TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Omnichannel shopping
- Personalization
- Social media shopping
- Voice commerce
- M-commerce
- Environmental awareness
- Payment options
Whether you own an e-commerce site or not, you don’t want to miss out on these trends we’re about to mention. To keep up with your competitors, we prepared for you some useful e-commerce trends that can undoubtedly help your business. For those of you who don’t yet own an e-commerce site, don’t worry, we can help you with that. Before we start, check out the 5 reasons why should you use an e-commerce platform. Now let’s dive into the topic.
Omnichannel shopping
When we’re talking about e-commerce omnichannel shopping, it refers to a multichannel approach to sales with a focus on providing a customer experience. The client can shop online from a mobile device, laptop, or offline at a physical store and that’s the idea behind omnichannel shopping. According to Omnisend, purchase frequency is 250% higher on omnichannel vs. single channel and the average order value is 13% more per order on omnichannel vs. single channel. In case you’re wondering if your customers want an option of omnichannel commerce, the answer is probably yes, given the rise of omnichannel shopping.
What’s more important, as the number of touchpoints increases, so does the need for seamless integration from one touchpoint to another. E-mail, social media, mobile push notification, a chatbot, or face-to-face chat with your store staff – no matter what channels you’re using, you should always make sure your customers feel empowered when interacting with your company. To succeed in that, you should break down the walls between the channels in the business and we’ll tell you how.
Get to know your audience
For starters, research your target audience as well as their needs, interests, and behaviour. Use a variety of online tools to gain insight and additional information about your customers, but make sure you’re also open to customer feedback.
Choose the right channels
You probably already have a clear picture of channels, your customer's preferences, and what they are doing on social media, on their smartphones, or how they navigate the internet. Gather those kinds of information if you’re interested in implementing it.
- Google Analytics
Use Google Analytics if you’re looking for a tool that can give you all those information. It’s one of the most popular digital analytics software and allows you to thoroughly analyze the details of the visitors to your website. You can get valuable data and shape the success strategy of your business.
source: https://allstarsdigital.in/digital-marketing/the-ultimate-guide-to-google-analytics/
Select one purpose for one channel
It should be visible to every customer - a clear purpose per channel. For example, you could have one channel mainly for news updates, the other for interaction, etc. Otherwise, you can get entangled in too much unnecessary information in one place.
- AIDA model
Keep an eye on the AIDA model as well. It can identify cognitive stages a potential customer goes through during the buying process for a product or service. It can be very helpful as it gives you information such as:
- a way of communication during each of the stages as customers will be using different platforms,
- a way of engaging at different touchpoints,
- providing different data throughout the stages from different sources.
Connect all channels
When you select all channels you planned, it’s time to connect them. Make sure to execute it correctly and use the right technology to follow your customers across all touchpoints. Use compatibility testing to ensure a consistent experience in the overall omnichannel testing strategy. It will help you evaluate the application's performance across operating systems, browsers, mobile devices, and network conditions. This can be a great way of reducing the chances of system failure.
Maintain your channels
The last thing is all about testing and improving your strategy. Navigate these touchpoints well, to serve your customers nothing but the best, so you could create a loyal customer base.
- Social media
Using social media is an excellent solution when it comes to finding a way to maintain your channels. Be sure to connect with your customers via comments, likes, and shares to find out what they are interested in the most.
- Implement customer surveys
By adding an interactive element, you could encourage engagement and feedback. A brief customer survey or poll can be a great start in finding out what your customers want and what they think about your company.
- Use online tools
To help you understand the behavior of your customers and get their feedback, you can use online tools such as Hotjar.
