The new year is right around the corner, and it will come with changes to adapt to and new challenges to overtake. With the further spread of internet-capable mobile devices, the marketing and optimization trends will change, too. This is the perfect time to start implementing changes to your CMS in order to stay up to date with what your visitors will expect in the coming year, no matter if you write about online casino games, technology or even personal finances.
Become mobile friendly (if you haven’t already)
If you haven’t done so during Google’s “Mobilegeddon”, it’s time to update your CMS’ theme to a responsive or an adaptive one. There is a difference between the two – the “responsive” design will operate with proportions, offering a more fluid way for your site to adapt to the different screen sizes your users might use to access it, while the “adaptive” approach operates with predefined screen sizes and adapts to them through the use of scripting. No matter which approach you choose, what’s important is to be mobile friendly.
Becoming mobile friendly is even more important as next year is expected to see an unprecedented rise of mobile internet traffic.
Optimize for Siri
And not just Siri, but the rest of the digital assistants that have been released on the market. Microsoft has Cortana, Google has Now, Amazon has Echo, and there are surely a series of other coming in the near future. These digital assistants do rely on search engines to get information, but they present the results in a different way compared to traditional searches. This makes it important for your business information to be easily accessible for those running a voice search on the go.
Besides, you have to take into consideration that queries run through a digital assistant will most likely be much longer than a traditional keyword search on Google. Mobile searches that are typed in are usually short and to the point, but Siri – and her competitors – can accept queries that are complete sentences, so you might want to try to optimize for longer keywords. Besides, it is wise to use schema tags and rich snippets to assist search engines in better understanding the information posted on your website.
Embrace the power of simplicity
Apparently simple, flat design will dominate the web of 2016. The card layout, which works so well on mobile and makes consuming content on desktops more easy, will improve during the next few years. Typefaces will become more important, and large scale images in the background will most likely disappear in the long term. A trend to expect is for websites to focus less on the design per se, and more on the experience the user has while navigating them.
