In 2024, the digital behavior of Australian consumers is more dynamic and multifaceted than ever. My latest reports — The Digital Moments Map, 2024: Australia and The Digital Connections Tracker, 2024: Australia — offer a compelling look into how Australians engage with digital experiences across tasks, interaction modes, channels, and devices. These insights are essential for brands aiming to stay relevant in an increasingly fragmented digital ecosystem that competes for customers’ shrinking and selective attention span.

1. Context Is King: Understanding Your Customers’ Digital Moments

The Digital Moments Map, 2024: Australia reveals that Australians don’t just use digital tools — they tailor their usage based on the task at hand. Whether it’s shopping, chatting, or controlling smart devices, users choose the most effective interaction mode for the moment (see the graphic below). For instance:

  • Control tasks, such as managing smart home devices, are seeing a rise in voice interactions that may soon challenge graphic user interfaces (GUIs) as the top choice.
  • Consumption tasks, like streaming media or checking a bank balance, are predominantly GUI-based, but chat interactions are gaining traction (ChatGPT, anyone?).
  • Communication tasks, involving written and spoken back-and-forth exchanges such as with customer support, are increasingly happening through chat interfaces, but voice interactions stubbornly remain significant by use volumes, not preference (see the graphic below).
  • Commerce tasks, such as online shopping and digital payments, mostly lean toward GUI, especially on mobile apps, without notable alternatives on the horizon.

This task-based approach highlights the need for brands to design experiences that are both context-aware and preference-oriented.

This graphic shows the user proclivities as they progress from awareness to preference.

Digital Moments Map

 

2. Digital Connections Are Complex: Finding The Right Mix And Balance Is Key

The Digital Connections Tracker, 2024: Australia paints a picture of a highly connected population in Australia that is using a growing number of devices, channels, and platforms — often simultaneously. The average consumer might browse a product on a tablet, compare prices on a smartphone, and complete the purchase on a desktop.

This multidevice, multichannel, multiplatform behavior means that consistency and continuity across digital touchpoints are no longer optional — they’re expected. Brands must ensure that their digital experiences are seamless, regardless of where or how the user connects.

This graphic shows the different options users may utilize to engage and interact with brands digitally.

Digital Connections Tracker

 

Implications For Digital Strategy

Together, these reports underscore a critical shift: Digital experience strategies must evolve from being product- and channel-centric to being context-aware (to understand the digital moments) and channel- and device-agnostic. Here’s what that means for organizations:

  • Design for flexibility. Ensure that your digital interfaces adapt to fit the context of tasks your customers need to perform, according to their comfort level and preferences.
  • Invest in interoperability. Make sure your platforms and channels work together to provide a unified digital experience with minimal compromise for the consumers.
  • Leverage data smartly. Use behavioral insights, focused more so on attitudes than past usage, to anticipate user needs and boost digital engagement and interactions.

As digital behaviors continue to evolve — differently in every market and in every population segment — the brands that will thrive are those that understand not just where their customers are but why they’re there and what they’re trying to do. Forrester’s foundational research on digital moments and digital connections offer a blueprint and roadmap for navigating this complexity and investing in technologies and digital experience design with clarity and purpose.

Want to learn more and understand the data from this research? Schedule a guidance session or inquiry with me!