Development
Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
They are basically websites that look and feel like an app – a great alternate for businesses that don’t want to invest greatly into a mobile app. PWA is a web application that uses modern web technologies and design patterns to provide a reliable, fast and engaging user experience that can be accessed offline. You can see some examples when you visit Forbes, Starbucks and Instagram when browsing the Internet on your phone.
Chatbots
We seem to mention this most years, but in 2019 it was found that 57% of customers appreciate Chatbots due to their instantaneity. Chatbots are finding its place among customer service professionals, which isn’t a big surprise as businesses can save a lot of money by employing bots instead of humans. Bots don’t replace the entire process though but are usually used for the initial start to a conversation or to answer some of those FAQs.
Design
Dark Mode
Since Apple went dark in September, people have cottoned on to the fact that our eye sight is quite useful, and there’s now an alternative to staring at a bright white screen all the time. Darker screens are much easier on the eyes, they make bright colours pop and they’re set to be all the rage in 2020.
Text
Font sizes are set for a big size increase next year, with a move towards straight talking designs, which thanks to their huge type leave no question in your mind what a company does.
Along with larger type, another trend is the move towards a utilitarian feel, especially in ecommerce. Straight talking sites that just get on with things, allowing for a much simpler shopping experience.
More burgers
Unfortunately, not the food. The use of three horizontal lines to represent a menu is set to increase, as more people understand what they are, and designers seek ways to reduce the ‘clutter’ of an always on menu.
Search
Machine Learning and SEO
Machine learning will become more important. Google already has RankBrain as part of it’s algorithm and the recent BERT algorithm update also related to machine learning. This should mean that search results become more relevant to the queries people are typing in – especially for longer terms and those based on questions or natural speech.
This doesn’t really change our strategy, but it emphasises the need to have content that reads naturally, is highly relevant, and that meets users’ needs. FAQs or question-based blog posts have been a good idea for a while. The importance of this content is only going to grow.
More ‘Smart’ Campaigns for PPC
Similar to machine learning in SEO, we expect to see Google bring out more and more dynamic or ‘smart’ options in Google Ads too. Their automated bidding strategies used to be terrible, but they’re become a lot better in recent years. They’ve also introduced Smart Shopping and Dynamic Search Ads – both automated ways of serving ads. While these have to be used carefully, they can be useful tools for gathering data and trying out new things.
I’d expect to see more options based around machine learning coming out in 2020.
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