Social proof will enhance personalization
Personalization is becoming increasingly important, and the next step is to drive a cohesive cross-channel experience for customers. The ability to provide relevant and consistent content and offers across channels will become a key differentiator for retailers in an increasingly competitive market.
For the travel and retail sectors, the ability to drive social proof will be increasingly important to maximize sales from customers brought to the site by expensive acquisition options such as paid ads. Social proof widgets emphasizing scarcity and/or popularity of products will help to support purchase decisions from first-time site visitors. These will become "must have" tactics within the cross-channel personalization toolkit.