Did you know that most Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) users are only tapping into 20 percent of its capabilities? AEM helps marketers get personalized, content-led experiences into market faster through a digital asset management tool with the power of a content management system. A successful implementation happens at the cross section of customer strategy, user experience (UX), technology strategy, analytics, data, creative, content strategy, and agile project management.

Whether you’re exploring a new AEM implementation or ready to revamp your existing experience, avoid these three common pitfalls so you can deliver a better experience for your customers and work more effectively for your brand:

1. Failure to define adequate performance indicators (KPIs)

Begin with the end in mind — define what success looks like. Chances are you will need to modify the code on your site to support performance measurement, and you need to be prepared for this ahead of time. If you wait to define your KPIs or fail to define them at all, you will be left with the inability to effectively measure how you are tracking against your goals.

2. Failure to design with “mobile-first” in mind

Design the site to a standard CSS grid, beginning with the smallest screen in mind. Tag elements that you may choose to hide or adjust in a mobile view. Many consumers today use mobile as their primary device and designing the mobile site as a bare-bones version of the desktop site can result in an experience that doesn’t answer user needs. Failure to account for the mobile user affects consumer perception of your brand, conversion rates, and ultimately your bottom line.

3. Custom building a feature that’s already available

Thoroughly vet all functionality requests prior to sending to your development team. Developers who are unfamiliar with the authoring side of AEM will dive right in and write code that the environment already has functionality for. It wastes time and money, and it results in a poor authoring experience. This is especially common when working with offshore developers.

Adobe’s AEM is an excellent option to delivering a personalized website experience to your customers. But to truly make that happen, it requires a solid strategy and implementation. It also requires that your brand doesn’t  remain stagnant. To continue to evolve your customer’s experience, it is important to continue to evolve your AEM.

Want to learn more about AEM and how to avoid even more of the common pitfalls? Download Merkle’s new eBook, Avoiding The 10 Most Common AEM Fails here or check out our webinar on AEM October 16. Sign up here.