This post is part of a series of 2016 predictions from industry experts.
Customer Centricity Rules
Marcus Tober, Searchmetrics, @marcustober
2016 is will be dominated by more customer centric methods that many companies will utilize to create a better experience for their (potential) users. The times where it was enough to just be online, to have just a mobile friendly page are over. The diversity and redundancy of available products and services is enormous. The user has many more options than ever before. This trend will continue in 2016 and more local business will make their services available only too, especially in ecommerce, so it will become more crowded online.
The customer centric methods will include that search engines are going to better understand what is local and what is a general search query. So they will be the foundation that a user doesn't need to decide is it local or global. It will become more convenient and better targeted. For vendors this is a challenge, because the content they need to publish needs to be responsive to the needs of their customers. There is a still a huge gap in the experience of people going in a mall shopping versus the same online. But with responsive content that is customer centric that gap will become smaller. The responsiveness of the content will depend also on the locality of the user and his interest. I imagine a world where the online shopping experience is as supportive and fun (I mean to touch things and try things out) as it is in real life. With one-hour delivery and more local shops being connected to the responsive shopping experience, this reality is not far away anymore.
