Software development has made some significant progress during the last few years. The emergence of the Internet and the ubiquitous powerful PC hardware together create tremendous opportunity for a new generation of large enterprise applications, which can reach millions of individual and corporate users through Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).
Companies understand that great experiences build great businesses. Great experiences drive use, and ultimately, success. As customer behavior and marketing technologies evolve, new opportunities arise for companies to become more sophisticated in order to reach their users. Recent developments in technology are leading to a speedy convergence between marketing and technology. There have been rapid advancements in technology, which are causing considerable shift in the consumption patterns across industries. This implies a large disruption in the current business environment of many industries, and significant blurring of traditional markets.
Let's take a look at business problems associated with poor online user-experience to understand the impact.
* Low conversion rates due to poor designed User Interface (UI).
* High error rates due to information architecture.
* Process abandonment due to poor experience of design.
* Slow and unresponsive HTML pages.
* Customer, employee, and business partner frustration translating to lack of loyalty
The best way to understand the value delivered by RIAs is by trying to put in context the 2 main characteristics - rich and reach.
Rich is the ability to incorporate client side interactivity and intuitive UIs, and reach is the ability to make your application available to almost anyone, anywhere.
Now, after years of suffering with non-intuitive experiences, organizations are realizing that combining the reach of the Internet with a rich UI is the best of both worlds. Nowadays, we see everyone from Internet hobbyists to large enterprises building RIAs, and their business improving dramatically as a result. Large financial services institutions are using RIAs to solidify their brand with users, and speeding up internal business decision-making through better interaction with mission-critical data. Online retailers have reduced shopping cart abandonment by 50% during the checkout process. Individual developers have integrated slick online mapping services, giving the most recent and updated information to users across the globe.
Using technologies based on the principle of RIAs, designers can bridge the one shortcoming of online applications - what to do when the Internet isn't available? Or when one needs to edit a document mid-flight? What if you want to post your photos from the subway? Currently, you're out of luck. But with Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR)-based applications, you could perform your edits offline and sync your data the next time you connect.
The overall trend of RIA and Web applications puts increased pressure on the industry to start changing and recognizing this emerging trend. This trend creates a new playground for developers, designers, and ultimately end-users, who are the benefactors of this variety available to them. The attention toward the RIA space is just starting to pour in, and changes that consumers demand in their user experience is an indication of this emerging trend.
By Sandeep Mehrotra, country sales manager of Adobe Systems India
