Planning To Update Your Website For 2020? Read This.

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Looking to update your website for 2020? If so, it’s important to be aware of users are interacting with websites. Interaction goes beyond users simply scrolling through text on a page. There are now many different strategies that can be used to connect with users through your website design, existing technology, and use of unique features.

Here are some things that you’ll want to consider when updating your site:

Multimedia Content

Whether it’s online audio players, interactive design elements, or video, users are becoming more comfortable with multimedia content. In fact, the video is one of the most desired forms of content. Many consumers prefer videos to understand how products look like, how they work, and how they’re used. Online retailers that use videos to demonstrate and sell their products are finding it to be more effective than the text-only format. Video is becoming increasingly important for sales and content creation. The reason why is because people find content that is visual, auditory, and personal to be more engaging. But the use of multimedia doesn’t stop at just video. There are interactive elements like eCommerce sites allowing consumers to custom design an outfit, blogs allowing their followers to playback past podcast episodes on their site, and more.

Unique Website Design and Personalized Content

When most marketers think of how to approach their web design, they usually turn to conventional designs. The reason why is because these designs are safe and it’s hard to make big mistakes using this approach. But it’s becoming more important to create a unique website experience that’s also natural. There are many web design choices you have available that are organic, engaging, and pleasing to the eye. Many website owners are finding that they can be just as effective, if not more than conventional designs. You can also integrate customer data into website content. Savvy marketers are using advanced CRM platforms to deliver website content that’s based on past consumption behavior. They’re also aggregating content based on customer profiles that have been built around users for a one of a kind experience.

Many eCommerce sites like Amazon are already using this technology to recommend targeted offers and follow up with buy reminders for products that their users have browsed.

Advanced Chatbots

It’s clear that chatbots are here to stay. However, the use of chatbots have been fairly lackluster in terms of how they’ve been used. They’re only good for engaging audiences for marketing purposes and answering simple customer requests. With that said, chatbots will only get better in the coming years. They’ll be able to help customers with more advanced requests and even do a better job facilitating sales. Chatbots are already saving businesses an immense amount of money in customer support costs. CNBC reports that they can save business $8 billion dollars by 2022. With AI gaining more adoption, chatbots will become just as effective as human users. It’s a good idea to start experimenting with them on your website to get familiar with the technology.

Social Media and Website Sales Integration

For a long time, it’s become very important to convert web visitors for leads. Once businesses generate a lead, they can follow up with the lead to develop relationships and increase the likelihood of generating a sale. But now it may be also important to turn new visitors, repeat visitors, and customers into social media followers. The reason why is because platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram features to sell directly on their platforms. This gives businesses another channel to grow their revenue. It also makes sense to get the follow because users that do ignore emails may catch your message on social media. With multi-channel marketing becoming more important, you’ll want to integrate social media content and features on your website. Of course, the focal point is to get users to follow you on the major platforms as opposed to simply liking or sharing your content.

User Generated Content

User generated content (UGC) is used by many businesses on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. But it’s a marketing strategy that should be extended to your website as well. Various businesses are using UGC to build out content for wikis, create FAQ pages, collect testimonials, and keep communities running. Some are even going as far as allowing users to create blog posts on their site. UGC is one of the most cost effective ways to develop your web properties even further. It’s a good idea to experiment with UGC and allow your audience to participate in the creation of your website content. You can even integrate apps from social media platforms to set something up on your site.

These are just some of the things you should be aware of when updating your website for 2020. The crazy thing is that what you see here is just a small sample of all the things that you can implement for your site. There are other things like accelerated mobile pages (AMP), voice commands/search, AI-driven ad copy, and more. It’s all about being open-minded, creative, and at the forefront of emerging trends and technologies.

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —