05 Jan Digital Trends in 2018
2017 was certainly a progressive year on the digital front but 2018 is set to blow that out of the water! Big developments are coming and they will all impact everything you do on a business and personal level. Find out more about AI, VR and AR…..
Here’s our Key Digital Trends for 2018.
V-Commerce
We have been talking about e-Commerce for some time now and it’s growth year on year has seen many national and international retail treasures close because they didn’t make the right moves when it came to bridging the offline and online gap.
Further developments are afoot and those who don’t solidify their position online now are likely to miss the opportunity to get prime positioning in the e-commerce market because the big brands, leaders and digital powerhouses are investing in both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.
One day consumers will be able to enjoy the entire shopping experience right from their own home, it will be instant and will likely include all the sensory receptors we use to make purchasing decisions.
Video
This medium is set to develop even further and will of course incorporate the above. Video will join augmented reality which will use artificial intelligence, voice recognition and may indeed mean that we can enter an alternate digital universe, and although that’s hardly likely to happen this year, the steps towards it are certainly being tread in 2018.
Influencer marketing will continue to thrive through 2018 but it may have had its day where big brands are paying celebrities big bucks to push their products because the public is getting wise to this and are hungry for authenticity so this may fall off in the months to come.
That said, YouTube and Instagram will continue to have an enormous impact for brands who are smart enough to get into the video arena, especially if they want to reach a much wider audience. Instant, engaging, informative and entertaining are the keywords for visual marketing in 2018. If businesses don’t jump aboard this boat soon they will eventually end up dead in the water!
Voice Recognition
With the likes of Alexa for business (and home) taking the world by storm, voice command will become more common in every facet of our lives, making typing less necessary. You can set a meeting, write a note, make a conference call, set a reminder, report a problem to IT, find a free meeting room, play music, manage your diary, order the shopping, search for information, and all by just saying what you want.
This is set to go even further in 2018 and beyond. LG has announced their latest TV’s will be able to connect with Google Assistant and Amazon Echo, although Sony has already taken the lead on this in 2017.
Writing and now even typing may one day become a thing of the past, it’s a difficult concept to get your head around if you’re ‘of a certain age’ perhaps, but there is no stopping the changes of time and the progression of technology in the twenty-first century.
AR and VR
Augmented Reality (AR) is on the rise, it’s coming out of the gaming world and into the real world. This is good news for businesses who want to showcase their products or show how their services work. Ray-Ban sunglasses is a fantastic example of how this works, click the link to see how your next pair of shades will look on you https://www.ray-ban.com/uk/virtual-try-on
Virtual reality (VR) is coming your way too, they have even developed scent so you can be totally immersed including site, sound and smell. The film Total Recall was clearly many years ahead of itself and is clearly becoming a reality now, although hopefully without all the scary stuff.
Seriously though this will eventually have a huge impact on all elements of business and industry so it’s an exciting time to be living in as the future seems to be our present.
Amazon
We have already touched on this brand but it’s worth a mention all on its own because they look now set to take on the biggest names in tech and the digital industry in any and every way. Jeff Bezos, the Founder of Amazon is now reported to be the richest man in the world today and he’s not done yet, because it would seem that the Amazon websites were just the beginning. The company has now ventured into the cloud with Amazon Web Service (AWS) alongside other product and services so the potential for further development and growth is enormous. We have another Bill Gates, Steve Jobs pioneer on our hands here and it’s very exciting!
Advertising and marketing via these new platforms is a very interesting possibility and one likely to rival if not shake the foundations of Google and Facebook, who’d have thought that?
5G
Forget 4G, 5G is coming to a town near you. Again, not yet but with the demand for instant information and hyper connectivity, the mobile market is demanding a faster and more powerful connection by the second.
Samsung have recently unveiled their new 5G powered software DRVLINE which will assist car manufacturers in creating advanced autonomous cars which can be customized to the customers specifications.
AI
When you think of Artificial Intelligence you probably think of robots right? That is of course correct but AI is actually in all of our lives already, just not in this way yet. Robots are not about to take over your job, but they are in the pipeline and will likely be a part of our lives within the next 10 to 20 years.
AI is there to enhance the way we work, compliment it and effectively make our lives easier, not take over them! As with anything there are negatives and it will take developers time to perfect things but the wheels are certainly in motion now.
AI is already in our lives in a big way, with everything we have described in this article and if you haven’t heard of the Internet of Things (IoT) already, you certainly will in the months to come because it can have an enormously positive impact on your business and now you can access, monitor and utilise data statistics.
The IoT is the artificial intelligence that connects physical devices that are embedded with software, sensors, connected to a network and many more. Every item or THING has its own unique identifiable code but can also interact with other Things via the internet network. This allows them to be connected to each other and exchange data. This includes home appliances, road vehicles, heating systems,security systems, mobile phones, home hubs… you get the point.
Whenever you see the word SMART attached the an item or product, then it’s connected to the IoT super highway.
It is predicted that by 2020, there will be around 30 billion THINGS with a global market value of over 7 trillion dollars!
The ability to gather and monitor data at a rapid rate is the most exciting side of AI for businesses, although AI will also make jobs easier to do and more efficient as they have already done in recent years.
We humans are already feeling the pressure when it comes to absorbing data and managing it, this will no doubt get easier over the next few years as we learn to manage the data more effectively utilizing the power of AI and augmentation.
Key Trends 2018 Conclusion:
Digital and tech are now changing faster than ever before so it’s vital for your business stability, progression and success that you keep your finger on the pulse, especially when it comes to what your competitors are doing to stay relevant online.
Keep an eye on our blog and newsletter because we always cover the latest news to help your business stay ahead.
Click the link for our Key Trends for 2017 predictions.