The Future of Web Optimisation

What’s the future of web optimization? 

One thing which we are seeing now, and can certainly expect to continue into the future, is a move amongst retailers to an omnichannel operating model – there really are no other routes to go down. The systems which are available have, up until now, been very expensive, but these are only getting cheaper, faster and more effective as time goes on.

For retailers, this is great news, they’ll be able to harness the power of their data to build a unified customer view, and from there advanced optimization work can be done continuously. What will be profoundly interesting, however, is to see exactly how retailers implement the changes. 

Where conventionally making content changes was a laborious process carried in darkened back-offices over a period of months, in the future we will see more and more retailers optimizing directly to device, whether that be a browser on a desktop or laptop, or even on a mobile browser or app. The changes which can be made are without limit – you are able to do everything you would be able to do using conventional software development.

It’s really a very big architectural change, the significance of this may be quite difficult to understand now, but considering the fact that Google, amongst others, are pushing this model in a big way right now, I think there is a very good reason to believe that this will become the prevailing method in the future. 

What kind of technology do you foresee having a big impact over the next year? 

One thing that I’m really intrigued about are the possibilities surrounding virtual reality. People have been talking about it for years but it’s reaching the point now where the hardware is becoming available, it’s affordable and it’s high quality. I will be really surprised if we don’t see some really interesting experiments in eCommerce using virtual reality over the next year. 

There are a wide range of possibilities for this technology especially for travel and retail – it could revolutionize clothes shopping once the technology has advanced a bit further. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see the gambling industry capitalize on this as well. 

*This interview is an extract from our recent whitepaper 'Survival of the Quickest' you can get a copy by clicking the link below.