Although there were a ton of wonderful talks at this year’s IDEA conference, one that sticks out for me is Vidya Drego’s Trends in the Future of Online Experiences. I’m usually pretty skeptical of talks like this, because I find myself disappointed at people’s guesses for the future. Usually these types of talks lack research and viability and are just based on some really cool ideas that the speaker has. However, knowing that Vidya is an employer of Forrester, my hopes were high.
I was not disappointed. Vidya started by explaining a little bit about the type of research they had been conducting. She then explained that after a great deal of analysis her and her team were able to come up with a framework that outlined the characteristics that they were seeing of successful and delightful online experiences. Her statement was basically by using this framework, one could enhance their online product for future success.
The framework (called CARS) says that sites that are Customized by the end user, Aggregated, Relevant to the device, and Social are sure to find success in the “future”. Vidya gave some examples of sites that are doing some of the CARS framework really well (shout out to USAA woohoo!!) and it was interesting to see their future predictions happening right now.
Ok, so the framework based off research and analysis is cool, but you may be asking yourself how can my company get there? Vidya mentions that to do so you and your company should look for and record customer insights, look at and record the multiple-channel (web, mobile, etc) view of the customer journey, work towards atomized content (content that is reusable and extendable), and ensure enhanced functionality.
Easy right? Nonetheless, I think this is a great place to start to think about how to take your online product into the next phase of the web. If you missed the talk and would like to see more, be sure to check out Trends in the Future of Online Experiences today. I would love to hear your thoughts on it in the comments!