Competing online is a challenge, but by harnessing some of the top digital marketing trends you can be that much more confident of success. We’ve identified the top 6 digital marketing trends to take notice of. Here’s the first two for your consideration:
Omni-channel marketing
Today’s consumers have a multitude of tools and devices at their fingertips – the internet, shopping centres, television, magazines, smartphones…so what was once an easy process has evolved into a journey on which your customers can, and will, interact with your organisation in many different ways. This evolution has necessitated the need for a new form of marketing – omni-channel marketing. This type of marketing is focused on offering a seamless experience for users across all channels. Consider this; a potential customer sees your product featured in a magazine, then they research it on the internet and social media platforms, then they order it via their smartphone and finally visit your store to pick it up. Is your marketing up to par, consistent and working across all of those channels?
62% of companies have, or plan to have, an omni-channel marketing strategy – AdWeek
70% of businesses say that omni-channel strategies are important, very important,
or critical to their success – AdWeek
If you don’t want to lose customers part way through their purchasing journey then it’s time to create and implement an omni-channel marketing strategy for your business.
Loading speeds
We are all aware of how slow our internet is here in Australia and it’s affecting business at phenomenal rates. The majority of retail mobile websites take about 6.9 seconds to load – that’s actually double the length of time that almost half of all internet users will wait before they leave. This abandonment due to slow mobile load times is estimated to equate to $500 billion in lost revenue for the ecommerce industry. If part of that lost revenue is yours, read on…
Trying to boost mobile user experience by speeding things up, Google brought out AMP (accelerated mobile pages) – this allowed websites to have lightweight pages that load quickly, really quickly.
Some of the features include:
- AMP HTML: A version of HTML without all the extras like custom tags
- AMP JavaScript: A lighter version of Java is, like AMP HTML, a restricted version of its parent programming language that doesn’t allow third-party JavaScript.
- AMP CDN: This optional ‘content delivery network’ allows you store a cached version of your web page on Google’s servers, which makes for even faster delivery to the users requesting it.
When built correctly, these pages load in a fraction of a second, they are easier to find and feature prominently at the top of search engine results.
Once Google rolled out AMP to webpages they went after ads and landing pages and they expect it will please everybody for these important reasons:
- Users will be more likely to click on a result if they know they’re guaranteed a positive user experience
- Improved user experience will result in higher conversion rates
- Publishers boost their revenue while allowing users a way to return to their content
Learn more about the top digital marketing trends by reading our part 2 blog post or by contacting the team at Website Design Centre team today.
