Top 8 Ecommerce Marketing Trends for 2015

 

The Less You “Sell,” The More You Make
The more information we’re bombarded with on a daily basis, via the Internet, TV, even our smartphones and tablets, the better we have to become at sifting through the junk to find what speaks to us most honestly.
Therefore, the more often a company tries to push a sale and the less time they spend showing passion for both their product and customers, the less likely that potential consumers will spend with that business. Below are a few ways that new technology will change how companies can find champions and customers alike, while avoiding wasted ad dollars and pushy sales.

1. Screen Shifting

According to Forbes, as we increase the number of screens we use each day, for example, we can watch a movie while texting from our phones and tweeting from our laptops all at the same time, so will marketers adapt their advertising for each screen. Advertisements for wearable technology, such as Google Glass or the Smartwatch, will need to become more customized for smaller screens and heads up display (HUD).

2. Streamlined Shopping

In 2015 more people will be doing their online shopping on their phones and more retail locations will be using online/offline POS systems. Marketers will be attempting to take advantage of the swiping and tapping motions we all know so well, while making an in-store transaction may no longer require a cash register, much less a keyboard.

3. Marrying Copywriting & Coding

Being able to write, and write well and in many tones, will be a key factor in the success of digital marketing for 2015. The best writers will need to understand interaction design and responsive content development to create messaging that resonates across different platforms and screen dimenesions. Conversely developers will need to include content developers earlier and work more closely with the content marketing side.

4. Mobile Marketing Attribution

Marketers will begin to find that they can gain more credit and attribution from an ad that is clicked via a smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device. According to Tom Webster, Vice President of Edison Research,  potential customers no longer have to run back home and look up an advertised product, they can simply tap on the ad on their phones. More marketers will start to realize that using mobile as a hub for ads will give them an edge.

5. Multi-Dimensional Sharing Networks

 We will see a drop in usage for sites that only allow its users to share certain files. For example, Twitter may see a decline in popularity because it is merely a supplement to a more in-depth online personality as opposed to Google+ which lets its users group chat, post thoughts, images, documents, and much more. Social media platforms will become more competitive in creating the most comprehensive, integrated, and aesthetically pleasing format for its users to present themselves to the online world.

6. Corporations Getting Personal

In an effort to seem like your best friend or someone you know close to home, marketing campaigns will incorporate more and more home-video-like advertising. Copy will start to seem a little less professional, and a lot more in-your-face honest. Transparency, or the illusion of transparency, as well as simplicity, will become major facets of major marketing strategies.

 7. The Golden Age of Storytelling

 Related to the above, marketing, public relations, and advertising categories will  continue to converge as the main agenda becomes getting future customers to be moved by the message. Anyone with talent for storytelling in diverse or emerging formats, whether it’s through comics, street art or filming, will have a highly valued role in the marketing field.

8. Finer Content Targeting for Niche Audiences

As Facebook and tools like Google Analytics provide more powerful audience insight such as gender and age, marketers will be challenged to apply that new granular demographic data. Lee Odden of Top Rank Online Marketing and Pam Didner, Intel’s Global MKT Strategist, predict that in 2015 marketing teams will have to take a step back and completely reevaluate their target audiences and figure out how to speak to reach specific users in more meaningful ways.

Intro to Open Web Apps

Open Web Apps are essentially no different than standard websites or Web pages. They are built using standard open Web technologies — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. — and can be accessed using a Web browser. The main differences lie in their ability to be installed on a device and work offline, and access to advanced APIs that allow interaction with device features such as the camera, address book, and other such things. In addition, they are built on open technologies as much as is possible. Where differences lie in technology implementation between platforms, efforts should be made to ensure that both are supported, through a combination of feature detection and appropriate code for different platforms, and graceful degradation.

Advantages of Open Web Apps

Let's look at the advantages of Open Web Apps in a little more detail:

• Local installation and offline storage: Open Web Apps can be installed on the device, and leverage APIs such as local storage and IndexedDB to provide local data storage capabilities. In addition, open Web technologies tend to have a much smaller footprint than native apps and can generally be updated automically rather than having to install a complete new package each time there's an update. (an exception to this is packaged apps, which require a whole new package when updating.) Apps are therefore less dependent on an always-on Web connection, and more useful when networks are patchy.
• Hardware access: The metadata provided with Open Web Apps can be used to grant the application permission to privileged APIs that enable usage of device hardware features, something the Web platform has not traditionally enjoyed.
• Breaking the walled gardens: The norm for mobile platforms tends to be be walled gardens written with proprietary technologies, so apps are locked inside their platforms. And smartphones tend to be expensive, and require credit cards for app purchases. Open Web Apps tend to be able to run on much cheaper hardware, especially in the case of Firefox OS devices where you've literally just got Firefox running on top of a lightweight Linux kernel. And they are written using open Web technologies, which is the most distributed platform around. In addition, Firefox OS devices feature payment systems where you can simply prepay for apps, or add the cost to your phone bill.
• Open Web App stores: Following on from the previous point, you can choose to host your apps in an existing marketplace (such as the Firefox Marketplace), or host them somewhere else entirely. It's up to you. Mozilla aims to put the developer back in control of every aspect of the app experience — from easy development to distribution to direct customer relationship management. And the apps can be searched for just like any other Web-based experience.

The Web is the platform

An open web app as it exists as installed on a platform like Firefox OS is not a bookmark — it’s a proper part of the system. Open Web Apps hold that great promise. They are an opportunity that we should not miss, otherwise the Web might become fragmented once more. With this in mind it should be made clear that Open Web Apps (OWA in short) are intended to be standardized and to become part of "the Web". If successful, OWA should eventually work on all browsers, operating systems and devices.
At Mozilla we are working hard to create this apps platform that is backed entirely by the open Web. It’s not intended to be a “Mozilla platform” or a “Firefox platform”. The Web is the platform. We’re creating a set of open APIs and implementations to show how portable apps can exist on the Web without vendor lock-in. Other groups like Facebook and Google Chrome are also working on apps platforms backed by the Web. Facebook apps are meant to hook into Facebook and Chrome apps are designed for Chrome OS devices and Google servers. Chrome apps are the most similar to Open Web Apps. We continue to collaborate with the Google Chrome team as app standards evolve and we definitely share a lot of the same vision. There is tremendous potential for all Web based app platforms to converge and we invite all vendors to help us build the right Open Web App APIs.
Even though currently you must have a Mozilla Firefox-based engine ("Web runtime") to use Open Web Apps, it is not intended that this always will be the case. Many parts of the Open Web Apps project are still being worked out and it isn't possible to implement everything in all browsers at once. Although many parts of Open Web Apps are already standardized, many other parts are still in flux. It is intended and hoped that Open Web Apps will be a standard capability that is available in all major browsers.
Therefore, when you read the MDN pages that deal with Open Web Apps, please keep in mind that even though much of the information is specific to Firefox right now, it will hopefully enable you to develop Open Web Apps for all browsers in the future.
For more info visit Mozilla Open Web Apps