Where is ecommerce heading

What you should do in Scale your omnichannel strategy To capitalize on the ecommerce boom and overcome fierce competition, you need to optimize commerce across channels like online marketplaces, social media, retail, and wholesale.

That also means building—or buying—a technological foundation that frees your team to create immersive, unified experiences wherever your customers are. The business benefit is resilience, allowing your business to quickly shift efforts and resources from offline to online, and back again, based on customer demand.

This is not just a pandemic disruption. Having a unified view of your product and customer data is the first step toward providing a consistent experience to customers across channels. Build your business on a single platform that connects workflows and data sources, allows you to manage all your sales channels in one place, and integrates with third-party solutions.

Brands without a single source of truth for sales data and reporting will find it difficult to efficiently track performance across channels. Your commerce platform must integrate with both the sales and supply sides of your business. Use a POS system to connect your digital storefront with retail locations in a central reporting hub. Worse yet, mobile bounce rates are consistently higher than desktop. Responsive online stores allow your brand to provide consistent experiences across all devices, from desktop to tablet to mobile.

Responsive themes also help improve SEO, site speed, and overall user experience. The greatest threat—and one of the greatest threats for the past two or three years—is still this user experience baseline. The foundation for a user experience that is truly aligned with actual end-user behavior. Combine your progressive web app with an accelerated mobile page Some brands are also combining progressive web apps with an accelerated mobile page , or a mobile-first, stripped-down HTML copy of a web page that loads instantly.

The combination can lead to better search results, more top-of-funnel traffic, and improved site conversion rates. Headless commerce , an API-first solution , decouples the front-end customer experience from the back-end technology infrastructure. Benefits include:.

Despite the cost and development complexity associated with going headless, many merchants are still willing to adopt a headless architecture in an effort to improve conversion rates.

Expect the adoption of headless and lean microservice tech stacks to accelerate in Koala, an Australian furniture brand, adopted a headless architecture from the start. Koala built a headless progressive web app, which allows it the flexibility to offer the right experience at the right time to different customer segments across any device.

This is the customer-facing portion of its web presence, allowing for new web pages, products, and content to be deployed faster. Although decoupled, the progressive web app integrates with the content management system, shopping cart, and other mission-critical systems.

But the real power is in Shopify POS, which unifies your online and retail sales on one platform so you can offer a blended omnichannel customer experience with:. The pandemic brought about changes to lifestyle and consumer spending habits. With consumers still wary of buying in store , online purchase demand in new product categories has surged worldwide.

Though dynamics vary across countries, health, hygiene, home essentials, and food and beverage are now the new top online product categories. We did a survey of about 70 brands right after the pandemic hit. And we were surprised that beauty was thriving, even though people were working from home and on Zoom. Which of these do you consider good reasons to buy an item online? Never has the consumer expected more of businesses.

Not only do shoppers want to buy online, they also expect it to be fast and convenient. Consumer surveys indicate that these shifts will be sticky. Other shifts that took hold during stay-at-home orders are also expected to persist, including shopping online, using mobile payments, and video calling and conferencing.

Sourced from Global Web Index. Stickiness will depend on how satisfied consumers are with their new digital experiences. This varies by country. Chief executives around the globe say digital is here to stay , the shift to ecommerce is structural , and behavioral changes are permanent. Focus on creating innovative digital experiences that make life easier for your customers, reinventing traditional shopping experiences for the post-pandemic world, and bringing your brand to life in new ways.

Start by making sure your customers can do business with you wherever they like. Connecting the online and offline worlds allows the customer to choose where they buy. It also allows you to capitalize on their desire for speed and convenience. Local pickup options are faster and cheaper than shipping, and another opportunity to bring customers back to your store and experience your brand in real life.

The faster and easier you make it to check out, the more money you can make. The next opportunity is being able to pivot between the digital and physical worlds and provide a truly blended shopping experience. Augmented reality simulates in-person shopping experiences online by allowing customers to see how a product might look on them or in their home.

With AR, customers click on a product and instantly see it overlaid wherever they point their mobile device. Helping customers better see the size, scale, and detail of your products drives conversions.

Use 3D modeling or 3D versions of your products to show product shape and texture from any angle. Combined with AR functionality, 3D modeling creates intimacy with your products by allowing consumers to try before they buy in degree realistic experiences. While more popular in China , livestream shopping events in the U. Viewers can chat with hosts and stylists, then click on items for purchase.

Drive sales by converting traditional shopping or marketing experiences into virtual ones:. Intimate apparel brand Knix pivoted from its international growth plans when COVID hit and launched digital versions of traditional physical experiences, most notably, a virtual fitting room.

Customers learn how to take their measurements accurately, and find the right size and fit. Knix also hosted a virtual warehouse sale that achieved:. No more workarounds, patches, or hacks: With Shopify Plus, you can run your online store and retail locations with hardware, software, and payments that were made for each other.

And unlike marketplaces, you own your brand and customer experience across every touchpoint, synced right in Shopify. With analytics at your fingertips, stay on top of growing trends in your business across in-store and online sales. Powered by Shopify POS, you have all the tools you need to manage your business, market to customers, and sell everywhere. With the cost to fulfill orders soaring , brands must turn fulfillment into a strategic asset. Fulfillment must be smarter, closer to the consumer, and automated.

