2017 will see a mobile ecommerce ecosystem that’s tailored to the growing population of millennials, who are more comfortable making large ticket purchases on their mobile devices. Machine Learning and AI will be ubiquitous and security will harden. At the same time, privacy will continue to be a top concern as software vendors try to extract and collect more and more user data.
This year will also see a maturing of backend technologies to complete the mobile experience and make it faster, safer and feel more local and personalized.
Some key trends to watch for:
- Hardening of app security and fraud detection technologies, and new advancements in security, verification, and encryption will create increasingly secure apps
- Significant growth in mobile payments and increasing availability in international markets
- Enhancement in technologies for “user state virtualization” will create continuity for users as they move from desktop to tablet to mobile, and even when they open the vendor’s app on a SmartTV or SmartWatch
- Social Tech and in particular Messaging Apps such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and iMessage have huge user bases and provide SDKs for building apps and bots. Facebook Messenger alone has close to 1 billion users! Due to their growing popularity, messaging platforms will gradually become the mobile development and marketing platforms of choice.
- Increased Bluetooth and iBeacon sensors installed in restaurants, stores, airports etc. making it easier to detect users and send localized content
- Location-based services will be increasingly used to target consumers with deals and opportunities geographically close to them. This will also allow Online Travel Agencies to respond quickly to unforeseen events such as natural disasters, flight cancellations, or delays by targeting users affected by such events
- AI and Machine Learning have come of age and along with CRM and personalization will be utilized much more in 2017. These innovations are used to tailor and personalize user experience, provide predictions, make recommendations based on lookalikes, analyze feedback, and analyze real-time user behavior, such as hesitation on a screen or menu item
- An already mature application of AI is voice technology and there will be more and more apps coming for Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri. Voice interfaces have unique challenges and will spawn their own user-experience conventions, especially as voice interactions need to be more succinct.
- There will be a significant growth in the international market, especially in developing countries, where people may not have desktops and therefore conduct all of their communications and online purchases through mobile devices.
Image Credit: CC by Jeff Turner
