William Cameron | Beyond the Keyboard

Over a billion pounds was invested by start up companies in the first part of 2016 on AI.  Most of those companies were e-commerce and digital shopping, catering to retailers that are using AI to improve customer shopping experiences. While retail applications of AI might not grab the headlines like self driving cars, it will be just as impactful, affecting almost every retail purchase decision that a consumer makes. AI will allow retailers to build an incredible level of customer loyalty. The three most common ways will be through individual segmentation, real time communication, and personalisation. Used tactfully, these techniques can help brands transform shoppers into lifetime consumers. Individual Segmentation Amazon and Google use a simple form of AI to curate product recommendations without needing human intervention. This is called collaborative filtering. A more advanced form of this is individual segmentation, where brands create profiles based off of behavioural shoppi

ECommerce is now a daily part of our on-line lives.  During 2016 we predict to see an increase in eCommerce and on-line sales across mobile devices while people move away from traditional desktop and laptop PC's. Some of these design trends include: 1. Material Design Now being adopted by eCommerce companies, the vibrant and content focused design style continues to make waves since its launch in 2014.  It's unified experience across platforms makes it a great for developing an engaging eCommerce.  This has been utilised very well by sites such as PA Design and Bewakoof . 2. Hidden Menus Popular for cleaning up cluttered eCommerce designs, these menus used to be used mainly on mobile versions of sites where space was limited, however are now making their way into desktop sites to allow a bigger canvas for more creativity.  These are in use on many desktop sites and should continue well into 2016, on sites such as House of Fraser . 3.  Upwardly Responsive Responsive

Just in case you haven't noticed.  Facebook are rolling out a new feature across their platform called Reactions. This appears to be off the back of the community requesting for a long time a Dislike button on posts.  It is clear to see however this is having mixed... well, reactions across the globe. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg posted: Today is our worldwide launch of Reactions -- the new Like button with more ways to express yourself. Not every moment you want to share is happy. Sometimes you want to share something sad or frustrating. Our community has been asking for a dislike button for years, but not because people want to tell friends they don't like their posts. People wanted to express empathy and make it comfortable to share a wider range of emotions. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the ri ght way to do this with our team. One of my goals was to make it as simple as pressing and holding the Like button. The result is Reactions, w

Shopping cart abandonment is an epidemic in online retailing, with some companies reporting that more than 60% of checkouts end without a conversion. Preventing even a relatively small percentage of these abandoned carts would significantly improve revenues and profits. While purchase price and shipping costs are the leading reported causes of shopping cart abandonment, ease of use is close behind. One increasingly popular method used to slash cart abandonment rates is to introduce single-page, Ajax-driven checkout forms that combine the convenience of a single page format with asynchronous form validation. Single-page checkout is faster and easier so that more customers convert. When you’re trying to decide if your checkout process should be a single page or several pages, consider the analogy of a supermarket. When shopping, consumers always gravitate towards the shortest checkout lanes or fastest cashiers. By definition, a single-page checkout is faster than a multi-page checkout if