How to Future Proof Your Digital Experiences
Chapters
Introduction
Future proofing your digital experiences is the key to staying on top in a fast moving world.
From optimizing your website to maximizing your marketing strategy, what you do today can have a huge effect on your success tomorrow.
And it doesnât have to be difficult.
In this guide, we take you through the best ways to supercharge your customersâ digital experiences.
Now and in the future.
About the authorVegard Ottervig
Vegard Hovland Ottervig holds a Master's degree in film studies and has worked with journalism and marketing since 2010. He loves cycling, philosophy, gaming, and writing.
Chapter 1
Make Your Website the Hub for Your Digital Experiences
Your website is the virtual equivalent of your office. And just like you might want to impress clients with pot plants, coffee machines, and high tech boardrooms, your site needs to work hard to offer visitors value.
More than just a host for your content, a website should be at the heart of the customer journey. It should provide content, services, and ongoing support every step of the way.
And all of this doesnât have to cost the earth. Be savvy about your website, and youâll find that this relatively low cost channel can repay you in so many ways.
Why not reuse content and services from your website for other solutions, like a mobile app? Or if you want to start small, simply let your web presence grow with you.
Agile, efficient and exciting, your website has the potential to become the go-to hub for your digital experiences
Chapter 2
Go Beyond Responsive Web Design for Mobile
Weâve already established that websites are great. But what turns a great website into a brilliant one?
Progressive Web Apps
You might have been told that a mobile friendly design is the key to a supercharged site. After all, more and more searches take place on mobile phones than computers. But for a truly future proofed site, you need more. Enter progressive web apps.
What is PWA?
Progressive web apps (PWAs) are web applications that offer an app-like experience. This means they combine features found on most modern browsers with all the great benefits of native mobile apps. So you can expect things like super speedy loading, silky smooth animations, and an immersive user experience.
Why Is It Better?
A PWA has it all. Not only is it smoother, slicker, and more streamlined, itâs also easy to develop and release into the world. All of these benefits translate into impressive stats.
In fact, when using PWA, Twitter experienced a 75% increase in tweets sent, while ecommerce giant Alibaba reported 76% higher conversions across browsers.
Hassle Free Experience
For users and developers, PWAs offer an all round hassle free experience. For a start, it cuts out one of the biggest hurdles for users: Actually finding, downloading, and installing an app.
Instead, your customers can enjoy a seamless experience from the comfort of your website.
Universal Compatibility
With todayâs web browsers offering support for the latest HTML5 features, youâre all set to get the most out of a PWA. That means you have the potential to reach billions of internet users. Far more than the 1.46 billion people who currently have the capability of installing an iOS app.
Enjoy the Benefits of Push Notifications
PWAs might not have all the features offered by a native app, but they do have one of the most important ones: Push notifications. This increasingly common form of mobile communication is a really useful tool for marketing directly to your audience, helping to keep them engaged, updated, and informed.
Avoid App Store Bureaucracy
Native apps arenât just harder to build. Theyâre more difficult to distribute too. Technical requirements, community guidelines, complicated forms, and tiresome review processes all mean that it can be a slog to get your app into the world.
In comparison, for a PWA all you need to do is tweak the code, test it, and push it out live. Itâs just as easy as updating your companyâs website.
Chapter 3
Stand Out in a Noisy Online Space
Now that youâve got a functional and modern website, how do you plan on standing out? Getting recognized online might seem like an art form in itself, but all it really takes is some hard work and savvy marketing.
Here are some ideas for you to get started.
Boost Organic Traffic Through SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, has gained a reputation for being cryptic. Some old school marketers have attempted to crack the code with keyword stuffing, link baiting, and a whole host of other SEO tricks.Â
But in actual fact, SEO can be pretty simple. And hugely effective. It starts with offering value driven content on an attractive, user friendly site. When people start returning time and time again to your site, Google will begin to take note.
Share Content and Engage on Social MediaÂ
While most of us excel at using social media in our personal lives, far fewer embrace it in their professional ones. But sharing content and connecting through social networks like Linkedin, Instagram, and Facebook can add real value to your business.
Acting as both a point of contact and a vital part of your brand development, social media actively improves the digital experiences of your customers.
