As ad blocking technology continues to gain steam with consumers, advertising and marketing are undergoing dramatic transformations. 
Brands today are realizing as never before that fostering customer engagement hinges on delivering a targeted, personalized and connected brand experience across every channel and device, both online and offline. Some brands are already doing this very well, but for every standout, there are even more marketers who are failing to check every box when trying to deliver the experiences their audiences want and need. 
But what exactly are those boxes and how should brands go about checking them? Here are five fast rules to follow to design digital experiences that will align with your customers’ goals as well further those of your brand.

Rule 1: Be Assistive


Delivering a contextualized digital experience is pretty much what every marketer shoots for these days. So this year, why not take that aspiration a step further and make it more active? Create an assistive experience that anticipates the steps in the purchase process and guides customers through what comes next via video, images and other content cues.
For example, if your commerce content includes how-to videos, make them part of sales process by positioning them as online help; then offer access to the same video content once a purchase has been made.  By putting a link in email or on your thank you page, the very same video can serve to remind customers  what to do as soon as your product arrives. And consider showing your customers user-generated content to extend the conversation and cover the unknowns.  

Rule 2: Make it Elastic


Make your experience able to leap small phones and tall browsers in a single content strategy bound across all devices. In other words, content should always be flexible, responsive, location-aware and able to go where your users need it to be every time, across device types. This means creating an environment that is device-agnostic but can also extend beyond the screen into diverse environments such as an in-store experience or even signage at a sporting event.
Designing for the smallest screens doesn’t mean you need to remove important content from the experience either. Rather, it means making that content more engaging in a quicker timeframe such as creating 15-second videos instead of ones lasting a minute. 

Rule 3: Personalize the Experience


While personalization might seem at first blush like Digital Marketing 101, there is still a thin line between personalizing content and content that comes across as annoying, or worse yet ― creepy. Remember that Lego set you considered buying for your niece that’s still following you around, whatever site you visit? You’re not the only one who’s turned off.  Don’t do the hard sell but instead ensure that content becomes more personalized in context as your prospects click deeper into your site. 

Rule 4: Reuse Content Often

Along with making experiences easy to use, repetitive calls to action and familiar patterns will increase the perception ― and in most cases the reality ― of a faster solution. As you design and build for both speed and accuracy, reuse content modules and processes so that your site visitors become comfortable with the process for engagement.