Let us take a deeper look at the impact of conversational commerce and how it is shaping our future. It enables a dialogue with the customer.
By deep learning and machine vision, AI can also crunch massive amounts of data. This is where app personalization meets AI. The app space on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store is over-crowded. As of 2019, Statista reports that the number of apps on the Play Store and the Apple App Store was 2.9 million and 1.84 million, respectively. Once installed, most users delete the app if the first experience isn’t satisfactory. Even if an app does pass that threshold, you must work to ensure that the app is being used so that it doesn’t lie dormant on the user’s phone.
Organizations worldwide have had to endure a big hit because of the flare-up of COVID-19. Since then, people have changed the way they shop. In-store shopping, at this point, is an inclination. Purchasers are effectively shopping on the web, and numerous organizations have gone online to keep in touch with their customers.
It is becoming increasingly important to ensure that apps provide their users with highly personal and smooth experiences. This helps an app stand out from the crowd. After having touched on app building, testing, marketing, and monetizing, personalization is one of the best ways to help your user enjoy their experience with your app.
Brands now don’t just keep talking about themselves, but they also listen to their customer’s problems and help resolve them individually. It results in a better interaction where each customer feels heard, and the smart technology resolves their particular issue.
We are at the helm of a technological revolution. We can see how innovations such as Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality are reshaping CX, allowing brands to better cater to digital customers who increasingly favor self-service to human interaction.
2. Progressive web apps (PWAs)
So it will no longer be enough to be on the first page of a search result or even be one of the first five listings. The top spot will be the most coveted. With voice search, it is one or none. The winner takes it all.
While the customer goes through a journey of understanding what they need, what they want to buy, how they want to purchase it, and then to take action, the chat assistant needs to know when to turn the conversation to influence the customer to make the purchase.
YouTube VR is a standalone app optimized for VR. You already know what YouTube is. With YouTube VR, you can choose to view any video with an immersive VR experience. You can subscribe to channels in this app, add playlists, and watch history just like the YouTube app.
Why should you learn about drone software development? The drone industry is said to become the next high-growth market. Once the regulatory system frees up the airspace for drones, drones’ commercial applications will cause exponential growth in this industry.
The engagement potential of VR makes it a potent tool for learning as well as for entertainment. If used carefully, it can help users develop a range of competencies and talents.
Customers have made it very clear that they prefer online and mobile commerce. It is now for the companies to decide if they want to move further away from real-life human interactions into an age of advanced, digitized self-service.
Customers today expect brands to value their collaboration and to extend their complete support for the customer to have a good experience. These expectations are only going higher, and customers want relevant, targeted, and highly personalized solutions.
3. Virtual reality
The association that brands have with their customers has reached a tipping point, and all signs point towards a new technological revolution that will again reshape the customer experience.
With chatbots, brands can now have conversations with multiple customers at once, at minimum cost. It speeds up the process of resolving issues and helps brands create relationships with as many customers as possible in a short amount of time. Customers are even asked to rate their interactions with the online assistant and can provide feedback if they want to.
The website immediately launched into a PWA—no downloading and no waiting. The user also does not have to factor in the usage of additional data for downloading purposes. Most importantly, you prevent the user from getting lost in the App Store and directly guide them to your official website.
4. Drone software
This is a relatively new digital marketing trend in that it started in 2018 with large companies like Twitter, The Financial Times, Flipkart, Wikipedia, and with great results. Treebo launched a PWA and saw a 4x increase in conversion rate year-over-year. Conversion rates for repeat users saw a 3x increase. Petlove’s PWA resulted in a 2.8x increase in conversion and a 2.8x increase in the website’s time.
The web browsers also provide an option wherein you can save the PWA on your home screen as a shortcut so that you can access it instantly. The PWA will then ping you with push notifications as well, should you agree to that. So it is safe to say that you get all the flexibility of a native app with a PWA without installing it.
A drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle. Whether controlled entirely by artificial intelligence or by a human, it makes little difference. Drones of the future are expected to be overwhelmingly automated.
6. Voice search
“In the near future, we project these organizations will evolve into a distinct digital marketing organization that spans commerce, web, email, mobile messaging, and paid channels like display, search, and video,” says Chris Lynch, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Oracle Marketing Cloud.
The report says, “More than one in three brands say customers and prospects prefer to complete a purchase or resolve service issues without speaking to a human associate, if possible.”
7. Chatbots
According to Tomoson data, influencer marketing was the fastest-growing customer acquisition channel, beating organic search, paid search, and email marketing. It was also the most cost-effective.
