With 2011 drawing to a close, some of us are already thinking about what the new year will have in store for us. 2012 is going to bring many new and exciting trends to the digital marketing world. There have been a few posts with people talking about what are going to be the biggest trends for the new year, and I have chosen my favourite from all these.
Gamification
A lot of sites are going to adapt this amazing new form of user interaction on their websites. This is a way to keep visitors coming back to your site by rewarding them for doing certain things online. Plenty of sites have already jumped on the gamification bandwagon and it’s all worked out well for them in the end. Gamification allows you to reward your visitors with badges or different user status levels (from part time reader to everyday reader, for instance) as they perform more actions on the site. A typical example a site might use is, “The King of Comments” award if somebody has posted a certain amount of comments on their site. At first, when looking at it, you might think there is no way to fit gamification into your site but there are plenty of actions users can take on your site and it’s up to you how to reward them for being a loyal visitor.
Internet TV
Internet TV has been around for a few years already but it is becoming more popular nowadays. There are manufacturers that have released TVs capable of connecting straight to the internet and allowing users to watch online content straight from their television set. With 3D technology moving at a rapid pace as well, I see plenty of 3D content being made available online via your television. More and more people are getting high speed internet connections at home and I predict that digital content should be taking over from regular television viewing in the next few years.
Quick Response Codes
QR codes are revolutionising the world as a whole. I recently watched a video from Tesco that showed shoppers scanning QR codes wherever they find an advert of the online shopping site. A great example of its efficiency is how they put the boards, displaying some of the most common products, is in a subway station so that people could simply scan a code and have the products delivered to them by the time they get home. These QR codes will be used by major sites to link to articles and even to “like” or “follow” them on different social media platforms.
Mobile Integration
With the popularity of the iPad, Kindle Fire and other tablets, plenty of sites will be looking to develop apps for their sites so that they perform better on mobile devices. Mashable has said that their tablet app user spends six times more time on the app than their normal site user would. Gaming is also going to play a big part in this as more gamers will use an iPad or other tablets to keep gaming even on the go. Most gamers want to have access to the internet as well and will keep track of latest blogs and forums on a daily basis.
These are just a few of the trends that will be big in 2012. I see plenty more changes happening during the year as well, as we all know that strategies and trends change almost everyday.
Darren Vrede is an experienced writer and has written about a variety of subjects he is writing about digital consulting and Digital Marketing services