Adobe’s Web SDK is the newer – and better - way to deploy Adobe Analytics but be careful of the pitfalls that come from transitioning to this powerful tool.
If you’ve had Adobe Analytics in place for a long time, chances are that you are not deploying it with Web SDK. That begs the question: are you incorporating Adobe functionality into your websites with several distinct JavaScript libraries? One for the ID service, one for Analytics, and one for Target? This setup can lead to some complex timing issues since these libraries have trouble passing information to each other at precisely the right time during the loading of the page. If and when it goes wrong, the issues are hard to spot, because the symptoms only occur some of the time, making them hard to debug and fix. If you’ve suffered through it, you’ll know what I mean.
The merit of leveraging the Adobe MarTech ecosystem lies in the seamless data exchange between its products. For instance, you can utilize Audiences from Adobe Analytics to personalize content via Adobe Target or you can attribute users’ complete website journey in Analytics back to an AB test from Adobe Target.
Imagine having that level of functionality, without those aforementioned timing issues. That’s where the Web SDK comes in. It consolidates all those Adobe libraries into one, eliminating the need for code coordination.
Additionally, Adobe has reworked its back-end process to make use of its “Platform Edge Network” where there is (allegedly) lower latency and faster activation. As customers, we don’t need to concern ourselves with those details, but it’s nice to know Adobe’s working hard on their back end.
This overview video from Adobe delves deeper into the topic, but the bottom line is that it’s a much cleaner architecture that makes good sense and will cause fewer headaches.
Transitioning to Web SDK also opens you up to the world of XDM (short for eXperience Data Model). It’s a wonderful world that streamlines data across systems through a standardized structure.
Consider a situation where you have a CRM that stores the user’s first name in a field called “firstName”, but in your company’s customer database it is called “first_name” and then you have a form on the website where it is captured simply as “first”.
When you need to move data from one system to another, you need to translate these names. To move to and from each of these 3 systems means you have 6 translations to write. For a typical enterprise company, you will be multiplying this work by a larger number of systems and a much larger number of fields. It’s hard to maintain – and easy for human error to creep and sully your data.
XDM aims to solve this by providing an agreed-upon JSON schema for all marketing data to follow. For example, the first name would be stored as “person.name.firstName”. In some cases (say your website form) you might directly use the XDM naming convention. On the other hand, when you can’t do that and you will have to do some translation, it will always be in the XDM format. The XDM format becomes the Grand Central Station for marketing data – XDM is either the final destination or the format your data travels through on the way to another system.
Adobe XDM is also a cornerstone of the Adobe Realtime CDP. If you have that on your roadmap, then you will be giving yourself a nice head start by implementing XDM via the Web SDK.
It’s easy to see that the Web SDK and XDM are likely the future of Adobe, so while you may not need to utilize these features in the short term, an upgrade is inevitable and it is likely in your best interest to do so now.
As with any innovation, there are drawbacks to consider. The XDM data format has a learning curve and data translations both on the page and within Adobe Analytics may prove challenging. Finding where to put some particular piece of data requires familiarity with what's in XDM. Additionally, in some cases, you will need to add a new field, specific to your organization, but it might not be clear when to do that. This is where a partner who specializes in digital transformation can help guide you through the process. The promise of a lower-maintenance architecture with a forward-looking data format is worthwhile, and iCrossing can help you make that transition easier through our Digital Transformation offerings.