Trends come and go from year to year. Some tried and true e-commerce trends stay the same, such as making the user experience (UX) the best it can be. Others are new and come to stay, while still others fizzle out after a few months. As we move into 2020, there are some trends you can expect to see based on current technology and practices from 2019.
In 2020, online sales of physical goods are expected to reach over $604 billion in the United States. Each year, e-commerce sales grow a bit more, so there is still plenty of room for growth in the online retail world.
Although there are dozens of trends for online businesses, some are more worth your time than others. An animated logo is a nice addition, but it isn’t necessarily an e-commerce trend, nor will it help you sell more goods. Here are eight e-commerce trends you can expect to see in 2020 and beyond that are worth investing your time and resources in.
1. Voice Search
As more and more households take advantage of smart speaker features such as Alexa and Google Home, expect more searches to trend toward voice. Already, 21% of people report using voice search every week. If your store isn’t already set up for voice capability, now is a good time to prep for future changes. At some point, Google may even rate websites based on their voice features as they already have based on mobile responsiveness.
Google Store is optimized for voice search. Although the site looks like any other e-commerce site, Google Home integrates with it perfectly, and users can create commands and enact them easily on the site. There are many ways of making your store voice search-friendly without installing additional software, such as considering “near me” searches and making sure alt tags and CTAs are clearly marked.
2. Faster Speeds
Thanks to the coming 5G saturation, slow website load times will be a thing of the past. Pages will load so quickly that users will not even notice a hesitation at all. It’s important for you to focus on going with the fastest web hosting company possible and optimizing your site for speed. Stay away from heavy graphics and cumbersome scripts.
3. Hover Indicators
Mouseovers have become more and more popular in recent years. They help make a website more interactive, and they can expand on the information users are most interested in knowing more about. Hovers work for mega menus when you have a lot of categories you need to highlight, but they also work well for informational purposes.
DutchWare Gear utilizes hover features to expand on information about each category of products. Notice how when you hover over the image and text for hammock gear, you see choices such as hammocks, suspensions, accessories and quilts. This lets site visitors know exactly what they’ll find when they click on that option.
4. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence is utilized more and more by e-commerce stores and all types of businesses. Today’s AI can predict the behavior of customers based on past behavior and serve up an email with specific product recommendations most likely to strike a chord with that person. Computers are learning how to work more like the human brain, so as programming advances, expect to see more and more software options and choices that integrate with what you’re already doing with your online business.
5. Social Media Shopping
More and more people are using social media to find gifts for others or shop for themselves. Targeted marketing via Facebook, for example, gives online retailers the opportunity to reach people interested in a specific topic and even narrow the audience down by age group or location. You’ve probably noticed if you search for new doors on Google that Facebook suddenly shows you advertisements for new doors. Social media is a powerful shopping platform and a good place to take your more interesting products viral.
Tootsie’s Children’s Clothing features their children’s boutique style clothes in their Facebook group. They let people order right there on the page and either have the items shipped or pick them up. This type of selective offer could work for any type of product imaginable. Limit quantities and offer to your top customers first.
6. Eco-Friendly Options
Over 90% of consumers are more likely to trust a company that is environmentally or socially conscious. One thing you can do is showcase on your website how you’re doing your part. Use recyclable packaging, take out web hosting space from a green company and highlight anything else your brand does to be greener.
7. Personalization
We live in an ever-increasing impersonal world. That might be one reason why personalized products and services are on-trend. As analytics improve and companies are better able to track past purchases and buying behaviors, e-commerce stores are better able to offer selections based on what a buyer’s preferences are. You can also offer to personalize the products they do purchase with a name or other special touch.
Man Crates offers an entire section with personalization options. Customers can add a first name, monograms or custom items. Not only can buyers choose the most appropriate gift type, but they can make it even more special by adding details you can’t find anywhere else.
8. Expanded Fulfillment
Thanks to Amazon’s Prime services, users expect faster delivery and more options than ever before. Look for ways to get products to customers faster and more efficiently. You should also add the ability to ship overnight for a premium cost for those people who wait until the last minute to shop. Calculate the cost of shipping internationally and determine if it’s worth your time and effort or not.