- Hotjar
Hotjar is a behavior analytics and user feedback service that uses different kinds of tools, such as session recordings, surveys, and heatmaps. It will help you get visual data points about what’s happening on your site and why people behave the way they do.
source: https://bind.media/cro/how-to-setup-hotjar-basic-account/
Personalization
Personalization can be described as a marketing strategy of tuning out the noise and connecting with customers and prospects to make them feel their needs and priorities are essential to your business. It's crucial to let them know they matter and are understood and heard. They should hold a personal connection with the brand. Building a trusted relationship is key to winning business. Over the last couple of years, personalization became a massive trend among companies and it’s expected to become a must-have to sustain the e-commerce business. We'll give you a couple of examples of what features to implement to provide personalized content for e-commerce.
Create a personalized homepage
Unlike physical stores, webshops can closely get to know their customers/visitors thanks to cookies. If you're collecting cookies on your e-commerce site, you already know so much about your customers. You can use this kind of information on their next visit and improve their shopping experience.
Display recently viewed products
You can add a Recently viewed section when your customer comes back to your site, displaying the products they checked the last time. By creating a strong call-to-action, customer expectations for personalized content can be fulfilled. You can subtly remind them to reconsider their products from their previous session. In that way, you're increasing their likelihood of buying those products.
source: https://www.teamcroco.com/experiment_ideas/recently-viewed-products/
Make personalized recommendations
According to Clerk.io, 49% of consumers said they have purchased a product that they did not initially intend to buy after receiving a personalized recommendation. In conclusion, product recommendations have a significant effect on conversion rates. It's something your e-commerce site should have.
source: https://www.dynamicyield.com/template/recommendation-banner/
Social media shopping
Social media shopping is also known as social commerce. It refers to companies selling products directly within social media platforms. Because more and more people are doing their shopping on social media platforms, it's vital to use them the right way. Social media shopping is more than just advertising channels, given the improvement of social media's selling capabilities. People can now quickly purchase any product on some of the existing social media platforms; Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Those specific platforms rolled out the buy buttons and made significant improvements in their selling features.
According to Retail TouchPoints, a total of 76% of consumers have purchased a product they saw in a brand’s social media post: 11% bought immediately; 44% bought later online. Looking at these numbers, it's obvious now is the right time to join the e-commerce world with new opportunities. Social commerce expects to grow in the next year with even more features, providing customers with unique experiences.
Let's take a look at Instagram and Facebook.
Instagram has a shoppable post feature allowing businesses to enable product tags in their post and product stickers in stories. It means that customers can tap a product tag or a product sticker in the story to view information like an image of the item, a description of the item, price, and a link where they can buy the item. This particular trend saves time and effort for customers in their intention to buy one of your products.
Facebook also allows its visitors to purchase a product from its platform. The most used tools are Messenger and Facebook Page Shops. For example, you can sell directly from your page, add and update items or manage shipping and orders, so basically, it means that brands can build an entire store on Facebook. Messenger also owns a channel for customers to interact with companies. These interactions occur in real-time with the help of chatbots. They can answer questions and offer promos to deliver better results than traditional digital funnels.
Voice commerce
A very interesting e-commerce trend is voice commerce. Voice commerce is the ability to place an order for a product using your voice. Voice devices, such as Google Home or Amazon Echo, respond to voice commands to control home appliances, look up some information, or simply play music. It also simplifies the online shopping experience through voice commands. The voice commerce trend is expected to continue growing in the coming years. According to Algolia, voice-driven shopping is expected to hit $40 billion (way up from $2 billion) by 2022. Also, voice commerce growth is determined by the convenience and accuracy of the technology. Amazon and Google are pushing regional languages in their virtual assistant devices to provide a seamless shopping experience to their customers.
