Tag Archives: technology

What e-commerce technologies are redesigning the digital landscape?

Ecommerce technologies and online shopping only became a reality when the internet began in 1991. However, those ecommerce pioneers of the 1990’s did not survive the technological changes or did not adapt to the new dynamics of ecommerce.

Amazon.com can be considered one of the first ecommerce sites that has favorably adapted to the always evolving internet landscape until now. The following ecommerce technological developments and trends will influence the future of ecommerce, the way businesses adopt them will determine their success or failure:

Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning.

These two factors are creating a tremendous impact on ecommerce. Machine learning and its applications are improving user experience based on customers’ buyer behavior and previous data. It is helping ecommerce companies to understand customers’ preferences and choices. Similarly, Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning are helping businesses to predict what kind of products and services their customers prefer.

Ecommerce Mobile Apps

Trends and studies about ecommerce consumer behavior show that customers are buying more from mobile phone than from personal computers. As reported by SearchEngineLand, approximately 60% of Google’s total searches come from cellphones.

In the same way, Google is recommending ecommerce businesses to design their websites for mobiles and to design mobile apps as in 2018 consumers browse 286% more products on apps than mobile web.

Animation applied to ecommerce technologies.

Different technology developments are being adopted from the video games design industry and introduced to ecommerce sites. Motions are a key factor to design video games that help to attract players and give them helpful feedback. For instance, the design of video games take into account aspect like when players are doing well, what do they pay attention to and how they could improve.

Such aspects, help ecommerce websites and apps to discover how motion can be a signal of pleasure, personality, or urgency when buyers are interacting in a virtual store. Motion makes buying experiences feel more alive.

Finally, the abovementioned ecommerce technologies, will radically redesign the digital business landscape and make online shopping different and more enjoyable. However, choosing the right ecommerce technology for each specific business need, will improve the user experience and determine its success.

ecommerce technology trends

Virtual reality applied to digital marketing strategies.

One of the most prominent technological developments in the last decade are the devices and software that recreate “virtual worlds” or what is called virtual reality (VR) and its application to different digital marketing strategies.

Virtual Reality can be defined as a computer-generated, three-dimensional environment that is created with a mixture of interactive hardware and software in which users interact in a seemingly real or physical way. Moreover, a person using VR devices can “look and move around such artificial world and interplays with the virtual feature of that world”.

How to apply virtual reality technologies to different digital marketing strategies?

Companies can take advantage of some of the following features of virtual reality in order to improve customer experience, decision-making and relation with the brand.

Plausibility: In virtual reality environments, people experience a “different world”, believing they are in another reality. For example, Jaguar, the luxury car brand, created a brand positioning campaign called ‘Feel Wimbledon’. Jaguar’s strategy was to sponsor the Wimbledon tennis tournament working together with tennis player Andy Murray. The idea was to build an engagement experience where customers enter the body of Andy Murray as he wins a match point in a game. This strategy was promoted during the time of the tournament and increased the brand impressions amongst its customers.

Immersiveness: Is the attribute of virtual reality that makes any experience to be fully believable and interactive, as it engages both mind and body. For instance, Excedrin, the migraine medication company, developed a virtual reality-based symptom simulator to help users understand what the symptoms of migraine are. This kind of symptom-stimulating technology based on virtual reality can help to promote awareness about different diseases. Moreover, it can help to show how a medication or specific treatment provides symptom relief, which helps market the treatment/medication provider.

Explorability: Virtual reality gives customers the possibility to explore a big and detailed picture of such reality, creating at the same time multiple abstract perceptions. For instance, Oreo, the commercial brand of cookies, built an animated virtual world to promote its filled cupcake flavored cookies. The virtual experience recreated an animated world with milk rivers and chocolate canyons in which users interact and enjoy that world. This strategy, had over three million views and increased the brand voice in social networks.

The main point brands need to understand when implementing a strategy using virtual reality, is how this technology fits into their overall digital strategy. Moreover, brands need to consider what kind of digital experiences can make a difference to consumer decision-making process and how it can help to accelerate this decision.

Virtual Reality experience.[/caption

Why our societies are technologically deterministic?

Technological determinism is a reductionist theory that explains how society’s structure and cultural values are driven by technology. This concept, has gained relevance in the last two decades since most of the basic human social skills such as meeting new people or fostering existing bonds of friendship, have become activities highly mediated by technology.

According to some technology analysts and the companies that develop social network platforms, these technologies are effective tools that help to resolve the subjective necessity of promoting friendship or to seek new relationships. Their main argument states that people’s lack of time, society’s cultural changes, people’s new life styles and the growth of the migratory flows, have triggered the use of these social networks.

However, other authors claim that factors such as the lack of a real communicative interaction beyond virtual platforms, the low levels of trust created in online relationships and the e-commerce interface of the “matchmaking apps” for example, have created a technology with multiple flaws that can hardly address such social needs.

We are consumed by a technological deterministic rhetoric.

Considering the above mentioned arguments, some relevant questions might help us to put the concept of technological determinism into context:

Should we assume a neutral point of view on the social, economic and cultural changes, social networking technologies are creating in our societies?

Should we be more critical about the implications social networking technologies might have in our daily lives and in the way we construct our relationships with other people using such technologies?

Are societies aware that the development of these technologies happens because societies organize themselves to give support and expand these technologies once they have been introduced?

Are companies such as Facebook, Apple and Google delivering a technological deterministic discourse that leads us to believe that their technological developments have positive effects on society inherent to themselves?