If you are not getting good results from your web marketing campaign, then most likely it is because you have not been able to keep pace with the recent trends and changes in online marketing. For one thing, there’s been a significant increase in machine learning and technologies like voice search coming of age as well as the challenge of producing a more personalised experience for users.
So what does any of those have to do with designing a website? Recent trends are going to have a significant effect on how sites are designed for conversions. In this article, we will go over a few web design trends for better web marketing in Sydney.
Personalising user experience
One concept in web design that is starting to gain ground is the matter of personalisation. The idea has been around for awhile, but the technology to make it happen has been made available only recently. How is this so?
Now when we say personalisation, we do not mean calling your customers by their first name or anything weird like that. The customisation that we are talking about has to do with determining the interest of consumers. For example, let us say that you have a potential customer who is in the middle of the buying process. You can send them a personalised message designed to have them visit a landing page on your website that offers a more personalised user experience.
There are tools like Optimizely, Omniconvert, and AB Tasty that you can use to create variations of your homepage for various audiences. Hence you can deliver more personalised content based on criteria such as location, the device that they are using to access your content, where on the web are they accessing your content (social media, search engines) and the like.
Content-first web design
The time of designing websites to suit desktops is over — mobile web technology has become incredibly advanced and has revolutionised the web design industry for the better. We are in an age where people can access the web from a myriad of devices and not just a desktop computer. Websites ought to be able to follow suit or risk becoming irrelevant and unusable in an area that has become essential in people’s lives. The idea is to design content that works across computers, smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and other internet-enabled devices.
Sadly even today, we see content on many websites leaving a lot to be desired regarding mobile experience. Content first web design is about formatting content in such a way that it is universally accessible no matter what internet-enabled device is used.
Artificial intelligence and AI
Many SEO experts in Sydney hint that we are on the brink of artificial intelligence tools that can introduce changes to your website’s design based on how people interact with your site.
Design options on your behalf, based upon how people interact with your site help with conversion optimisation. Pretty soon, these tools will have the ability to crunch more information in a day than you could in a year and provide valuable insights on how to get more of your users to convert.
While many web designers cannot help but feel fearful of the growing influence AI has on the design process, it is well worth noting that the trend is not meant to replace designers but rather to empower them to make better decisions backed by enormous amounts of user data.
Google Assistant
Companies like Google and Amazon already have conversational platforms that are doing remarkably well on the market. These platforms can be further developed to provide assistance for just about anything people need to do online. If you are not integrating any of these platforms in your web design, then you will be missing out on all the potential conversions the technology has to offer which will only get bigger over the next few years.
Integrating with conversational UIs
Among the most significant changes in web design over the next few years is the integration of what we call conversation UIs. The latter means developing content that can be integrated with voice AI systems like Google’s Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa.
The latter refers to any UI that mimics communication with a real person whether by voice or text. Conversational user interfaces fit perfectly into e-commerce design as it gives users the opportunity to interact with websites on human terms as opposed to traditional navigation or having to input specific commands to get to the information users are looking for. With conversational UI, you need only ask or tell your computer or mobile device what to do which has the potential to raise the quality of user experience to a whole new level.
Conversational UI comes in two forms – voice assistants and chatbots. As mentioned earlier, the tech industry has capitalised heavily on voice assistants with leading brands like Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon all have their voice assistants and have taken great strides to make them better by the day. Google, in particular, has demonstrated that their voice AI is so advanced that can make reservations, and people won’t be able to tell the difference – Google Duplex.
On the chatbot side of things, “Slackbot” is a classic example that allows real-time communication with users and can be personalised to accomplish specific tasks such as setting schedules, placing orders and conducting surveys among other things.
One of the best things about conversational UI interfaces is that it is not tied to any particular platform. The technology can be applied to desktop and laptop computers, smartphones, tablet computers and most other internet-enabled devices. Thus conversational UI creates a frictionless experience for users which is always a good thing in e-commerce.
Web marketers cannot afford to be talking about poor user experience and outdated design trends any longer. There is no reason to tolerate a bad user experience when everyone out there is stepping up their game. In the years ahead, marketers need to invest more time and resources in leveraging the latest technologies to create the kind of experience that keeps customers engaged throughout the buying cycle and yield better conversions in the process.