Top 5 Website Development Trends To Look Out For in 2022

Keeping up with the newest website development trends is a sure-shot approach for web designers to guarantee the attention of the internet audience in the face of growing competition.

Over the last two years, we've all spent considerable time surfing the web. It's fair to think that this period has and continues to offer new chances and possibilities for further innovation in website designing.

These five website development trends identified below would help developers build a website that gives regard to the dawn of the internet while also looking ahead.

1. One-Page Websites

Designers can develop more innovative work with the one-page website concept. These sites operate best when the material of the site is tighter, such as a portfolio. They may also serve as a helpful bridge to bring customers wherever they want to go quickly and effectively without the need for unnecessary browsing or distractions. One-page websites also encourage designers to reconsider their overall style and layout to not only put all of their material to the front and centre but also to figure out what's most crucial to showcase in the first place.

2. AI Communication Tools

Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots are causing quite the stir in the digital world. These technologies allow for the building of digital assistants that chat with and assist customers to websites. It also enables the gathering and analysis of data. Around 70% of internet sites will employ this system by 2022, allowing consumers to acquire the information they require in only a few messages. Because AI is mainly reliant on ML (Machine Learning), it may integrate customer requests, data, and feedback into future interactions.

3. Using Voice Navigation & Control

People today demand access to real-time information and would rather say a few words to their smartphones than type them. This procedure will be sped up thanks to the use of voice control. This trend has started influencing a whole fresh wave of devices based on voice control, such as all home automation gadgets and office assistants. Many websites and online apps will be influenced as a result of this effect. Website-level speech recognition tools like Voxpow offers you to use voice recognition for free and effortlessly. In reality, it employs the most advanced machine learning algorithms for voice recognition, achieving over 95% accuracy in more than 100 languages.

4. Implementing PWA & AMP Apps

Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) applications now have become the next well-known alternative for website developers. PWAs will enable web pages to scale to the size of the phone, resulting in a much-improved UI/UX design. While catering to user retention, the page loading time will also be super fast. An AMP is a more appropriate option as compared to PWAs if your website has a lot of motion and video content. It will render all of your page's contents available to users on mobile devices while preventing overcrowding.

5. Cloud Servers as Website Foundation

A cloud server design eliminates data loss and is another feature that prevents the webpage from being overloaded. Computations are done using cloud resources rather than servers. As a consequence, web designers gain a substantial competitive advantage since they can now reduce their project development and tech support budgets. Switch to cloud servers will also make the website more versatile and adaptive.

All of these website development techniques will benefit you in staying competitive and successful while developing new web pages and making the best alterations possible to enhance the site's aesthetic.

Rally your developers and begin making these upgrades sooner than later so you can get a headstart in 2022!

Instagram Guides - The Secret Tool to Increase Brand Awareness & Engagement

The ultimate secret tool to distinguish your brand on Instagram? Guides, undoubtedly. Despite their underuse, being social media's scrollable mini-blogs, they're ideal for highlighting brand USPs, content groups, FAQs, collaborations, reviews, and more! You can find them all together under the Instagram Guides tab on your profile.

Benefits of Using Instagram Guides:

1. Showcasing Brand Products and Services

Instagram Guides help bring all the products and services your brand offers under one umbrella. You can create different gift guides, tips & tricks for using your products, specific brand features and the like to promote and amplify your business. What’s more, customers can avoid extra steps of locating your products which also helps in increasing your conversion rate!

2. Repurposing Existing Content

You can repurpose content that is already on your page to curate Guides on Instagram. Guides use existing posts from your profile to create mini-blogs. Clicking on a single feed post in a Guide will redirect the user back to the original post on your profile, which makes it perfect for repurposing old content. This will not only help in increasing the reach and engagement of old content but also promote your brand to newer audiences.

3. Engaging with New and Old Visitors on Your Page Guides help in engrossing old and potentially new customers on your page. The long-form content of Guides will give your viewers a chance to scroll through your entire profile. This will also help in maintaining a connection with your audience and vice-versa.

4. Act as an Expert in Your Industry Let’s all agree that Instagram Guides look aesthetically pleasing and sophisticated. They not only look professional but also position you as an expert in your industry. Creating guides, especially those focusing on tips and tricks, step-by-step usage of your products and services, etc. are a few examples.

