The web development approach that we currently know is very different, compared to when CMS like Wordpress launched in 2003. With automation and optimisation being the biggest trends in the tech market, we've recently seen the rise of machine code algorithms that have as their main goal User Experience and Conversion Rates Optimisation. Let's break down in more detail how these technologies could reshape the digital field, especially when it comes to web development.
Instant Retargeting
A simple example of these technologies would be related to the website personalization world, which is trending in the E-commerce field, given the fact that, especially with the advent of heavily marketing focused businesses like drop shipping, showing the right product at the right time is the top priority. In this scenario, the optimisation happens when the core of the website instantly adapts the catalogue on what are the most picked products, hiding the ones that are out of stock or have received bad reviews. By having a personalized storefront for every single impression, the conversion rates will naturally grow, especially if the company is focused on a very competitive niche.
Mobile
The UK market has approached the matter by providing industry insights on how machine learning-related development is indeed a considerable focus in investment and research. Many are the Android app development companies that started to re-brand and rebuild their core application with automation as their main target: a simple and well-renowned example would be ASOS, that recently included many different personalization tools in order to boost the website's user experience, even on mobile.
The mobile market has recently peaked at 52.2% of the entire internet's traffic, which is also why many companies are heavily focusing on the potential avenues within the area.
Does UX Boost Conversion Rates?
Yes, it does. Retargeting an abandoned cart, providing the best product in terms of reviews/offers and stock availability are incredibly important in order to boost the client's User Experience, which, consequently, is more likely to improve the store's conversion rates. We can easily say that a code-based store, with an ML learning core, would be twice (at least) more powerful than an app-based one.
User experience has been a big part of the last couple of year's web development learning process, which is why providing this type of tool could literally reshape the market.
How Competitive Is This Technology At The Moment?
Let's state the fact that these tools are at a very embryonic stage. First of all, CMS like Wordpress and Shopify are not highly supportive in terms of architecture and processing power, so the coding behind these new applications is kinda limited, to start off. Once this obstacle will be overcome then we could easily see more and more automation tools that will be able to understand impressions in order to boost conversions. With that being said, the next couple of years will be crucial, either from a development point of view and also from a marketing one.
Is This The Death Of Digital Marketing?
No. SEO and PPC are still loud within the E-Commerce world and, even if these tools will achieve an "industry standard" status, having a solid keyword planning campaign, combined with a catchy on-page content, is still the top priority. We can surely say that having this kind of tools will definitely boost the click-through ratio, which will surely reduce the budget needed for PPC campaigns, but it won't be enough to kill Adwords and Adroll.
How Does It Work?
Website personalization based on ML algorithms simply analyses all the data received from impressions, in order to automatically optimise the catalogue or the way the website is presented: for example, if 70% of a website's impressions are looking straight for a particular product, the tool will present it straight in the homepage, because it recognises it as a top-selling avenue. Of course, settings could be decided based on brand awareness (I want to boost my new product's impressions) or conversion rates (this is my top-selling product, I want it to grow even more).
While this process would require a lot of manual work, especially from the marketer who controls the website's analytics, these tools could be truly helpful.
To Conclude
Machine learning is slowly making its way through the E-Commerce market, conquering the depths of the development world. As said above, the next couple of years will be crucial in order for us to understand if this technology will be an industry standard or just "an expensive toy". What we can easily say is that web development and website personalization reached a competitive level that wasn't taken into consideration a couple of years ago, when everyone thought that CMS were the peak in web development technology. The future is automated!