The pace of change in digital is rapid – what was an emerging technology less than five years ago is probably obsolete already or even worthy of display in a museum. It is quite crazy the pace at which advances happen. For those working in the industry, it is hard enough to keep up, but for those whose businesses only flirt briefly with digital matters, it can be almost impossible to know what the latest trends are. But staying up-to-date is critical if you want your business to flourish and prosper. Business is exactly like a race, and if in a race you stand still then you will very quickly be passed by the other competitors. The thing with digital specifically is that the race is run at the pace of the sprint, even if it is the distance of a marathon. With that in mind, here are some of the key trend changes you should be aware of.
The benefit of the cloud
For a long time, companies like to handle all their IT needs in the house. From servers and web hosting through email and data storage, it was all looked after internally. Server rooms packed with racks and air conditioners pumping to the max were the norms – as were fraught technicians who ran around all day trying to ensure maximum up-time. Recent trends have seen all these elements being transferred to the cloud. For many businesses it has been both a cost-saving and a mentally relieving exercise. Find an expert who specializes in cloud transformation services and get them to start working their magic.
All about mobile
It wasn’t long ago that the bulk of people accessing the internet did so via desktop computers. Laptops soon passed desktops as the platform of choice and they now outsell their old rivals by almost two to one. Meanwhile the rise of mobiles has been electric with more than 50 percent of all people accessing the internet now doing so via a smartphone. This means that anything that you do online needs to have a mobile focus and needs to work, from a user experience perspective, as a mobile property.
Changing mindsets
One of the biggest ways in which digital has changed is the way in which experts relate to it. The old-school metrics that measured success by page impressions and the number of likes or follows a person had are now been seen to be useless. Digital has always made it easy to track data and collect information and those analytic experts will now tell you that it is not the size of the audience that counts, but what you are able to do with them. As a person operating in the digital space, you need to know what your goals are, and you need to create KPIs that will measure your success accordingly.
Advertising
The original internet model was premised on it being advertising-funded. This has obviously proved a huge fallacy as the supply of ad impressions has far outstripped the demand for them. What it has led to is rapid change in publisher commercial models and huge advancements in terms maximising the returns from readers. Things like big data analytics and programmatic advertising have been direct results of this urgent need to innovate.
