Insights

How 2020 is reshaping the digital landscape

Needless to say, 2020 was an interesting year.

While pretty much everything was shaken in the past 10 months and there are valid reasons to be disheartened, it is clear to me that the future is looking exciting.

Digital innovation is going to continue taking an important place in our daily lives, and in shaping the future economy for the better.

I have selected 6 topics and digital predictions for 2021 that I find particularly interesting.


Digital will lead COVID recovery

Nearly all aspects of the economy are impacted by COVID and will need to undergo some sort of transformation.

Working from home has become the new normal. Along with that trend, we have seen a huge increase in digital activities and an acceleration in behavioural trends.

Building an e-commerce presence has become essential. Businesses are learning to move much faster.

The fashion industry, for example, is about to be turned upside down - according to the McKinsey report: “Some apparel, fashion, and luxury companies won’t survive the current crisis; others will emerge better positioned for the future. Much will depend on their digital and analytics capabilities”.

More valuable insight is available on the McKinsey report.

Shoppable social (shopping out of websites)

Amazon and eCommerce in general have experienced an incredible boom thanks to the pandemic. Along with Jeff Bezos’ net worth… He is now rich enough to literally buy many of the world’s stock markets outright (yes you read that correctly).

So online shopping is here to stay and to increase. It is bound to become more pervasive and omnipresent. Shoppable social, shopping directly from search engines… It is going to be everywhere.

More about this trend on this great article from The Drum.

The rise of no code / low code

Don’t be misguided by this title - talented engineers and developers are more needed today than ever before. However their skills lie more and more toward the ability to assemble third-party software together to create the ideal solution

As Betsy Atkins from Forbes points out:
“The current really important key trend that I believe is here now and will significantly change the product development landscape is a new paradigm called the no code / low code era."

"The essence of low code and no code software is the emergence of a new class of software ‘assemblers’ not traditional software ‘developers’. The software assembler is a “citizen developer” which essentially means that with minimum to no coding training a technically astute person can create new software capabilities which can help speed-up the overall digital transformation initiatives.”

More about low code on Forbes.

Rise of privacy issues and its impact on online advertising

As we’ve seen recently with the rise of Signal over WhatsApp, or the end of third-party cookies, consumers are more and more concerned and aware of their online privacy. This trend is only going to grow and is going to have a massive impact on online advertising

A lot more interesting information about the topic of privacy is available on these 2 excellent articles from CMO.com.au and dataprivacymanager.net.

Personalised video marketing

On the topic of digital marketing… a new trend is emerging and it’s not risky to say that it’s only bound to grow stronger. Personalisation is already a staple of digital marketing, through things like email marketing or website personalisation. But the most engaging digital media - video - has been operating the old school way so far.

Now, with AI technology improving at light speed, it is possible to fully personalise video and make it an absolute killer of a marketing tool.

Read more on ‘Personalized Video Marketing: The Next Revolution in Content Marketing.’

UX and design trends

3D illustrations, Glassmorphism, advanced personalisation…

A digital trends press review wouldn’t be one without thoughts around UI and UX design… So I really recommend reading these 2 articles from UX Planet and UXdesign.cc.

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