5. Amplifying Reach

People can find Guides on Instagram not only by looking up hashtags but also by specific keywords. This aids in making your content more discoverable, in turn, increasing brand reach and impressions. Putting up practical and relevant content that others can share in their networks is crucial here.

Instagram Guides: Must-Knows

1. Know what your viewers want. Keeping a tab on the preferences and choices of your customers is the first and foremost step in creating the perfect Instagram Guide. This will help you choose relevant content to put in your guides.

2. Share Guides on Stories

Another step to promoting your brand and its products is resharing your curated Guides on your stories. This will help your page reach more accounts and increase brand reach.

3. Build a Community

Including user-generated content in your Guides will build a community-specific to your brand and industry. This will also highlight your brand loyalty and help in generating more leads.

4. Create a Relationship with Your Peers Create Guides focused on the subject matter of your industry and also include your peers and collaborators. Not only will this help in building strategic relationships on social media it will also increase your chances of storytelling and ECommerce on Instagram!

Instagram Guides is the perfect secret spell you need to cast immediately to enter into a new and relevant area of digital and social media marketing. It's easy, it's consumable, it's fun!

10 Minute Guide: Competitor Analysis for ECommerce Brands

What can I do to make my brand stand out?

How can I impact consumer decisions without being too different?

If you're a marketer and you're pondering upon these challenges, the solution is well-executed competition analysis. It would equip you with the information you need to make strategic marketing decisions.

Let's have a look at how.

Step 1- Identifying Your Brand's Competitors

You must analyze two types of competitors.

• Direct competition

Identifying companies who sell similar items or services to the same clients through the same distribution channels as you is the first key step. You must analyze your brand for estimating entry barriers and evaluating product viability.

• Indirect competition

The next step is to identify online sellers that offer differentiated products but can also satisfy the same customer demand. Keep these brands in your competitive analysis for they can cross over into the direct competitor zone any time.

Step 2- Performing a SWOT Analysis of Competitors

After identifying your competitors, analyzing their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is important. This is called a SWOT analysis. Furthermore, contrast their weaknesses with your strengths. This can be a good way to capitalize on the opportunities they are missing out on.

Swot Analysis: Factors To Look Out For:

1. Strength: One of the primary strengths of eCommerce businesses is their extensive accessibility.

2. Weakness: Being industry specific is one main weakness of eCommerce businesses.

3. Opportunity: The market for eCommerce businesses is ever growing and immensely dynamic.

4. Threats: Since the barriers to entry in the eCommerce industry are low, the biggest threat it poses is competition.

Step 3- Determining Market Positioning of Competitors Determining the market position of competitors can help in differentiating your offers and create value for your market. To do just that you should:

• Identify the primary group of customer needs.

• Choose a geographic region to study.

• Decide whether you would keep tabs on the entire market for a product or only a specific segment.

• Select a price range for analyzing and identifying the primary benefits to the customer at different price points.

Step 4- Researching Competitors' Sales Tactics

Know about your competitors' sales process, their sales channels, their total sales volume, annual revenue, regularity in discounts, offers, etc. This will provide you with an idea about how competitive their sales process is. With this, you will also come to know about how you need to prepare your sales representatives to compete at the final stage of buying.

Step 5- Looking At Competitors' Pricing Strategy

For correctly pricing your product, it is pertinent for you to understand the pricing of your competitors. Perceptual mapping will help you identify how different competitors price their products and where you could fit in. Apart from analyzing pricing, also focus on offers or discounts that they offer and identify how you might match those perks to compete.

Step 6- Ensure Meeting Competitive Shipping Costs

Take a look at your competitors' shipping costs and ensure you're meeting, if not exceeding, those prices. In case free shipping isn't a practical option, consider differentiating in other ways through discounts, giveaways, etc.

Step 7- Reviewing Competitors’ Social Media Performance

Evaluate your competitor's social media presence and engagement rates. Identify their content kind, tone, and focus. Also, take a look at their mode and frequency of customer interaction. Finally, use a similar grading scale, compare all your competitors, and identify opportunities on social media that your brand can leverage.

Conducting an effective competitive analysis requires a perfect blend of personal expertise, market knowledge, domain expertise, marketing, and branding skills. Thus, make sure to count on them when comparing yourself against the competition. Should your brand need any help, Socially India has already kept its virtual and physical doors open!