Definition
A Digital Experience in Salesforce is a self-service portal or community site built with Experience Cloud that provides external users (customers, partners, employees) secure access to relevant information, support, and transactions. It can include knowledge bases, case creation, account portals, and more.
Real-World Example
the IT director at Vertex Global recently implemented Digital Experience to scale their operations using the Salesforce platform. Digital Experience gives them the infrastructure and tools needed to support new business requirements, handle increased data volumes, and serve a growing user base without compromising performance.
Why Digital Experience Matters
A Digital Experience in Salesforce is an external-facing site built with Experience Cloud (formerly Communities) that gives external users secure access to relevant Salesforce data and functionality. Digital Experiences can be customer support portals, partner deal registration portals, employee self-service sites, branded customer communities, or any custom external experience built on the Salesforce platform. They use the same data and business logic as the internal Salesforce org but present it through a separate, branded interface tailored to the external audience.
Digital Experiences are the modern replacement for several older Salesforce concepts: Customer Portal, Partner Portal, Self-Service Portal, and Communities. Salesforce rebranded the umbrella as Experience Cloud and the individual sites as Digital Experiences to reflect the broader scope of digital interactions they support. Building one involves choosing a template (or LWR for fully custom), configuring branding, designing pages, mapping data access through profiles and sharing rules, and assigning external user licenses. The result is a self-service experience that reduces inbound support volume and gives external stakeholders direct access to what they need.
How Organizations Use Digital Experience
- •Skyline Consulting — Built a customer support Digital Experience for a client where customers log in to view their cases, browse Knowledge, and submit new cases. The site cut inbound support phone volume by 30%.
- •Vertex Global — Runs a partner Digital Experience where channel partners register deals, view co-marketing materials, and access training. The portal is the primary touchpoint between Vertex and 200+ partners.
- •NovaScale — Built a custom employee Digital Experience consolidating HR documents, time-off requests, and company news into a single branded site, replacing three separate internal tools.