How to implement voice commerce
The most common and efficient way to implement voice shopping is with repeat orders. It means that customers already know what they want to buy. It can be something they regularly buy, every week, or every month, so they don't need their product's visual content. This way, you can save time for your customers because they don't need to log into an app, scroll through the webshop, and go through the checkout process. This feature can also help the customer if they do not remember the exact type or name of the product they ordered last time, but they know they had a positive experience. Customers don't need to remember every detail of a product they already purchased once, making it more convenient, and likely they'll repeat their order. Repeat orders are most common with hygiene, medical, cosmetic, or food products. There is also an option to set up reminders to re-order products customers often use, voiced through Alexa, Google Assistant, or similar assistants.
source: https://www.shoppingfeeder.com/insights/how-will-ai-transform-e-commerce/
M-commerce
Mobile shopping is also one of the most popular e-commerce trends. M-commerce uses wireless handheld devices like smartphones and tablets to conduct commercial transactions online, including buying and selling products. The future of mobile shopping is for sure bright. Retail m-commerce sales hit $359.32 billion in 2021, an increase of 15.2% over 2020. By 2025, retail m-commerce sales should more than double to reach $728.28 billion (Insider Intelligence). It's evident that mobile shopping domination is inevitable in the coming years, so why not implement it into your business as soon as possible. You still don't have a mobile app? Now is the time to build it. With new technologies developing every day, creating your mobile app isn't a complicated process as it used to be. Make sure to also check the seamlessness, speed, and user-friendliness of your mobile checkout process.
Environmental awareness
Green consumerism over the years became a must. Green consumerism refers to a state in which consumers demand products and services with an environment-friendly production process. Its population and importance have risen rapidly over the last couple of years. It means that brands need to act quickly to stay competitive in their environment. Investing in sustainability in e-commerce can bring satisfaction both to customers and businesses. Take a look at some figures.
According to Forbes, 92% of consumers say they’re more likely to trust brands that are environmentally or socially conscious. This indicates that e-commerce brands that prioritize the eco-friendly system will dominate the market in the coming years.
Here are some quick tips to attract even more customers to your webshop.
- Decide on your contribution to the environment and set a deadline. Let your customers know what system and practices you're going to use to achieve your goals.
- Use environment-friendly packaging and products that have a low impact on energy consumption. For example, you could use recycled cloths or wrapping sheets.
- You could switch off equipment when it’s not in use to help reduce energy consumption as much as possible.
- Search for environment-friendly alternatives to your existing products.
Payment options
Payment processing is part of every customer's journey, and it can be of great importance in the conversion process. This refers to the fact that customers can decide to cancel their purchase even at the last minute. Payment options are also one of the reasons why customers choose a specific brand. They can choose not to purchase from your webshop if you don't offer their preferred payment option. Except for classic payment methods, such as credit and debit cards, there is another engaging method you could implement into your e-commerce site.
Digital wallets
A digital wallet, aside from representing a new payment option, is a service that allows you to pay for your products, usually through a mobile phone app. The most popular digital wallets are Google Pay, Paypal, Apple/Samsung Pay, and eCommerce businesses widely implement them.
- How do they work?
Digital wallet software is usually housed through a mobile app on a smartphone. It requires you to download a digital wallet app on your smartphone. These can be created by your bank of choice or a trusted third party. In that way, they allow you to make purchases through electronic transactions, giving you a seamless shopping experience.
Be ahead of your competition - start today!
We hope this blog gave you a couple of ideas on how to improve your e-commerce site by implementing these e-commerce trends.
According to Tidio, in 2022 global e-commerce sales will likely reach more than $5 trillion, so if you’re looking for a growing sector, e-commerce is your optimal option.
Let’s recap what we’ve talked about:
- Omnichannel shopping is gaining popularity, so consider implementing it at your e-commerce site.
- Customer expectations for personalized content will only grow in the years to come.
- Social shopping will help you attract more customers.
- Voice commerce growth is inevitable - embed it as soon as possible.
- The future of mobile shopping will determine your further success.
- Sustainability in e-commerce - act quickly to stay competitive.
- New payment options will boost your sales.
Let us now introduce you to Gauss Box!
Among other modules, it includes Web & e-commerce solution - a modern and flexible platform made for merchants and their businesses. Feel free to contact us anytime, our team will be happy to help and consult with you!