Living in a post-pandemic world, we can see how global lockdown has changed our everyday things, and the e-commerce business has also been affected with this. Starting in 2020, online shopping has become an everyday routine, and sales in this area have reached amounts in just one quarter that the e-commerce market used to run in 10 years. Today, more than 2 billion people worldwide regularly shop online, making it 27% of the world’s population, which means that the future of e-commerce will likely be thriving for many years. Learn the latest e-commerce trends and predictions in this article.
The development of e-commerce was a logical outcome after people were faced with the limitation of visiting physical stores. Today it has great popularity among users because online store owners have done everything to make customers feel comfortable when buying, even if there are no consultants and assistants. Nevertheless, this field continues to change, and if you want to keep your business relevant and convenient, you should keep track of e-commerce predictions and trends.
In particular, the following trends will help you with the following:
By slowing down in business, you can get left behind pretty quickly. Those who have picked up the wave of moving sales online now probably have more success than those who have resisted digitalization. By studying trends in e-commerce, you apply some of them and thus stay agile, visible and successful
In sales, it’s essential to focus on customers and their desires, and taking an interest in the latest news in your field will help you understand customer needs and adapt your product to meet those needs. For example, today, the issue of sustainability is very relevant in society and by making your packaging from eco-friendly and recyclable material, you will significantly increase your chances of approval and success
By studying statistics and trends, you can learn from others’ mistakes and successes. By processing the data, you can improve your strategies and products in line with current market conditions. This is important because consumers tend to switch to updated and fresher products
Speaking of updates, the success of your sales also largely depends not only on the product but also on the place where you sell them. Therefore it is also essential to monitor the relevance of your website, its design, applied business & marketing strategies, and promotion methods. All of these components must also be in line with current retail e-commerce trends, which we’ll talk about below.
Although e-commerce didn’t gain momentum until 2020 noticeably, we can see how the online sales industry has changed quickly. This shows that the e-commerce industry is actively evolving and improving, and to keep up with these changes, an online entrepreneur needs to be aware of the latest trends. Below we will highlight trends that can provide you with an overview of what is the future of e-commerce.
Users are free to choose the device through which they will shop online. So lately, the cell phone has dominated consumer choices, and most purchases are made through it. This is to be expected; phones are easily portable and convenient, and the modern man falls asleep and wakes up with it, rarely letting it out of his hands. As of 2023, 4.3 million people have smartphones, so e-commerce owners should include mobile optimization in their website development. By adapting your interface for the mobile screen, you’ll dramatically accelerate the growth of your business.
According to a Tech Jury survey, 70% of users believe VR & AR can help make online shopping more efficient. Yet today, the percentage of online stores using these technologies is relatively low. The sooner you incorporate VR or virtual reality into your business, the better.
It’s worth noting the difference between the two: augmented reality connects the real and virtual worlds, allowing users to enhance the shopping experience, while virtual reality fully absorbs you into the digital environment, where there is no interaction with the real world.
IKEA is one of the few stores that use AR on their website. It allows you to select any furniture from the catalog and “try it on” in your interior, see if and how it fits the design, and whether you are satisfied with the scale. This e-commerce trend is also becoming popular with clothing retailers.
Deep customer focus is one of the latest e-commerce retail trends. When customers feel personalized, they will likely come back to you for another purchase. To effectively generate customized content, you need to collect data on customer views through surveys, ratings, reviews and other strategies. Most users will willingly share their data with you to personalize them so that you can tailor promotions, coupons, and recommendations to your customers and send personalized emails (newsletters).
Personalization is Amazon’s strong point, offering personalized recommendations from the start. If you are a new user, it has “most people have bought” tabs where you can see the most popular products.
Among other online business trends, we should not forget about the actively growing artificial intelligence and the significant help it provides to online business owners. AI optimizes business management processes, particularly inventory management, as it can predict future demand for specific products. In addition, AI plays no small role in understanding your customers, as it helps collect data and its subsequent analysis to extract useful information.
Artificial intelligence is also used in digital marketing, reducing customer service costs and acting as the primary means of communicating with potential customers in chatbots without the involvement of human resources.
An e-commerce site is divided into a server-side (order placement, payments, etc.) and an outer part, the visible part that the customer interacts with (catalog, shopping cart, and other menus). E-commerce growth has contributed to the emergence of headless sites, that is, sites in which these two parts are separated. As a result, you can choose any suitable system for your site, and you are not constrained to choose only one provider. So you can combine platforms in the way that best suits the needs of your unique business.
Headless CMS claim to positively affect:
One of the active practitioners of headless CMS is Nike – with its help, the company has opened up an additional revenue channel by improving the mobile approach to e-commerce.
However, you should note that it’s rather just a trend at the moment. Headless CMS solutions are not really development-friendly and are quite difficult for the support of the scalable & growing projects. There are multiple plugins that claim to solve any task but finally end up being completely invalid, available functional options can’t match the custom needs of the ecommerce projects, subscriptions might get quite costly for growing projects.
Modern global e-commerce trends are likely to be replaced over time by others, but security and privacy will always be relevant. Take good care of protecting user privacy on your website if you want to remain a trusted buyer. Use modern security protocols, encryption methods, password managers and other measures that can help keep you safe from online threats.
Implementing or at least considering current e-commerce trends for your business will allow you to increase your store’s efficiency and revenue, attract new customers, and gain their loyalty. That’s why it’s essential to follow the upcoming trends in your development sphere; if you want to modify and refine your e-commerce site – request a free consulting session with Centum-D experts. We always stay abreast of the latest technological developments and know precisely what you need to optimize your site.
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