Happy New Year! January 2013 is officially here, and we at The Practice are keen to ring in a fresh start with some of our top digital, online and technological predictions for the coming twelve months.

2012 was certainly monumental for social media growth, the merging of web and TV, and mobile suddenly dominating the marketplace with advertising, e-commerce and apps all driven through our fascination with the small screen. But what’s in store for 2013?

Last year, and particularly towards the height of the festive period, we saw an increase in digital influencing the retail sector. With in-store QR codes and digital campaigns gracing shop windows, we only expect this trend to continue.  For 2013, we expect companies and brands to greatly enhance the shopping experience and start responding further to consumers’ demands for retail ease. The physical and digital commerce worlds will continue to merge, with more and more people choosing for example, to buy online and pick up in store: it’s this seamless new way of integrating e-commerce with the physical shopping experience that we feel will drive marketers to step up their online efforts. Therefore we’ll see brands creating more unique content based on their online consumers and social media fans, rather than their in-store shoppers.

2012 already set a precedent for locational-based targeted marketing, with push-messages via mobile depending on geography, and even Twitter’s instatement of tailored trends. We at The Practice believe this will continue to be big news for 2013 as digital is able to infiltrate local sectors as well as global. However, we also see marketers going one step further and responding more to the consumer’s online enjoyment of buying into a lifestyle. Perhaps the coming year will see brands advertising products and services that they know will garner strong social media traction? We see greater use of savvy and subliminal marketing tactics, particularly on Facebook, with brands advertising their products through their unique identities and market positioning. It’s this that will help propel the trend of putting emphasis on products that are likely to entice social groups, as brands will outline their own stories and lifestyle images rather than just the mere products they sell. And if you thought the infiltration of adverts on Facebook was strong enough, 2013 is only going to see this increase; ‘Facebook will morph from a relatively private social space to a business entity driven by the bottom line’, predicts Martin Ash of research firm Millward Brown.

One of the key areas for 2013 is definitely going to be the use of mobile for most transactions. We’re likely to see everyone from banks, technology providers and retailers offering mobile apps to allow us to make secure payments. 2012 already saw startups such as Square, iZettle and mPowa allow retailers to take payments via mobiles and tablets, and we only see this trend continuing as technological advances increase our interest in convenience and ease.

If 2012 was the year of the smartphone, tablet, and everything in between (yes that’s our current obsession with the iPad Mini!), then might 2013 be the year for a hands free alternative? Google might just have the answer with their Google Glass headsets which were already a huge talking point during September Fashion Week, and have been on pre-order since June 2012. With a high level of popularity, the headsets offer lucid display, Internet connectivity, hands free navigation with built in Google Maps, and push-alerts. We see Google Glass offering appealing novelty value, until the notion of walking around wearing strange-looking spectacles starts to wear off…And 2013 might continue to be another big year for Google gadgetry, with the popular and reasonably-priced Google Chromebooks built by Acer and Samsung being an affordable laptop alternative.

Is there something big we’ve missed? We’d love to hear your predictions for the coming year, or even your technological New Year’s resolutions. Whether that’s organizing and properly filing your work documents, or simply making greater use of those inactive apps lurking on your iPhone, we’ve all got them! So please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and connect on our Facebook page.