Everyone admits this fact that E Commerce has really started playing a vital role in our day to day lives. We hardly go to stores to make purchases. Instead we are ordering for goods sitting at home itself. The introduction of smartphones has really accelerated the transactions conducted through the internet.
According to the developer stats, Owing to the increasing internet user base and favorable market conditions, In 2019, Amazon was estimated to have generated over 346 billion U.S. dollars in retail e-commerce sales annually. E-retail sales of the company are projected to reach 468.78 billion U.S. dollars in 2021.Amazon is the world's largest online marketplace as measured by revenue and market capitalization.
Before going through the ecommerce trends thoroughly, let’s have a look at some of the ecommerce models.
What are the e commerce models?
E-Commerce Models
Business to Consumer (B2C)
In a B2C model a business sells a goods or services to an individual consumer (eg. purchasing of books from an online retailer) Business to Business (B2B): B2B business model is a model where a business sells a good or service to another business (e.g. A business firm selling products or services to other business firms)
Consumer to Consumer (C2C)
When a consumer sells a good or service to another consumer (e.g. You sell your old furniture on eBay to another consumer).
Consumer to Business (C2B)
When a consumer sells their own products or services to a business or organization (e.g. An influencer offers exposure to their online audience in exchange for a fee, or a photographer licenses their photo for a business to use).
Opportunities for E-Commerce
Direct Sales
Companies can directly sell their goods and services to customers through websites. Making orders for the purchase, invoicing and payment is done using the internet. The delivery of goods will be through a physical channel Pre sales Ecommerce companies can make use of their websites for promoting your sales. Companies can make use of email campaigns, search marketing or online advertising for boosting their product sales.
User Interface
The user interface allows us to search for the products easily and can order for the product in a lesser time. The customers can even filter their products based on price, colour, Top Brands and so on.
Shopping Cart
The shopping cart allows the customer to choose the products according to their choice of interest. Add to cart options can be used to add products to our shopping cart.
Payment Software
The payment for the online purchase can be made using debit cards or credit cards. The ecommerce website will direct the customer to a payment gateway. The three main methods of payment are opening a merchant account, Using a payment processing company or creating an online shop within a virtual shopping mall.
Now, let’s jump quickly over the top trends in ecommerce in 2021. Let’s have a look at them:
Recent Trends in Ecommerce
Connecting through Social Media
Now a day’s social media enables the customers to choose the products according to their interest. Social media can be used as a medium for providing information about the product to the customers. The role of social media in accelerating the sales of an ecommerce company is very vital.
Mobile Commerce
The purchase of goods using mobile phones and the transactions that are conducted through mobile phones has widely increased nowadays. Easy accessibility to mobile phones and computers has resulted in an increase in the amount of shopping done using mobile phones and networks. Purchasing using mobile phones has become more common with the introduction of the smartphone. You can also seek help from logistics and transportation software development services in India for smooth delivery of your projects.
Quick Service
The ordering of the product, payment and delivery of the product will be completed in one week. Online shopping is a type of shopping that helps the customers to reduce the amount of time required for purchasing.
Product Videos/Video Based Marketing
The effect that is created in the customers through videos will be long lasting. Customers can be easily motivated to purchase a product by providing them with interesting videos relating to the product. Videos are very effective in conveying the usage, comparison and specification of a product to the users.
Websites and Apps
More people are having access to mobile phones than laptops and computers. Smartphones are the most commonly used medium for accessing ecommerce websites. The high speed internet which is available in smart phones further simplifies the access of the site. Amazon, eBay, Grofers and paytm are having mobile applications that enable the user to easily enter and access the website and order for the needed product. So the demand for mobile apps and web development is increasing with the booming online businesses.
Virtual Sales Force
Ecommerce companies are really trying to boost their sales by using popups, chat modules and other tools for sales people to convince customers to buy before they make a decision.
Limitations of Ecommerce
Security Issues
People fear making payments online because of security issues. Customers fear the loss of their credit card information while making payment through online.
Privacy Issues
The customers are required to give their personal details such as name, address and mobile number for engaging in online buying. Most of the customers fear that because of these their privacy issue will be affected.
