The role of consumers has been changing for more than a decade. While it's true that the development of the Internet has mostly dictated this trend, the impact of other modern technologies altogether has been influencing our buying habits. In this time and age, online buyers are mediators between virtual space and their offline personalities. Indeed, if you stop for a moment and think about yourself when you're on the web, looking for different products, you're a different person from the one you know in your everyday life. What's different is that on the Web you become a digital consumer that uses cutting-edge technologies to find the deals that suit your budget. On the other hand, you can also be perceived as a sheer tool in the hands of mind-boggling virtual business strategies. But how exactly do companies use modern software solutions to yield tangible profits from digital consumers?
Self-exposure in social media
According to a report published by Nielsen regarding the habits of digital consumers in the USA in 2014, the expansion of mobile devices, both in number and size, has generated some new trends that will dominate the digital market in the years to come. More than 64% of the surveyed people stated that they visited social media via their PCs at least once a day. Also, about a half of the participants claimed that they used their smartphones to access their social media profiles. What we're often still unaware of is that every part of your personality you expose to the public in social media can be used to track your habits. Moreover, online businesses are especially interested in their users' shopping preferences. The more information you reveal about yourself, the more data they will gather about your personality. Is this good or bad? It depends on your attitude towards such customer-targeting tactics. On the basis of the conclusions drawn from a survey conducted by Demandware and published by Computer Weekly, it's clear that millennials like it when online platforms offer them products on the basis of their Internet behavior. All those bits of information are invaluable to businesses searching for their customers in the digital environment.
Creating users' profiles
Aside from social media, search engines also follow the activities of their users. Since the entire online community revolves around buying and selling ads, every page your visit and every link you click on remains stored as a part of your online portfolio. For instance, if you visit Google's ad settings page, you'll see how much Google knows about you and your preferences, given that you surf the web as a signed-in Google user.
On the other hand, users who don't want to be followed and targeted by personalized ads, distributed on the basis of their surfing habits, can simply go to the Ads Help section and adjust the ads parameters to their online (in)visibility preferences.
Nevertheless, it still doesn't mean that your online actions will be completely invisible to the search engine supervision system. A piece published by Makeuseof.com explains that even private browsing can be seen by third parties. No matter if you're one of the digital consumers or online businesses, you should always keep expanding your knowledge of search engine algorithms and tracking policies.
High-tech support for business strategies
Now that the importance of the online business image has outgrown its brick-and-mortar counterpart, every single business owner that plans to start positioning themselves on the Internet can't make it without some brilliant business strategies that rely on high-tech software tools. And this doesn't only mean launching a Facebook page and waiting for thousands of new customers to start pouring in and buying your products.
Firstly, you have to address your users so that they know you're talking directly to them. If you play your social media strategy in a smart and organized way, you'll reach out even to those Internet users that switch off the personalized ads feature when using Google. Always remember that the relevance of the content you share will set the future course of your business.
Secondly, get familiar with the efficient tracking tools, like Facebook Insights, to analyze the habits of the people who've visited your business page. Those solutions will improve your content strategy and turn your digital visitors into potential clients.
Thirdly, start thinking about your customers the way other businesses perceive you. If you've ever received an email from an unknown address, how did you react to it? What advertising efforts do you find amusing? How well do you accept updates for the digital tools you use? The latter is extremely important in terms of user experience and the outcome of placing new products on the market. For instance, if you want to get reliable feedback on your new products from your digital clients, it's vital to include some test management tools in your business strategy.
The more virtual features your business plan contains, the more leads you'll generate from your digital target audience(s).
Sophisticated trends of the future
As it seems today, the end of this decade will see a significant drop in the use of traditional digital devices, like smartphones, smart TVs and tablets. What will rise, on the other hand, is the need for more sophisticated gadgets. This group includes things like state-of-the-art equipment for cars and other vehicles, as well as various wearable items. Wearables are especially interesting, since digital users are already crazy for those items. Moreover, a market analysis conducted by CCS Insight and published by Forbes shows that by 2020 the market of wearables will be worth about $34 billion dollars. What's more, due to the rapidly growing technological innovations in this field, this prediction might be too moderate.
Moreover, speaking of sophisticated trends of the future, we can expect that some online tracking tactics will become an inseparable part of offline stores, as well. According to a prognosis expressed in an article brought by The Guardian, a growing number of retailers are introducing some trendy tracking tactics in their business strategies. Those new technologies will measure how much time a customer spends in front of the shop window before they get into a store and what departments inside the store grasps their attention.
As you can see, the latest innovative business strategies largely rely on high-tech solutions. In the near future, companies will interchangeably use data about their digital customers and offline buyers, to yield the greatest benefit for their business efforts.