Inbound MarketingÂ
When it comes to getting your business noticed online, inbound marketing is a must. As well as costing an average 62% less than outbound marketing, HubSpot studies show that itâs far more effective at attracting an engaged audience. The reason? Thanks to its anti spamming approach and focus on producing meaningful content.
Get the Inside Track with Analytics ToolsÂ
Analytic tools help you to measure your success, and plan for the future. Dig deep for data driven insights that allow for technological decision making and drive real time experiences tailored to each and every customer.
Chapter 4
Privacy Policy and GDPR
Future proof digital experiences arenât all about slick UX and savvy analytics. It also involves going above and beyond to build trust by keeping your usersâ data safe.
What Is It?
You might have heard the term âGDPRâ thrown around a lot in recent years. Thatâs because the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR for short, has transformed the way companies manage data.
GDPR has allowed people to have easier access to the data businesses hold about them, as well ensuring organizations always obtain the consent of the people they collect information from.
When Does GDPR Apply for Your Digital Experiences?
If your business is a âcontrollerâ or âprocessorâ of personal data, you are subject to the GDPR regulations. Personal data includes all sorts of information, like names, addresses, and IP addresses. Anything that might be considered sensitive.
If your digital experiences rely on user data, be prepared to explain the what, why, and how of the data youâve collected. Itâs also important that your company gives individuals the opportunity to control their own data.
Chapter 5
Looking Towards the Future: Innovations in Digital Experiences
From Alexa to AI, these are the innovations that revolutionize digital experiences now and in the near future.
Voice Assistants
Voice assistants like Alexa and Siri are already a huge part of our homes, and theyâre soon set to become a big part of business too. With 19% of people using Siri at least daily, this tech offers huge potential when it comes to innovating your digital experience.
Chatbots
More and more businesses are embracing AI driven chatbots as a way of optimizing their customer service.
As computer programmes that mimic human to human interaction, chatbots are increasingly becoming able to pull from a companyâs collective expertise. Thatâs a big improvement on old chatbots that could only work from preprogrammed rules and scripts.
So how can a chatbot improve your digital experiences? According to 95% of consumers, the answer lies in customer service. Customers are increasingly looking towards chatbots as their go-to mode of communicating with companies. Much thanks to their promise of instant answers and 24/7 support.
Machine Learning
Machine learning may be complex from an engineering point of view, but its impact is simple to understand. Using AI, machine learning gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. This means that it has the potential to simplify, streamline, and increase efficiency in digital experiences.
Personalization
Personalization optimizes your digital experiences. It helps streamline the customer journey and adds that personal touch that keeps customers coming back for more.
AI enabled solutions work by analyzing the way different functions operate. They then learn about past behavior and offer recommendations with genuine value to users.
Chapter 6
What Makes the Really Great Digital Experiences Stand Out from the Crowd?
Every digital experience is different, but the best ones have one thing in common: A future proof CMS. As a central backbone for your digital presence, a good CMS will offer scalability, flexibility, and better productivity.Â
When looking for a CMS thatâs guaranteed to last long into the future, remember to look for:Â
Security
Your CMS needs to be up to the job of handling hacking attempts and other security issues.
Scalability
Get the most out of your CMS by ensuring it can grow with your business.
Flexibility
You donât know what the future holds, but you can ensure that your CMS is able to handle the future requirements of your users. Such as support for rolling out new code changes and features continuously. As well as a high degree of flexibility for web editors.
Interoperability
Integrate your favorite marketing tools and legacy systems for a supercharged CMS.
Productivity for Web Editors
Do your digital team a favor and look for a CMS that supports responsive authoring (from big screens to mobile), and keyboard shortcuts for faster management. A modern UI and simplified image handling will help boost productivity, too.
Headless Support
Headless support can help you get more out of your content. Headless lets you access your content using APIs and feed it into other systems like mobile apps, chatbots, and ecommerce sites.
Accessibility
Make sure your web content can be accessed by everyone with a CMS that enforces accessibility for navigation and markup. This is especially important in light of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
These guidelines ensure that businesses make their website accessible to disabled users. Just remember that the CMS canât do all the hard work. Youâll also have to guarantee that all web content is accessible with e.g. transcripts and subtitles.
