC uses API connectivity to orchestrate multiple digital experiences in a headless, decoupled framework. It extends from frontend as a service (FEaaS) or visual page builders, enabling developers to set up digital experiences and hand them to business users for day-to-day management in no-code environments. DXC empowers enterprises to achieve business composability and provides packaged business capabilities for composable experiences. Source
Is the emergence of digital experience composition (DXC) here to stay?
Yes, the emergence of DXC is here to stay. DXC provides a flexible and scalable solution for managing digital content across various platforms, enabling enterprises to deliver enjoyable and customizable digital experiences. Source
How does DXC differ from DXP, CMS, and other technologies?
DXC differs from DXP (Digital Experience Platform) and CMS (Content Management System) in its modular and composable approach. While traditional DXPs are monolithic and provide an architecture for digitizing business goals, modular DXPs and DXC use API-driven approaches to integrate best-of-breed products. A CMS manages content creation and modification, whereas DXC focuses on designing and delivering digital experiences by orchestrating various tools (commerce, media, content, marketing) through APIs. Source
How does digital experience composition (DXC) work?
DXC breaks monolithic experiences into smaller, modular pieces using tools connected via APIs. This enables easy addition or removal of components and supports omnichannel digital experiences. DXC operates on two principles: (1) no-code or low-code environments that allow technical and non-technical teams to collaborate independently, and (2) a headless framework that enables ongoing migration and modular stack assembly. Content teams can combine data from CMS, CRM, PIM, DAM, ERP, and other backend systems, while engineering teams integrate new technologies piece by piece. Source
How does DXC help deliver an omnichannel experience?
DXC enables enterprises to deliver omnichannel experiences by allowing content teams to update and distribute content across multiple platforms (desktop, mobile, etc.) efficiently. For example, Samsung improved consumer engagement by migrating its legacy Members platform to a composable, API-driven headless approach empowered by Hygraph, resulting in a 15% increase in user engagement and faster time to market. Source
What are the main benefits of adopting DXC?
The main benefits of DXC include customizable digital experiences, increased operational efficiency, faster time to market, and optimized cost synergy. DXC tools allow you to visually assemble pages and components, improve cross-functional team productivity through no-code/low-code principles, reuse pre-built components for rapid deployment, and maximize team potential by reducing manual tasks. Source
Features & Capabilities
What features does Hygraph offer for digital experience composition?
Hygraph offers features such as a GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, scalability, and seamless integration with various tools (CMS, CRM, DAM, PIM, ERP). It supports no-code and low-code environments, enabling both technical and non-technical teams to collaborate efficiently. Hygraph also provides optimized content delivery performance, reducing bounce rates and increasing conversions. Source
What integrations are available with Hygraph?
Hygraph integrates with a wide range of platforms, including Netlify, Vercel (hosting/deployment), BigCommerce, commercetools, Shopify (eCommerce), Lokalise, Crowdin, EasyTranslate, Smartling (localization), Aprimo, AWS S3, Bynder, Cloudinary, Mux, Scaleflex Filerobot (digital asset management), Ninetailed (personalization & AB testing), AltText.ai (AI), Adminix, and Plasmic. Source
Does Hygraph provide an API?
Yes, Hygraph provides a powerful GraphQL API for efficient content fetching and management. Source
Where can I find technical documentation for Hygraph?
Comprehensive technical documentation for Hygraph is available at Hygraph Documentation, covering everything needed to build and deploy projects.
Pricing & Plans
What is Hygraph's pricing model?
Hygraph offers a free forever Hobby plan, a Growth plan starting at $199/month, and custom Enterprise plans. For more details, visit the pricing page.
Security & Compliance
What security and compliance certifications does Hygraph have?
Hygraph is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, ISO 27001 certified, and GDPR compliant, ensuring enterprise-grade security and data protection. Features include SSO integrations, audit logs, encryption at rest and in transit, and sandbox environments. Source
Use Cases & Benefits
Who can benefit from using Hygraph?
Hygraph is ideal for developers, IT decision-makers, content creators, project/program managers, agencies, solution partners, and technology partners. It benefits modern software companies, enterprises seeking to modernize technologies, and brands aiming to scale across geographies, improve development velocity, or re-platform from traditional solutions. Source
What business impact can customers expect from using Hygraph?
Customers can expect significant business impacts such as time-saving through streamlined workflows, ease of use with an intuitive interface, faster speed-to-market, and enhanced customer experience through consistent and scalable content delivery. These benefits help businesses modernize their tech stack and achieve operational efficiency. Source
What industries are represented in Hygraph's case studies?
