The Future of Digital - thoughts Part 2

Further thoughts on the future of Digital, inspired by the Marketing Society's Digital Day 2015.

Q: How have digital channels evolved and what will be the next big digital trend to capitalise on?

The speed of digital change is getting quicker, learn to deal with it. Focus less on the next technology, device or trend and far more on making sure your organisation can complete (this means being innovative, agile and ready to learn from its mistakes). Apple's slogan at its recent product launch was "the only thing that's changed is everything" and this is right.  5 years ago the iPad launched, now I am seeing tablet numbers decline across a lot of client websites compared to mobile traffic.
More shocking is the fact that 52% of all the companies from the Fortune500 in 2000 now don't exist!


Q: Which new technologies are passing fads and which are game changers for their business?
Over time every technology will eventually become obsolete. NFC, wearables, home thermostats (The Internet of Things) connected to your app, etc. will all one day be the equivalent of the fax machine or the telex. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t investigate some and adopt different ones that either take your on your journey of digital maturity or that meet the needs of your customers.


This is the second post on the Future of Digital, the first can be found here.

Is there a future for tablet computing?

I got asked yesterday what I thought about the statement made by Thorsten Heins ,the Blackberry CEO, that tablets are not a good business model. Mr Heins claimed that there will be no need for tablets  in five years and consequently the news sources have said he’s either a complete loony or a wise technological sage. “So is he completely barking?” I got asked by this friend…. Well yes and no.

As you may have read in an earlier blog, one of my future predictions is that technology will become more complex and yet more usable (complex in the number and types of devices and systems, usable in their interfaces), with the speed of change only increasing too. This speed of digital transformation should manifest itself in the ability of technology suppliers to design, build and launch devices much quicker… meaning they are both more responsive to customer demands and able to plug identified gaps in their products portfolios.  In effect… this all means that we should get more devices, more quickly and doing more things in more ways (that’s a lot of ‘mores’!).
 

So what does this mean for the tablet, a market sector that has only really existed in its current form for only 3 or so year? Well in my opinion it means the complete fragmentation of the tablet market into a range of smaller, bigger, wider, slimmer devices that more closely fit the task(s) required of them.  The computing market has been in a state of flux for some while, with different machines rising and fading in popularity as processors, displays and batteries all increased in specification and capacity.  So will the Tablet continue to exist? Yes, in the short and medium-term. But in the longer terms...  the tablet as we know will it evolve and diversify until the word means as little as “personal computer” does these days.

Note: I was wrong about the take-up and scale of the iPad market when it launched. I could therefore well be wrong now...

Abandoned basket emails... one thing I forgot

Isn't it always the way? You write a nice long posting on a specific subject, giving some useful tips along the way.... and then once it's written and published you remember something else that will be obvious to your readers.

Well, it's happened to me (again) with my latest opinion piece on optimising Abandoned basket emails. As it was only after I listed out my 6 suggestions for improving these emails and committed it to publish last night, that I realised I'd missed and obvious one.

So as well as: Experiment with subject lines, Experiment with the time of sending, Send more than one email, Use your email service provider, Experiment with layout, imagery & palette and Track links... I forgot to include "make sure your email is mobile compatible".

You see that although a lot of people just shop on their PC's and tablets, with mobile eCommerce lagging a little way behind.... they still carry their mobile with them. So if you're going to send an email reminder to them several hours later, to let them know they have left an item or two in their online shopping basket, there's a good chance they are out and about, or at least not in front of their main terminal. So if you want them to read that email and then go on to buy the product(s) you need to make it as compatible as possible for all devices.

BT tablet email does work on iPad - sort of

You've gotta laugh. I got an email from BT Broadband recently with the subject title "Get your tablet connected for free with BT Wi-fi".
I assume this would have been a useful newsletter telling tablet users how to connect their device to their home connection to save on mobile data usage.

However, the irony is that when opening and viewing this email on my iPad... I get the view you see. No content and no imagery. Oops!

