Enough time has passed since the beginning of 2015 to sum up the trends and see what is worthy of your attention. In this post, we would like to highlight the top five mainstream trends which you should be working on in order to keep up with the times.
Mobile is at the top of the world’s interest
No surprise, the growth of mobile traffic and mobile Internet access is the strongest trend. Do your customers still find you via desktops? On the contrary, they are searching more often via mobile. Smartphones are used by nearly 60 % of consumers when they do shopping.
This is it: smartphones do not only stimulate traffic growth but also on-the-go actions from users. Last year, 75% of Pinterest daily traffic was driven by mobile devices. 93% of Pinterest users bought at least one item online within the past six months. Therefore, this is an up-to-date decision to encourage customers to immediately look at engaging content from smartphone displays rather than to wait until they find a computer.
What’s also important Google thinks the same way. The April search update affected mobile search rankings to make them more relevant. From this date, websites which are not mobile-friendly will be lower ranked in the search query. The good news is this update applies only to mobile search results. But we all know how thorough Google is. Therefore, in order to remain on the top, you should redesign the most frequently requested pages such as contacts, home, order, etc.
Conclusion: businesses should care about their mobile presence (this includes mobile-friendly content, mobile advertising, and responsive design) in order to keep customers.
Navigation integrated to any place
The GPS navigation market continues to grow. In 2015, Apple acquired Coherent Navigation to improve its map service. Nokia HERE is on sale too and got interest from several potential buyers (German car manufacturers, Uber, Facebook, and Alibaba).
Indoor navigation is making progress as well. Although BLE beacons are not ubiquitous, they are being implemented at public places, e.g. airports, museums, and art galleries. This year, Zoom Torino Biopark was also added to this list.
The next logical step is to integrate both GPS and BLE beacons’ technologies within one app to make a seamless UX, e.g. in tourism. In this case, users will plan and track their routes via GPS. When they arrive at the point of interest, they will switch to BLE beacons to get the information.
Another BLE beacons’ use case is guiding. With a combined navigation tool, users will not only find their way to the building they need, but to the exact door, whether it be an account manager’s or a shoe store’s.
Conclusion: whereas GPS is a mature technology and BLE beacons is a new one, both are ready to be integrated to lead the customers to any destination point and to tell them about it.
BLE beacons help marketers engage customers
BLE beacons are designed to transfer a variety of information via push notifications, from greetings to sales promotions.
The first tests by big retailers (e.g. Macy’s and McDonalds) showed a higher action level from customers. However, the main issue of a BLE beacons’ campaign is to engage customers to install a BLE beacons’ app. To do this, we suggested crowdtesting by the focus groups of customers. This way, businesses can get a working app which would be tested in a real environment. Moreover, they can get the target audience and app download growth via rumor.
Conclusion: BLE beacons are a new tool for a contextualized UX which will help businesses. Now they just have to convince their customers to download the app.
Triumph of the cloud CRMs
In 2014, the CRM market grew 13.3% and there is no sign that it has reached its peak. Even location-based businesses (shops, hotels, restaurants, etc.) collect big data that comes from different sources (e.g. phone calls and e-mails from customers, and their purchase history) which needs to be integrated and then sent to various addressees.
The biggest trend here is that users expect a better, context-based service experience. When they are using smartphones for on-the-go actions, users expect their orders to be processed in real time so they will get a quick and relevant response (e.g. when making a call, they suppose that the sales manager has already read the online form that they sent).
SaaS-based solutions are a way to reduce marketing costs and support an omni-channel, client-friendly service. No surprise, 47% of all CRM systems are SaaS-based and within the next year they should prevail over on-premise deployments. They are scalable, easier to maintain, and allow to work from any place and for any manager. Moreover, cloud solutions are adjustable to the needs of any business.
Conclusion: when you are looking for a quick but relevant response to clients’ demands, detailed analytics, and you have no big IT budgets, you should migrate to a SaaS-based CRM.
The Internet of Things would improve the mobile contextualized UX
Although the mobile part of the IoT was predicted to be low profile, this is the cornerstone technology for context-based marketing. Thus, its importance would increase with the further adoption of context-sensitive technologies (e.g. BLE beacons) by the marketers. BLE beacons communicate automatically with smartphones while they gather statistics on smartphones which can be connected later with real customers’ actions with the help of a CRM system. Therefore, as soon as businesses learn how to use the data driven by the IoT to reach the targeted groups with personalized offers, they will use all the above-mentioned trends with total efficiency.
Also, BLE beacons already have temperature and accelerometer sensors which will help track customers’ movements inside selected places.
Conclusion: the future of the IoT depends on the integration of mobile analytics and how well customers will be targeted.
