Marcus Richards
The world of online business and commerce moves rapidly, and virtually every day it feel as if a new technology or platform emerges with advocates attesting to it being the next big thing that will revolutionize the sector.
With so much going on, it can be difficult to know what information to prioritize. In light of this, here we’ve collated the top digital business trends we see as representing a tangible impact on the sector, both in 2023 and on into the decade.
Person-Centered Curation
With algorithms ruling virtually every aspect of our day to day lives from selecting what we listen to, to recommending us products tailored to our specific interests and needs, it can at first be easy to assume the era of ‘expert recommendations’ is long past.
While it certainly may have appeared as if such qualities were quietly phased out with the arrival of ‘smart everything’, in 2023 the unique perspectives of insider advisors are making a dramatic comeback.
Much of this has to do with the common criticisms leveled at algorithms – namely that they struggle with nuance and depend on large data sets for accuracy. In such situations, and in those where the input of a real person is exceeding valued, many platforms and services are taking meaningful steps to recenter human know-how.
For one, the iGaming industry, which encompasses virtually thousands of providers of online casinos, utilizes algorithms for everything from surfacing sign-up bonuses to recommending platforms. But in such contexts as real money gaming, consumers are increasingly voting with their feet – or clicks – and opting for services that emphasize industry know-how and human input in their recommendations.
CasinoBonusCA is one such example of this phenomenon – this recommendation platform provides offers and casino recommendations for the Canadian market, and attests to having conducted over 10,000 hours of in-person reviews by real iGaming experts in order to arrive at its recommendations.
Chatbot Utopia
Chatbots have been around for a number of years, and they have become a virtually indispensable part of the way many online businesses operate. The reasons for this are easy to understand.
Chatbots represent a huge cost and time-saving benefit for online businesses – especially small ones, as they automate elements of the public-facing customer service operation. This has freed up live agents to tackle only the most complex and detailed customer requests – those truly requiring human input.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll no doubt have noticed that recent developments in this space point to the coming of a new generation of chatbots which will be able to handle a significantly wider range of requests and tasks.
These new chatbots will run on LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT – highly sophisticated AI that has been trained on public language data in such a way that they are able to understand and respond to natural language in a convincing and effective way.
Applications for this new wave of chatbots could range from customer service, to interoperability with equivalent bots in affiliated brands or partners. This could lead to the automation of bespoke consumer deals and package sales, all without the need for human intervention.
The savings in HR such bots will represent alone make them one of the key trends we expect to impact the digital business world over the coming 2 years.
Virtual Collaboration
One of the biggest changes to digital business workflows we’ve seen over the past decade is the rise of collaborative tools such as Slack and Trello which have facilitated remote working and collaboration between even large teams of people.
The office of the future is increasingly looking to be a digital one, and it is interesting to consider where this technology will head in the coming years. With talk of the metaverse currently fallen out of favor in the wake of Meta’s faltering attempt to get us all on the VR bandwagon, it can be easy to assume that this technology will simply go the way of the dodo.
But just because these tools are not ready yet for the kind of mass rollout required to get them in the hands of businesses doesn’t mean they’re not still just around the corner. The announcement of Apple’s own mixed-reality headset will likely facilitate broader industry uptake. We expect this to lead to true virtual office and collaboration spaces by the end of the decade.
