Follow the 6 E-Commerce Trends and Tweak Your E-Commerce Strategies
There is only one thing that is constant in the online world is change. And, e-commerce is no exception of that as the industry is experiencing a lot of new trends as a result of technological advancement and changes in consumers’ behaviors and preferences.
In the coming years, we can expect continued growth in the e-commerce industry with more businesses joining the market and statistics show that global retail e-commerce revenue will amount to $4.88 trillion by 2021. This reflects more competition as well as opportunity in the future.
So, are you ready to join this e-commerce revolution? As an e-commerce businesses owner, you need to be well equipped with the latest e-commerce trends to reach target customers, convert sales, and continue to automate the process.
In this post, we are going to discuss the top emerging e-commerce trends you should follow in 2019 and beyond to outshine your competition.
1. Personalize Customer Interaction
Unlike traditional retail shopping, e-commerce stores lack a personalized face to face customer interaction. Online e-commerce stores do not have any retail clerk to recommend products or services based on your personal interests and preferences.
To bring in this age-old experience, various e-commerce companies are looking to leverage personalized interactions with the customers throughout their shopping journey. Consumers are likely to spend 48 percent more when their shopping experience is personalized. Several studies show that 57 percent of online consumers are comfortable to share their personal information with a brand as long as it directly benefits their shopping experience.
Customers’ personal online data such as search queries, past purchases, page visits, past email interactions, time, location, type of device, referral source and many other factors help e-commerce businesses to understand customer’s needs and interests better.
For example, if you log in to your Amazon account, it will show you hundreds of recommended products based on your search history and past purchases. So, you can expect more e-commerce brands are going to follow this personalized technology in 2019 and beyond.
2. Focus on Voice Search Assistants
Voice Search is the next big thing in the e-commerce industry. Voice search lets customers purchase online products much faster at any time throughout the day, even while they are driving a car. As a consumer, you can search and buy something online using voice commands through various virtual assistants such as Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.
Virtual assistants can swiftly analyze consumers’ shopping patterns and record products via voice in a matter of seconds. As voice search technology evolves, e-commerce companies are focusing on improving personalized recommendations. And according to a current research, 39 percent of customers trust the product recommendations they get from virtual assistants.
With the rise of products like Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana, and Apple Siri, experts are expecting rapid growth in voice-driven user experience in 2019 and onward.
3. Employ Artificial Intelligence (AI) Based Customer Service
In 2019, AI assistants and chatbots are going to penetrate deep into the e-commerce industry to enhance customers’ online shopping experience.
For instance, chatbots can fulfill a number of customer service needs, from answering frequently asked questions about a product to discussing any complaint. AI-powered chatbots continuously track and watch customers’ conversation and interaction to offer better-personalized buying experience.
AI assistants can perform a number of human tasks from managing inventory to handling inquiries, from increasing sales to improving after-sales customer service issues to name a few. By carrying out various processes these virtual assistants help you to focus on other aspects of running your online store.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems also use artificial intelligence to process the massive influx of data coming in from your potential customers. This helps in determining when they are likely to purchase and lets you automate a number of actions like new product launch messages, discount emails, etc. Having all of this automated allow small e-commerce teams to serve hundreds of customers instantly and efficiently.
4. Dive in Multi-Platform Selling
BigCommerce’s survey shows that 78 percent of the consumers make a purchase on Amazon, 65 percent in a brick-and-mortar store, 45 percent in a branded online store, 34 percent on eBay, and 11 percent on Facebook.
The above numbers show how profitable it can be for small e-commerce brand owners to cater their presence on multi-channel platforms to address the needs of online shoppers. To grow your business as an online merchant, you need to make yourself available across all the channels that your customers use.
Apart from your own e-commerce website, you can make your presence on multiple social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and many popular channels like eBay, Amazon, Google Shopping, as well as other online stores.
5. Make Product Visualization through Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
In the past, online buyers had to rely on images and videos to know about the products they want to purchase. But the introduction of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) has opened doors to new ways of experiencing products before clicking the ‘Buy’ button.
Popular brands like Walmart are already investing huge amounts in both AR and VR for providing extraordinary browsing and shopping experiences to their customers. Also, the furniture retail company IKEA started implementing this technology in 2013 and allows its customers to virtually place 3D furniture true to its original size, in their home.
VR provides an engaging 3D view of products that brings in-store experience for online consumers prior to purchasing. For example, before buying a shoe you can choose your preferred design by flipping, turning and zooming the shoe. So, it’s time for exploring how you can use these experience-driven technologies for your e-comm website to optimize your products and increase sales conversion.
6. Ensure Faster Checkout and Payment Processing
The smooth checkout and payment process is the final step in the customers’ shopping journey and often overlooked by the e-commerce businesses that could make or break a conversion.
The customer has gone through multiple stages and finally made the decision of buying your product but if the experience at this stage isn’t smooth and effortless, you could still end up losing your potential customer.
According to statistics, almost 70 percent of shoppers cancel their purchases even after considering products and adding them to their cart. So a vast majority of shoppers don’t complete the payment process due to a long or complicated checkout process. Additionally, 13 percent of consumers abandon their carts if they don’t find a local payment option. So if you are planning to expand your e-commerce business globally, you need to offer a better payment solution for customers in other countries.
If your aim is to get ahead of your competitions, then this is one of the most crucial aspects that you must settle as soon as possible. You need to provide a smoother checkout process with easy and reliable payment options that will ensure hassle-free quick conversions.
Wrapping up
With the advent of artificial intelligence, multi-channel selling, interactive product visualization you can manage your e-commerce business more effectively while reaching more people. No matter which e-commerce trend you choose to pursue in 2019, you have to make sure that you are providing a seamless personalized, and engaging shopping experience to your customers.
Finally, let us know if you have experienced or implemented any new or advanced e-commerce technologies that helped you improve the buyer experience and increase the bottom line.
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Mentored by Mr. Soumya Roy, the Founder, CEO of PromozSEO Web Marketing Academy.
Being an entrepreneur and digital marketer, he loves to share his knowledge and experience in topics related to internet marketing, SEO, SEM, social media, content marketing, branding, entrepreneurship, and many more.
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