2020 was a crazy (dare I say unprecedented) year that most likely changed the digital marketing landscape and the whole customer buying process forever. As we look forward to 2021, these changing customer habits affect all areas of digital marketing including creative, media, strategy, and analytics. Our experts have looked at all sides and have come up with the following predictions and things to look out for in 2021.
Creative
Parallax, again. It feels like parallax scrolling has been the hot trend for years but recently folks are using it in new and interesting ways. By applying it to foreground and background elements you have the ability to really immerse your user in the page.
Horizontal Scroll. Ten years ago I tried to mix both horizontal and vertical scroll on a page and everyone freaked out. Needless to say it didn’t make it on the live site. I guess I was a decade too early here. This isn’t quite the no no it used to be and I think we’ll see it a lot more over the next year
Flat, skeuomorphism, neumporphism. It feels like the natural progression to flat design that took over the early 2000s. And with Apple’s Big Sur update whether you like the look or not it appears here to stay.
Development
Single-page Apps (SPAs) are paving-way for modern-day websites. It can be off-putting when one click leads to the entire website reloading. Reloads consume time and leave a negative impact on users. SPAs help avoid lengthy communication with the server, offer better performance and data protection. Common SPAs include Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are not that new. Although, it has been making headway since its arrival and is going to dominate 2021. PWAs and SPAs are all about the user experience. Making a website feel more like a mobile app. PWAs offer easy navigation without the need for constant page reloading. Some great examples include Uber, Twitter, Pinterest, Forbes, and Instagram.
Serverless architecture is a great way to build an application or service while keeping the infrastructure independently managed. The applications still run on servers but are managed by third-party applications like Amazon Web Services. Scaling, provisioning, backups, disaster recovery, and maintaining databases is no longer a hassle.
React is playing a major role in today’s interactive applications, covering web-apps and mobile apps. React enables faster and easier implementation of changes. React also provides a higher level of security. React is great at making on the fly changes to a webpage’s elements. These on the fly changes make it much easier to create a single-page application.
Strategy & Analytics
Data privacy & government regulation will transform the digital marketing landscape in 2021. With the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) becoming law in 2020, the first rounds of fines and penalties will come this year. Other states may also start implementing privacy laws similar to CCPA. It is generally thought that additional state regulations will not be as extensive as CCPA so ensuring your company is CCPA compliant is key to protect against additional legislation. Social media platforms will likely also have increased regulations focused on data used for advertising across platforms. On the flip side, consumers have become hyper-aware of the type and amount of data they give to companies and are less likely to provide information. Companies need to get ahead of this by being general good stewards of user data and determine strategies to continue hitting company goals while using less and less user data.
In addition, government regulation may change the digital landscape as a whole by launching antitrust suits and adding additional regulation against major tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple. Changes to these platforms could require adjustments to search and social strategies, however, these cases may not be complete until at least 2022.
