Critical trends of the future

For any ecommerce company - to make it big in the next leg of growth – they should be aware of the critical trends of the future. An awareness of the critical trends of the future would give them a platform on which they could make their next generation offerings. According to me the 3 key trends of the future are as follows:

1. Web is becoming more personalized & social

a. Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 – Intention web

Web has moved from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 and has since graduated to Web 3.0. Generation of Web 1.0 has seen the emergence of companies such as Amazon where the main focus was on ecommerce. In the era of web 2.0 we saw simultaneous upsurge of three factors – commerce, content and community – and companies such as Facebook and MySpace hold fort. Web 3.0 was all about personalization and socialization – A congruous mélange of Community, Content, Commerce, Context, Personalization and Vertical Search. The next 2 years would witness companies in Web 3.0 space.

Jeremiah Owyang, the founder of the word “Intention web” has some soothsaying thought in mind when he coined the term. According to him World Wide Web as it stands now is not fast enough. Web has, in my words, graduated from Asynchronous to Real time to Intention web. Search, which is the facilitator of getting information from web, is based on past data. It does not capture the real time intention of consumers. That is why, these days we see twitter results being part of SERPs. To read more about this click here

b. Mobile Social, Social Media, Search Marketing, SEO

I can write pages on this, but that would be digging an already dug ditch, though in a positive sense on a Keynesian note. There is so much that’s happening in this area that I would not be able to do justice in few words. All said and done, mobile social, social media, search marketing and SEO have done wonders in the area of digital marketing. I would write separate articles on these topics later.

c. Collaboration ( Wikis, IM, Blogs, Microblogs etc )

I cannot stress on the fact that Collaboration is the next big thing. What we see now is just tip of the iceberg. With money being poured in technology advancements such as Captology, Mobile Persuasion, Semantic Search, Netnography, and Augmented Reality collaborative solutions would chart a new growth phase.


2. With 500 + million mobile subscribers consumer internet is heading the mobile way.

a. Advent of 3G

We would see a paradigm shift in the market place when 3G comes of age. I personally believe that the demand for content and to be more precise, rich content would be generated from the rural and SEC D&E town and cities. With the less clogging of 3G spectrum, content providers can push rich content via mobile to these hungry users. Opportunities such as mobile episodes (mobisodes) and Video on Demand service would grow leaps and bounds. The rural market has the ability to consume humongous amount of entertainment content – be it in the form of Akbar-Birbal stories or small snack entertainment cartoons or even infomercials. A huge untapped opportunity lies here.

b. Evolved ecosystem : m-payment companies

Everything is not hunky dory in the mobile commerce space. We already discussed that 70% of the profit margin is taken away by the mobile service provider. Even more so, the m-payment ecosystem is not so streamlined. We have to build a more evolved ecosystem where the service providers would no more fleece the m-payment companies.

Standardization across mobile applications again sticks out like sore thumb. Some service providers use symbian as operating system where as some use android. Consolidation or standardization is a must in this space to enhance user experience. If that does not happen users would be pissed off downloading apps which do not run on their mobile operating system.

3. An engaged experience (Shift from text to visuals)

a. Product images & videos are important in etailing

We have seen a tremendous thrust at least in electronic retailing on product videos. In case of images also, much more stress is being given on clarity, 360 degree views, multiple views etc.

The clarity of the above mentioned pictures makes all the difference between a comfortable and satisfied online shopping and a frustrating one. The clarity of the pictures, unambiguity of the price, a provision to use videos adds to the whole shopping experience. In the pictures one knows about the product details to a very granular level. The length, breadth, height and even diagonal of the product offering has been mentioned. As if, it is supplanting offline experience. The consumer purchasing the product has a fair idea about the offering - she can actually visualize that her blackberry is more or less as the same size as her ipod or credit card.

The more we can bridge the chasm between online and offline shopping the better for the etailing community per se. And, good images as well as videos play an integral part in making it happen. We would also realize the power of videos when I talk about Augmented reality in my subsequent blog posts. In a nutshell, mobile has changed the way content is delivered and online retailing on mobile is not far away.

Some may argue that I missed out vernacular growth as one of the key trends. I believe it is essential but not essential as the 3 trends I mentioned. I would talk about vernacular growth in my next blog post.