It is no secret that as consumers, we will spend a lot of our time online. In fact, statistics show that we will spend up to a third of our lives looking at one screen or the other. This means, essentially, that our online experiences will impact our lives almost as much as our offline ones.
Online platforms know this, which is why a myriad of technologies are employed to give us the best user experience possible. But how exactly do these technologies impact our platforms and thus, our lives? In this article, we’ll touch on the phenomenon.
Offering Incentives For Users
Because there are so many digital platforms we can use these days, virtually all of them are looking to gain an edge over the others by offering incentives to users. Whether this is discounts on our shopping carts or bonuses when using online casinos, these can be the difference between a platform securing a long-term customer or losing them. These technologies not only facilitate these incentives being offered but curate them as well.
Activity tracking technology is responsible for messaging a customer with an abandoned cart and offering them 10% off to keep them on the site. It will also offer bonuses to players in online casinos. This is especially important given that the online gambling sector thrives on trying to outdo one another with bonuses. Players, in turn, use these metrics as a way to choose one side over the other. As gambling expert Andjelija Blagojevic explains, Canadian bonus hunters go from one side to the other looking for the top bonuses, and thanks to this technology, they can take advantage of amazing deals.
Curating Suggestions
Another way that technology can be used to curate our online experiences is by curating suggestions for us. This includes everything from products to services to even content. Think of the way Netflix knows what to recommend to you based on your previous watch history or how Amazon curates your suggestion page based on what it thinks you will want. All of these are based on artificial intelligence programs that analyze what we’ve done before or simply create a profile based on our demographic information. 
These go on to impact our user experience because they can cut down the time needed to search for products and services and can also make things more enjoyable. Virtually everyone has an experience of finding an amazing product through the suggestions tab or discovering a new favorite television program from their Netflix recommendations. As time goes on, e-commerce and other such businesses are becoming even more adept at giving helpful curators suggestions to users, so this use of technology is only going to continue.
Security And Privacy
Our online user experience is not only shaped by technology but can be made much safer as well. The rise of the internet has also meant the rise of cybercrime, but luckily, various technologies are used to combat it and keep customers happy. For example, various banks and other financial platforms leverage technology that analyze customer spending behavior and takes measures based on this.
If you receive a suspiciously large amount of money into your account or start spending with specific retailers or in particular countries, your bank may proactively block your account pending security confirmation. This can go on to prevent hacks and theft of customer funds.
This sort of system also applies when unauthorized parties repeatedly try to log into your account in a short period of time. It’s worth noting that our online experiences are much safer and enjoyable because of these technologies.
Customer Support
Anyone who’s been online will tell you that customer support and its quality make a huge impact on how good or bad their experience is. Whether this is help when setting up an account or assistance when you’ve run into issues, good customer support is a hallmark of any worthwhile online platform. This is another way in which modern technology shines, as it can often be used to improve the customer support journey. Using various technologies, frequently asked questions can be predicted and answered well ahead of time. Interactive and in-depth tutorial videos and articles can also be done to guide customers along their journey. AI assistants and Chatbots also mean that less serious customer issues can be attended to and, if needed, escalated to human support workers.
As technology continues to improve, it’s expected that the customer service quality we experience will do so as well.
Immersive Experiences
Take a look around and you’ll probably notice that customers have access to more immersive experiences online. Specifically, the rise of augmented reality and virtual reality technology means that the virtual worlds we interact with can come alive like never before. There have been virtual concerts held in metaverses, entire gaming universes where players build bonds and make friends, and so on.
Technology means that the material and digital worlds are more connected than ever before, and this means endless entertainment, as well as research advancement. For example, augmented reality is being used to teach medical students and offer a more hyper-realistic depiction of the human body. So, outside of realistic video games and digital entertainment, humanity is on track to reap the benefits of immersive technology in ways we cannot imagine.
Adaptive Technologies
Technology is being used not only to grant access to virtual spaces but also to help moderate our use of them. You’ve almost certainly gotten an alert from your phone that you’ve been playing music too loudly or have been online for too long. These help to counter some of the potential downsides of our technological use, such as digital addiction and so on.
This is especially important because not only does it mean that our own line experiences are more enjoyable, but there is limited damage done to our offline lives in the process.