Hygraph's case studies span industries such as food and beverage (Dr. Oetker), consumer electronics (Samsung), automotive (AutoWeb), healthcare (Vision Healthcare), travel and hospitality (HolidayCheck), media and publishing, eCommerce, SaaS (Bellhop), marketplace, education technology, and wellness and fitness. Source
Can you share specific customer success stories using Hygraph?
Yes. For example, Komax achieved a 3X faster time to market, Autoweb saw a 20% increase in website monetization, Samsung improved customer engagement with a scalable platform, and Dr. Oetker enhanced their digital experience using MACH architecture. More success stories are available here.
Pain Points & Solutions
What problems does Hygraph solve?
Hygraph solves problems such as reducing reliance on developers for content updates, modernizing legacy tech stacks, addressing conflicting needs of global teams, and improving user experience for content creation. Financially, it lowers operational costs, speeds up time-to-market, and supports scalability. Technically, it simplifies development workflows, streamlines query management, and resolves cache and integration challenges. Source
How does Hygraph address operational, financial, and technical pain points?
Operationally, Hygraph empowers non-technical users with an intuitive interface, modernizes outdated systems, and ensures consistent branding across regions. Financially, it streamlines workflows, reduces developer dependency, and supports scalability for business growth. Technically, Hygraph simplifies development by reducing boilerplate code, streamlining query management, and resolving cache and OpenID integration issues. Source
What KPIs and metrics are associated with the pain points Hygraph solves?
KPIs include time saved on content updates, number of updates made without developer intervention, system uptime, speed of deployment, consistency in content across regions, user satisfaction scores, reduction in operational costs, ROI on CMS investment, time to market, maintenance costs, scalability metrics, and performance during peak usage. Source
Support & Implementation
How easy is it to get started with Hygraph?
Hygraph is designed for easy onboarding, even for non-technical users. For example, Top Villas launched a new project in just 2 months from the initial touchpoint. Customers can sign up for a free account and use documentation and onboarding guides to get started quickly. Source
What customer service and support does Hygraph offer?
Hygraph provides 24/7 support via chat, email, and phone. Enterprise customers receive dedicated onboarding and expert guidance. All users have access to detailed documentation, video tutorials, and a community Slack channel. Source
What training and technical support is available for new customers?
Hygraph offers onboarding sessions for enterprise customers, training resources such as video tutorials, documentation, webinars, and access to Customer Success Managers for expert guidance. Source
Customer Proof
Who are some of Hygraph's customers?
Hygraph's customers include Sennheiser, HolidayCheck, Ancestry, Samsung, Dr. Oetker, Epic Games, Bandai Namco, Gamescom, Leo Vegas, and Clayton Homes. More details and case studies are available here.
Competition & Differentiation
How does Hygraph differentiate itself from other solutions in the market?
Hygraph stands out with its GraphQL-native architecture, content federation, scalability, and API-first approach. It empowers non-technical users, modernizes legacy tech stacks, and supports composable architectures for flexibility and rapid deployment. These features enable businesses to create impactful digital experiences while reducing costs and improving efficiency. Source
What is digital experience composition (DXC) and how does it work
Is the emergence of digital experience composition (DXC) really here to stay? What exactly does DXC mean, and should you adopt it? Let’s talk about this buzzword today.
Written by Jing
on Jan 31, 2023
Every now and then, digital experience leaders get exposed to a wave of buzzwords cluttering their social media feeds with posts about some new technology and have hard time to distinguish the benefits of it compared to the status quo. Similar to the notions that marked the last ten years of web content management, such as multi experience platforms or omnichannel experinces, digital experience composition (DXC) is a new kid on the block for enterprises that wish to provide their users with the most enjoyable digital experience.
Several concepts have been presented throughout the years to solve the challenge of sluggish digital experiences. Therefore, is the emergence of DXC really here to stay? What exactly does DXC mean, and should you adopt it? Let’s talk about this today.
DXC orchestrates digital experiences as modular pieces that can be composed and assembled in different ways.
Gartner has defined DXC as an emerging technology that ‘’uses API connectivity to orchestrate multiple digital experiences in a headless, decoupled framework. Extending from frontend as a service (FEaaS) or 'visual page builders', these tools allow developers to set up digital experiences and hand them to business users for day-to-day management in no-code environments.”
To put it simply, DXC should enable enterprises to achieve business composability. As mentioned by Gartner in Hype Cycle for Digital Commerce, 2022: “DXC is a step toward complete composability, providing a packaged business capability (PBC) for composable experience.”
But wait, what about DXP?
#How does DXC differ from DXP, CMS, and everything else?