Watch Your Competitors to Find New Trends in the Coming Year
One of the best ways to discover new trends is by keeping an eye on what your competitors are up to. As your closest competition adds new features, consider whether they’ll work for your customers and how you can implement changes in a better way. You want to keep up with others at a minimum with a goal of surpassing user expectations.
Lexie Lu is a designer and writer. She loves researching trends in the web and graphic design industry. She writes weekly on Design Roast and can be followed on Twitter @lexieludesigner.
Retail E-commerce is already a massive industry and, according to projections, will continue to steadily grow in the immediate future. According to Statista, worldwide E-commerce sales were over 2.8 trillion US dollars in the year 2018, and are projected to reach over 4.88 trillion US dollars by the year 2021. Based on these numbers, it is easy for business owners to conclude that a successful E-commerce strategy is a must, and no longer a luxury. Since all signs point to retail E-commerce being here to stay for the long haul, it is important to understand its future and where the retail E-commerce industry as a whole is heading. In this article, I will be discussing the future of E-commerce in 2019 and beyond.
How Amazon Impacts The Retail E-commerce Industry
Before we get into specific details about the future of E-commerce, it is important to understand the impact that Amazon has on the industry as a whole. Amazon is by far the most successful and profitable retail E-commerce company in the world. This is likely due to the fact that you can buy almost anything you would ever need on Amazon and because they have remarkably fast delivery times, free returns and low prices. All of these incentives that Amazon offers its customers force competing companies to offer the same, if not better, incentives than Amazon. For many companies, this presents a problem. This problem is also known as the Amazon effect.
Since Amazon is the leader in the E-commerce retail industry, it would make sense for business owners to try to replicate their strategies. For example, since Amazon offers extremely fast shipping, you need to be able to offer your consumers fast shipping as well. If you can’t offer that, you are already being beat by Amazon. As a general rule of thumb, all companies who are trying to compete with Amazon in the E-commerce retail industry should closely monitor what the company does each and every day. In doing so, you will have a better understanding of what strategies work, and which strategies don’t.
Mobile Commerce Will Explode
The first important thing to understand about the future of E-commerce is the role that mobile devices will inevitably play. Back when E-commerce was first introduced into society, smartphones were in the early stages of their development. They were nowhere near as popular back then as they are now. According to Statista, 2.53 billion people worldwide owned a smartphone in the year 2018. Furthermore, this number is projected to increase every year for the foreseeable future and is projected to reach 2.87 billion by the year 2020. This increase in the number of people who own smartphones has resulted in more and more people using their mobile phones to purchase goods and/or services online as opposed to their computers. All of this means that in the very near future, more E-commerce transactions will be made through mobile devices than any other platform. Therefore, you need to make sure that your website is optimized for mobile, and that you develop a mobile app. Doing both of these things will help you stay afloat when mobile commerce inevitably explodes.
Chatbots Will Be Used More Frequently
As we move into 2019 and beyond, chatbots will be used more and more frequently in E-commerce. Chatbots help to improve the overall customer shopping experience. By improving the overall customer shopping experience, you increase customer satisfaction and customer engagement. By increasing customer satisfaction and customer engagement, you will ultimately increase your bottom line. For example, implementing chatbots onto your website or mobile app allows customers to get fast answers to any questions that they may have regarding your store. This is much more convenient for consumers than physically calling a store and being put on hold just to get one simple question answered. Another benefit that chatbots offer is the ability to evolve. For example, chatbots are now able to learn from customer conversations and use that knowledge to offer a more personalized E-commerce experience for each individual. There is no doubt that in the very near future, a vast majority of E-commerce stores will have chatbots on their webpages and mobile apps.
In summary, retail E-commerce is a massive industry that is only going to get bigger as time passes. Although it is impossible to predict with 100% accuracy where the future of E-commerce is headed, it is possible to make educated guesses based on data. Two of these educated guesses include the explosion of mobile commerce and the increased use of chatbots.
Global retail ecommerce sales are exploding.