AI can dissect and analyze behavioral and demographic data much more efficiently than humans doing it manually. It can learn about every detail of the personal preference of a user. Your profile information, purchases, demographic information, or browsing history may be taken into account by an app to help and support you with what you need.
So let us think of how a customer might come across your traditional mobile app. They will need to go to the app store, search for it, and then download the correct app. With PWAs, it is relatively much easier for anybody to find you. All they need to do is search for you on Google, and they will be directed to your website.
This option may now start to become lucrative in 2021 for smaller businesses as well. Having a mobile site—or ideally, a responsive site—can help the user experience, but even then there can be hiccups. And a site that is lagging or difficult to navigate in the slightest will still leave a bitter taste in a customer’s mouth, leading to a missed opportunity or even a tarnished reputation. Think about it. Would you consider purchasing from a brand if its website looked shabby or didn’t respond well? The answer is probably no. With the large influx of customers on mobile, Progressive Web Apps, which are an amalgamation of the benefits of browsing on a mobile browser and mobile app, are increasing in appeal.
8. Conversational marketing
“Businesses are making .50 for each spent on influencer marketing, with the top 13% earning or more. A resounding 70% are earning or more, with the rest either breaking even or failing to generate a return on investment”, Tomoson says.
These last two marketing strategies have been around for some time, but their importance continues to grow each year.
We are already seeing this transition take place, although at a small scale, where the demand for products that allow for scaling across channels is on the rise. The users whose demands are satisfied by email alone are relieved to know that they can expand their business opportunities through cross-channel capabilities.
With this monstrous expansion in internet shopping, the competition between organizations is quite high. Numerous brands are recruiting digital marketing companies as they are young and equipped with present-day advertising patterns.
2021 digital marketing trends: tried and true
When it comes to reliability, a web app is only as reliable as its network connection. If you have a slow or uncertain connection, the PWA might also load or function slowly. If the network connection is strong, the PWA will perform very smoothly. A PWA that is reliable and fast will be able to keep users engaged. It does this by efficiently and quickly responding to their requests.
9. Personalization
Virtual Reality or VR is the use of computer technology to create simulated environments. VR allows you to experience and interact with a 3D world that isn’t real by putting on a head-mounted device for display. The device creates a 3D virtual world, which is immersive and almost authentic by receiving inputs from the computer.
E-commerce businesses find email to be the apt medium of learning about their customers’ leanings, receive feedback, recommend products, and generate sales. This will become more true in the future.
When using voice search, a person’s query is usually answered immediately without them bothering to scroll through the various options available on the screen. With text, we tend to scroll the rest of the listings on a search results page. With voice, the user inclines to go with the first thing that pops up as this usually answers their questions satisfactorily.
The truth is, AI-integrated apps will improve app performance. Today, most app developers consider AI as an integral part of app development.
10. Influencer marketing
When asked which technologies would most improve the customer experience, nearly 40% of sales and marketing leaders cited Virtual Reality. 34% believed Artificial Intelligence would be the biggest game-changer. 78% of brands say they have already implemented or are planning to implement artificial intelligence and virtual reality by 2020 to serve customers (Oracle, 2016) better.
Harikrishna Kundariya is a marketer, developer, designer, and the co-founder of eSparkBiz Technologies, a mobile app development company. His 10+ experience enables him to provide digital solutions to new startups based on IoT and chatbots. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
When the PWA does open on your mobile device, you will notice that the PWA shell looks just like a mobile app. Any gestures you make in a mobile app can be mimicked here as well.
“I think chatbots and voice bots may become the future of commerce, as it relates to Gen Z. We optimized for efficiency and grew up on on-demand services such as Uber, Lyft, Postmates, etc. Therefore, we expect the same when shopping. What better way to do that than interacting and shopping via chatbots and voice bots? That completely changes the game. It’s a whole new experience. It makes online shopping less tiresome and interactive and fun again!“ — Tiffany Zhong, Founder & CEO of Zebra Intelligence.
A recent study from Harvard Business Review (HBR) found that 15% of companies who are ahead in their use of technology and data intelligence had grown more quickly than their competitors and are better positioned for the future.
Chatbots enable brands to engage in conversations with their customers to create better customer relationships and drive more sales. Businesses have discovered the ease and efficiency of chatbots when it comes to consumer products. Oracle surveyed in 2016 on the future of customer service.
About the author
MailChimp already has a plan in action where their users have access to more data, allowing them to do super-sophisticated targeting, based on a person’s purchase history, Google search, most visited websites, and most-used apps, customer service interactions, and much more.