Family and Culture
Parents restrict their children from engaging in online purchasing. They fear the products purchased through online will be of lesser quality and not fit for use.
Technical Issues
As the entire process of ordering for goods and the payment is done using the internet the accessibility to computer related technologies are needed. Technical issues can limit the customers from accessing computers and networks.
Legal Issues
Ecommerce Companies should take care of a number of legal formalities for establishing the business. The difficult procedures limit the business from making their presence online.
Ar in your House
From “What WOULD it look like” to “What DOES it look like” in your home. Augmented Reality (AR) will be huge in 2018 as brands roll out features that allow consumers to use their mobile devices to visualize items in their home or office before purchasing.
From couches to blenders, consumers will be able to see exactly how an object looks in their environment before ordering, including visualizing “plus-sized” items like furniture or bathtubs. This should drive an increase in orders for “plus-sized” items, as well as related shipping and services. AR may also help to reduce returns – eCommerce’s $260 Billion dollar problem.
Apple CEO Tim Cook called Apple “a market leader with AR, noting there are already 1,000-plus apps with AR features on the App Store. Stemming from that, he said AR, which first sparked interest for marketers through the success of apps like Snapchat and the virtual game Pokemon Go, is now “mainstream,” pointing to applications with retail shopping, gaming, entertainment, education and the enterprise on both a small and large scale
The New Measure of Retailer’s Digital success
Retailers will now know how many dollars of in-store sales are attributable to every dollar spent on digital thanks to a reliable attribution model between digital and in-store: ROPO Ratios (ROPO: “Research Online, Purchase Offline”)
82% of mobile users search for a local business and 18% of local searches lead to a sale within 24 hours. The tools to measure a retailer’s ROPO ratio – the in-store impact of digital campaigns and investments – are now more advanced and about to become more accessible to retailers. By combining mobile devices and payment, social media, personalization, geolocation/mobile tracking, real-time inventory with advanced analytics tools, ERP, CRM and POS systems, retailers will be able to find out which ads, listings and site visits led to in store visits and purchases.
Mobile Checkout Overtakes Desktop Checkouts
From buying products and renewing services on the go to actually checking out or buying in-store, mobile checkout will become a convenience that no consumer will want to do without and that no merchant can afford to ignore.The advancement of simplified payment technology on mobile, including fingerprint and facial recognition, will boost the percentage of transactions completed on mobile.
With Google, Samsung and Apple deploying advancements in their payment technology (and doubling their user base), mobile checkout should in fact start becoming the preferred method of payment for retail purchases, with mobile reaching 70% of eCommerce traffic by the end of 2018.
Machine learning x ecommerce
A.I. will create the perfect, customized customer experience which means that millennials will likely be the last generation to be marketed to as, well, a generation. 2018 will signal a shift in most retailers’ and brands’ targeting strategy, veering away from marketing to a predefined, relatively large and varied group of people like Millennials or baby boomers.
As brands and retailers get better at leveraging consumer and behavioral data, eCommerce initiatives will target much more specifically, nearing the once impossible idea of one to one marketing. Just like when shopkeepers knew clients’ names and preferences.
Behavior-based analysis leads to personalization and data driven optimization, which brands and retailers will start using to much greater effect in 2018, signaling the beginning of the end of demographic-based marketing tactics.
Voice will change SEO
Consumers will speak to their devices and use voice to interact (conversational AI) like never before. Retailers, merchants and brands will have to change the ways they
Communicate.
For SEO, expect a Wild West-like land grab for spoken keywords, as voice often provides a single answer instead of multiple results. 2nd will be the new last. For advertising, the very notion of display advertising will have to adapt as these one-to-one interactions may not permit the interruption-based advertising model which has been prevalent for the past 50 years.
For eCommerce, the biggest implications will revolve around in-depth product information being compatible/optimized with voice search and making store inventory available in real-time.
Final words
So these are some of the ecommerce trends which will be revolutionizing our 2020. I hope after going through the whole blog, you came to know that how ecommerce is going to rock in future.
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