According to Statista, worldwide e-retail revenues are projected to grow to a jaw-dropping 4.88 trillion US dollars by 2021. Sounds good, doesn’t it? You can almost taste the money.
However, to get a bite of the cherry is not easy. These days online retail strategies change fast. It’s hard to keep up. New tools, new strategies, and new technologies are now required to be successful in this fluid marketing landscape.
Here are five trends to keep tabs on if you want to win and bring home the bacon.
Ready?
Here we go…
#1. The Augmented Reality Revolution
Augmented Reality (AR) is changing retail and the way people buy and sell.
Retailers now use cutting edge phone technology to allow customers to see how items they want to buy would look like in their homes or offices.
Not sure how that nice-looking couch would look like in your lounge?
No problem!
You can now use an app to position it wherever you want in your living room and see it in the exact context of your room living room. Amazing!
Such apps have three major benefits.
- Engaging customer experience
- Increased sales.
- Reduced returns.
Houzz has an app that lets you take rooms in your house and then place multiple products within them, virtually, from a selection of 500,000 product images. The best part? People who used the app were 11 times more likely to buy.
Image via Houzz
Hop onto the ecommerce augmented reality train before it’s too late. Your business will be better for it.
#2. The Emerging Markets Opportunity
The rapid adoption of smartphones and increase in internet penetration rates in emerging markets is turning e-commerce retail into a global market.
Your company’s customers are longer just in your backyard, they’re all over the world.
According to a report by Credit Suisse, total annual ecommerce sales across Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey could reach up to USD$3.5 trillion and impact companies across multiple sectors, including retail, finance, security, and technology.
Brands are taking advantage of this lucrative global opportunity by using powerful ecommerce solutions like Shopify.
Image via Shopify
Such POS systems support multiple foreign currencies for ease of shopping for local shoppers and have local currency selectors within their storefront themes.
#3. The Mobile Checkout Ascension
Sometime in 2017, mobile checkouts reached 52%, overtaking desktop checkouts for the first time.
We now live in a mobile-first world. Because of advancements in mobile payment technologies like fingerprint and facial recognition, more and more people will enjoy the convenience of mobile checkout.
With Google, Samsung and Apple doubling their user base and installing sophisticated advancements in their payment technology, mobile checkouts are projected to reach 70% of eCommerce traffic by the end of 2018. The mobile train is gathering even more steam and savvy brands are profiting from the development.
For instance, 10% of Starbucks U.S. orders were done with their Mobile Order and Pay app. The payment method was so popular that in February, mobile orders flooded staff and created unheard of wait times.
Image via Business Insider
It’s time to take advantage of the phenomenal rise of mobile checkout.
#4. The Voice Search Wave
Voice search is the future of SEO. In fact, it’s already here.
Its impact on SEO has set off a domino effect on internet marketing. The arrival of voice search has changed internet marketing forever.
According to Google, by the year 2020, more than half the searches will be voice searches. And, with over 30 million voice-first devices in US homes and one billion voice searches per month as of January 2018, there’s no stopping the voice search avalanche.
What does all this mean for ecommerce?
Three key things.
- Creating in-depth product information using natural language. The more info you provide, the greater the chances of ranking for some long-tail keywords prevalent in a conversational search.
- Crafting detailed FAQ around products and services. Since most voice search queries are question-based this’ll raise your brand’s chances of showing up in search results when people ask questions about your product.
- Exploring the use of voice assistants especially for simple straightforward tasks like placing orders.
Dominos Pizza’s voice-driven ordering assistant Dom, which lets consumers dictate orders via mobile devices while on-the-go, reached a half-million orders since its 2014 launch.
Image via The Independent
Clearly, voice assistants will have a huge role to play in ecommerce in the coming years.
#5. The Omni-channel Retail Craze
With the typical consumer using five or more connected devices daily, omni-channel marketing continues to grow at a phenomenal rate.
Statista reports that by 2020, the installed base of Internet of Things devices is forecast to grow to a staggering 31 billion worldwide.
The buyer journey is no longer linear. Prospects now start their buyer journey on one channel and end it on another.
Selling across channels or device is no longer a side dish — it’s now the entrée. From brick and mortar stores to blogs, from online forums to mobile apps, intelligent brands follow consumers everywhere to boost their sales.