For me this highlights the need to test any emails you send out across a range of devices and different email clients. Especially the one you want to target.

Note: I am using a first generation iPad which has (purposely) yet to be upgraded to the very latest version of iOS.

Have yourself a very merry tablet Xmas

As sales of tablets continue to grow and the market fragments into numerous smaller ones that cater to different user needs (media player, e-reader, games machine, laptop replacement, etc)... The end users and the device makers both seem to be the beneficiaries. Worldwide sales are now predicted to climb to over an estimated 100 million units in 2012 (a 98 percent increase from 2011 sales of 60 million units according to Gartner, Inc.)

Also if you run a website, you will probably have seem the jump in tablet usage from your website analytics over the Chirstmas periods of the last two years. So therefore, it is highly likely that there will be another jump in tablet users this holiday period (I'll also try and use the phrase 'Holiday Period' more often, rather than just Christmas and New Year, as this trend is a global one... with users who celebrate Thanksgiving and Hanukkah also driving sales in the winter months).

So with over 60% of tablet owners planning to research and then purchase holiday gifts, decor and food items this Winter, it is highly likely that you will see yet another jump in tablet usage.  This means that if you have not already considered the compatibility of your website on such a device, you are already behind the curve. To make matters worse, the types of device you now need to build and test for have grown significantly in the last year.

It looks like site owners and online retailers have yet more headaches on the run-up to their busiest period.

Are we about to have a battle of the tablets?

One in four US adults now owns a tablet computer, and two-thirds of those who own a tablet purchased them in the last year. These figures, despite being quite recent, don;t take into consideration the recent launches of the iPad Mini as well as the new Kindle devices (which now makes my slightly older Kindle look very out of date) and other Android devices...... let alone this month's Microsoft Surface launch
This means that the ubiquitous iPad does now have some serious competition in the tablet market and therefore this leads to an overall increase in tablet ownership.

The above diagram, provide by The Economist & Pew Research shows just how much the market has changed in one year.
http://www.economistgroup.com/leanback/lean-back-reading/pew-tablets-users/

In my opinion there's a battle coming. One that will be fought in full view of all of us (and most will get caught in the crossfire). The war over mobile commerce.... which is set to explode over the next few years.

Don't believe me?
Well Business Insider do, as they have predicted several mobile commerce trends over the next few years.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/bii-report-why-mobile-commerce-is-set-to-explode-2012-11 

Their predictions pretty-much reflect a lot of my own thoughts:

1. Mobile commerce is getting bigger and bigger
2. Mobile payments will fuel this growth
3. Tablet growth will drive up this usage even further
4. The SoMoLo 'holy trinity' of Social Mobile & Local will be attractive to marketers (although specifically how they will take advantage of this, I'm not sure yet)

Therefore those companies who manage to take as much of the tablet now, will be in a position to commercially make the most from it in the next few years.

The era of tCommerce

It seems that for the last decade, every successive year was going to be "the year of the mobile"....  up until last year, when it actually was! However, if you asked someone 10 years ago when the "year of the tablet" was going to be, they would probably have shrugged their shoulders or maybe muttered something about having "seen some devices back in the 90's that never really took off", etc.

But the tablet has arrived and now is a major platform for the consumption of online content (although perhaps not for the production of content).

This is exemplified by the recent statistics from the BBC, that showed how Olympic viewing on connected devices peaked in the evenings, when the tablet became the most popular device as people settled down either just with one or together with their TV (in the so-called 'second screen experience').

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/digital_olympics_reach_stream_stats.html

Furthermore.... if you'd suggested to anyone sane, even 3 or so years ago, that ecommerce transactions on a tablet would be a major revenue stream for a lot of businesses, they probably wouldn't have believed you, me included. But as we all know now the tablet, mainly in the form of Apple's iPad device, now makes up a significant proportion of our modern device usage with  a great deal of this activity naturally  online. And online activity for a lot of people means shopping (especially if you're my wife!).

So has the era of tCommerce or tablet commerce arrived?

In my opinion..... most definitely.