You might not be unfamiliar with the concept of DXP (digital experience platform). Traditionally, DXPs have been monolithic in providing an architecture for businesses to digitize their business goals, marketing activities, analytics, and content management.
Over time, with the rise of API-driven approaches and the need for omnichannel content distribution, there has been an emergence of modular and composable DXPs, which are essentially a loosely-coupled combination of best-of-breed products working in harmony. Essentially, DXPs can be made composable, so they can be integrated in various ways, which is what DXC is all about.
You might also wonder where DXC stands among other technologies like CMS and DAM. As expected, there is a constant debate about the terms used in the digital experience market (such as the differences between DXP and headless CMS). A CMS, by its definition (and let's stick with that definition for the moment), manages the creation and modification of content. DXC, on the other hand is the process of designing and delivering a digital experience.
To offer an impeccable experience to users, DXC might use commerce, media, content, and marketing tools, connect them with APIs, build experiences, and eventually deliver the presentation layer by orchestrating the frontend. So all can be essential components of a composable architecture, whether it's DXC, DXP, CMS, DAM, PIM, or anything else. Still, they serve different purposes, even though they are somehow related.
DXC breaks the monolithic experience into smaller pieces using tools connected with APIs that can be added to or removed easily from an architecture. This will enable us to deliver an omnichannel digital experience. According to Gartner’s definition, we can see that DXC has 2 principles:
No-code or low-code environment that allows both technical and non-technical teams to collaborate seamlessly while working independently. This means, with an intuitive UI, a content editor can update the content on the frontend without involving developers so that the engineering team can focus on the backend.
The headless framework that enables ongoing migration. A CMS migration project is commonly stereotyped as taking a long time and having to be implemented simultaneously. It is similar to assembling all the rocket parts but only getting to push the button after years of calculations and seeing if it works. However, with a modular setup, you can switch part of the stack piece by piece without migrating the stack all at once.
DXC embraces the idea that content teams can deliver digital experiences that meet their needs by combining data from CMS, CRM, PIM, DAM, ERP, and other backend systems, with behavioral and contextual data from digital destinations feeding this information to a frontend framework of their choice. On the other hand, the engineering team can work on integrating new technologies piece by piece.
Innovations alone are unpalatable in the business world, but innovative solutions are praised. Now that we know what DXC is and how it works, how does it help enterprises deliver an omnichannel experience?
An outstanding digital experience is best achieved with appealing content. The ultimate goal for DXC on the frontend is to extend the relevant content offered to users, thus keeping the users on brands’ platform.
Since roughly 8 years ago, Samsung has had a members platform that was initially mobile-only and was intended to keep Samsung customers engaged. As the program grew, there came increasingly more blockers with the CMS in place, such as lengthy content update process, inefficient cross-functional team collaboration, and unengaging website users.
To provide customers with a better digital experience, Samsung used an API-driven headless approach empowered by Hygraph to migrate to a composable member platform. Using the renovated platform, both the content team and the development team can now work independently and deliver timely content to both desktop and mobile users.
Through more frequent content updates on its members platform, Samsung increased user engagement by approximately 15% in half the time it took to market.
Benefits of DXC
By now, if you're considering a DXC solution, you can expect to see the following benefits:
Customizable digital experience: DXC tools allow you to design a customer-first experience. You can visually assemble pages, components, and blocks, then define the content the way you want it without compromising because of the stack limit
Increased operational efficiency: Delivering digital experiences often involves cross-functional team collaboration, and you would naturally expect it to be frictionless.Nevertheless, when technology is hindering your team, they will be forced to do manual tasks. The no-code to low-code principle offered by DXC should help with this and therefore improve your teams’ productivity.
Faster time to market: Delivering content in a timely manner is just as critical as providing unique content. In competitive environments such as e-commerce, user acquisition is often first-come-first-served. By enabling team productivity as well as reusing pre-built components, you will be able to achieve faster time to market.
Optimized cost synergy: By using prebuilt components, you save time on once-upon-a-time manual tasks; your team's potential is also maximized when they are relieved of manual tasks, so they can focus on improving more important features of the product.
Embracing a modular, API-first approach gives you an edge over defining your customer experiences, so you're able to focus on your business model, not waste time maintaining your stack.
At Hygraph, we've spoken to experts from leading organizations across the world to gather unique insights on where the digital experience market is headed, what composable DXPs are, and how they can impact your business strategy going forward.
Download our report to learn more about modernizing your approach by embracing modular Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) and Composable Architectures.
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Jing is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at Hygraph. Besides telling compelling stories, Jing enjoys dining out and catching occasional waves on the ocean.
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