Over the last 15 years eCommerce has come a long way, it has developed greatly particularly in the technology used to enhance the eCommerce experience.  As the pioneering eCommerce stores continue to advance and harness new technologies at a rapid pace the world of eCommerce changes and evolves into one that makes online buying and selling much more efficient, effective and most importantly enjoyable.

If you own or work with an commerce store it is essential that you keep up-to-date with the current and future trends that could change the face of the eCommerce environment completely, this will ensure your store runs to full efficiency. By not taking into account current trends your eCommerce store will lag behind that of your competitors, to whom you might find you lose some or most of your custom as to an eCommerce target audience, a user friendly and intelligent site is an incredibly important part of the online buying experience.

Currently the eCommerce world is or has recently undergone some changes and advancements which have begun to give rise to new trends.  We have seen online retailers investing part of their website to guest blogging, encouraging user interaction, we’ve seen website optimization resulting in higher CTR and conversion rates and more responsive design and an overall improvement of the performance of the website.  There have also been vast improvements in mobile site optimization, social networking tools, analytics and big data and overall performance of the website.

No-one can say for sure what the future holds for the eCommerce world, but looking at the evidence to hand, we can make a fairly accurate guess.  Here are some of the future trends that are likely to change the world of e-commerce:

• There are an increasing number of eCommerce platforms that enable users to complete a job or a transaction much quicker and easier, this on-going competition forces eCommerce sites to continually improve and develop upon their own site.
• With everything going mobile it is likely that eCommerce sites will need to become mobile optimized.  Currently most sires are mobile friendly; in essence they work decently on a mobile but not perfectly.  Sites are now developing their mobile sites so that the shopping experience is optimized and is much more user friendly and engaging.
• Mobile advertising is starting to grow and develop as more and more people choose to browse the internet or shop using mobile technology, this is likely to lead to a number of mobile advertisements going viral on social networking sites.
• With Google placing more significance on strategic link-building and creating better and more relevant content, we are likely to see a trend of long-form content. Furthermore, as articles and blog posts increase, we are also likely to see an increase in relevant video and podcast content.

• Wearable devices, such as watches and glasses are becoming the new thing, and so sites will need to optimize for this while ensuring they also promote services, offers and updates to those using wearable devices.

• Marketing automation has been in use for some time now, though it is likely we will see an increase in a bid to turn more browsing customers into paying customers.  This will include automating remarketing, lead nurturing, email personalization and analytics.
• Delivery times are also likely to improve as we see the development of Amazon’s drone delivery service.  We already have next day delivery service,  it is likely we will start to see same day delivery options starting to appear.
• Personalized experience have started to appear, where websites will show you products and services you have shown interest in or may like on the basis of your previous searches, as more users become comfortable sharing information with online store owners, we will start to see a more personalized shopping experience.

Visualization of some key statistics from world of E-commerce by AmeriCommerce

Data Driven Ecommerce – Infographic [Infographic] by the team at AmeriCommerce