Here are some the approaches to take note of:
- Integrated shopping experiences– brands are striving to provide customers with consistent and seamless shopping experiences across devices.
- Inventory visibility across channels/devices– it’s now necessary for your inventory management system to provide real-time updates across channels and devices.
- Personalized buyer journey– successful retailers allow customers to buy their way, in their own time, on their favorite channel.
- BOPIS and ROPO– BOPIS (Buy Online, Pickup In Store) and ROPO (Research Online Purchase Offline) are growing trends in purchasing behavior brands must adapt to.
Beauty industry retailer, Ultra boosted their 2016 revenue to $4.85 billion, up from $3.9 billion the prior year through a clever omni-channel marketing strategy.
Image via Ultra Beauty
To satisfy today’s sensitive customers need for total convenience and get results, adopt a sharp omni-channel strategy.
Trends Matter: Jump In On The Act
These topics are trending for a reason.
They’re making headlines because experts agree they’re the next big thing. Pick ones that make sense in your industry and deploy them now rather than later.
Be a smart early adopter brand so you position your enterprise for growth. If you’re sluggish in your approach, your competitors will quickly jump in — and zoom past you on the ecommerce highway before you know it.
So ride the wave today. Your bottom line will be all the better for it.
Author
According to his cheeky wife’s baseless claims, Qhubekani Nyathi aka The Click Guy, is an irresistibly handsome dude. He helps SMBs rapidly grow their income and impact through actionable long-form content that ranks high, builds authority, and generates tons of leads. He is a contributor to top blogs like Crazy Egg, Search Engine People, Techwyse, AWAI, and more.
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
Take a second to think about your favorite site to shop online. Then go to waybackmachine.org and see how it looked 3 years ago. I’m willing to bet things have changed a lot.
With e-commerce, trends change rapidly, especially this day in age. If your business is going to keep up, you may want to look into these six hot trends.
1. Responsive Web Design
Shopping at your desktop computer? So 2010. Over the past few years, the number of people that shop on iPads, iPhones, and other devices has increased exponentially. Your website needs to be prepared for the numbers to get even higher. But what exactly is “responsive design”? To keep it simple, it’s a website that looks good, no matter what device it’s on. By upgrading to responsive web design, you’ll avoid having multiple websites. Search engines hate when companies have multiple websites for the same e-commerce purposes.
2. Quality Content Marketing
Technically, having quality information (a.k.a content) to sell your product has always been important. But you used to be able to use lower quality images, videos, and descriptions, as long as your competitors were too. Not anymore. Hi-res images, large videos, and descriptions that really capture a potential buyer’s interest need to be implemented. Businesses are starting to catch on to the importance of quality content marketing, and those old sub-par practices are becoming increasingly harder to get away with.
3. Facebook Stores
According to Mashable/Vocus/Gartner Research, 50% of web sales will occur via social media by 2015. Social media will make your business grow, there’s no way around it.
Infographic provided by Vocus.
4. Subscription-Based Companies
Barkbox, Woobox, and NatureBox are three different companies. One sells dog toys and gadgets, one sells marketing apps, and the other sells nature snacks. But they all have two things in common – they’re subscription based, and successful. Expect to see more and more of these types of companies popping up throughout 2014.
5. Using Data
A lot of online shop owners don’t know their site’s bounce rate, average visitor duration time, and more. Frankly, this surprises me, but shop owners are quickly catching on. If you look at this information and all of your stats are good – then that’s awesome, and you’re doing something right. If your stats are not good – don’t fret. These numbers will help you recognize if you need to change your site’s design, work on page load times, increase your social media presence, or a number of other things that could help you drive more sales.
6. Fast Shipping
It’s a fairly simple concept, but many businesses still don’t do it. To battle the consumer’s ever-increasing need to have something as quickly as possible, more businesses will be offering options such as free 2 day shipping. Or maybe even delivery drones, right?
About author:
Ben is a writer from Upstate New York. He works with Web Payment Software, a company that offers affordable mobile payment options for businesses of all sizes. Connect with him on Google+.