The majority of consumers in the U. Proprietary data from Shopify shows the number of brands offering free shipping has increased 5. To answer consumer demand while maintaining profitability, brands are setting free-shipping thresholds.

Three-quarters of U. Many will also pay a premium. The focus is on zero-waste packaging , where all materials are used, reused, or recycled. Minimalist packaging , reduced package sizes , and redesigned shipping cases are also high priorities. Are you ready to buy environmentally friendly products even if they cost a little bit more? The unboxing video era almost guarantees your packaging will be seen by shoppers researching your brand and products.

Packaging influences purchasing decisions , inspires customers to recommend your product , and can increase customer retention. It must simultaneously impress consumers and meet their desire for sustainability. Complex consumer demands have coincided with rising shipping costs.

The shift to ecommerce has resulted in shippers operating at peak levels for the majority of Worldwide, FedEx announced an average 4. UPS is also charging more: Its new chief executive has prioritized aligning pricing with the value the company provides. Ecommerce is also making order profiles more complex: Distribution centers are fulfilling smaller DTC orders faster to meet aggressive cutoff times and shipping deadlines.

Sourced from Kardex Remstar. The global nature of trade, though strained by U. Purchasing power is shifting from the U. With Asia Pacific as ground zero for ecommerce, fulfillment complexity is compounding for brands selling cross border.

Even more challenging, consumers increasingly expect free returns. Returns are also rising as more online shoppers "bracket" their purchases, buying multiple versions of a product with the intention of returning some items.

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The ecommerce sector continues to see considerable growth Online marketplaces such as eBay Shopify and…. Stay up to date with the latest eCommerce news and inspiration, as well as system updates. Check out our blog to see the type of content you can expect to receive. Business Tips Where is eCommerce Heading? Humanise Your Brand Humanising your brand is going to be a key factor in determining the success of any eCommerce business. Same Day Delivery Convenience is king.

Free Delivery With businesses fighting over customers tooth and nail, is it any surprise they will use any incentive to attract more? Conversational Commerce Reviews and word of mouth are still massively influential when it comes to achieving greater sales.

Mobile App Dominance With mobile becoming the preferred way to search the internet and apps being dominant over mobile internet search, is it any surprise that this is the way forward. Want to receive more great content? Thank you for Signing Up. It's a piece of technology that really can't be replicated in-store. Ron Smith, Editor in Chief, The Digital Outdoor , emphasizes how the complexity of AI and the ability to make it more human is also increasingly important:.

Buyers of all sorts — including B2C and B2B — are looking for personalized , custom shopping experiences online. The data collected from AI is what makes it possible for a buyer to get personalized product recommendations and detailed customer service. Kaleigh Moore , freelance writer and ecommerce specialist, sees AI-powered personalization becoming increasingly relevant in Today, many consumers are more aware that ecommerce sites are collecting personal data, which puts them at risk.

Because of this, experts have mixed feelings about the benefits of big data and how it affects the personalized shopping experience. Luis Catter, Conversion Rate Optimization Expert at Kensium Solutions , has his own predictions for how personalization will continue to evolve alongside data concerns:. This will create an interesting dichotomy — people who have ultra-personalized experiences and those who do not. This will have interesting impacts on how we as marketers are able to reach new users.

Chatbots interact with online shoppers much like an in-store sales associate would do. Today's shopper wants to be able to find and buy a product in just a few clicks, and if they can't, they get frustrated. This is where a chatbot can step in and save the sale. In the retail space, self-checkout kiosks will probably become the norm and in-store marketing will increase.

Duran Inci, CEO of Optimum7 , sees chatbots becoming increasingly personalized to improve the customer experience:. Mobile shopping allows customers to make purchases from anywhere, which is vital in today's world. However, if your ecommerce site isn't responsive on mobile or through web apps, you'll be missing out on big opportunities.

Shoppers who are mobile users want the added convenience, plus the ability to pay digitally. Customers have individual needs when it comes to payment methods, but they might cancel a potential sale if they can't pay how they want on an ecommerce website.

Offering a wide variety of ways to pay is a good way to increase conversion rates on mobile devices. Plus, if customers can save their payment information on your site, they'll be able to checkout even faster the next time they make a purchase. This unique ID would be for a centralized wallet service that would securely store all your payment info, shipping and billing addresses, preferences, etc. Companies like Apple and PayPal have taken shots at this in the past, but I think it could become more normalized.

More ecommerce businesses are adopting headless because of its flexibility on the backend, plus the added SEO, content marketing and digital experience capabilities. We had a multi-region need that was solved for with the headless BigCommerce solution, allowing us to combine all of our stores into one single domain, for which we have developed additional features. Video proved to be a great way to engage customers in , and it's not going away anytime soon.

Creating videos for your website is a great way to instantly grab and engage a customer and inform them about your product or service. Shane Barker further emphasizes the importance:. Videos can help you explain and showcase your products better than images ever can.

You should consider adding videos of your products in your ecommerce store. There are subscriptions of all sorts these days and their convenience is attractive for consumers.

For companies, subscription services create a way to plan for inventory and sales that are already locked in. Consumers and businesses alike are becoming more aware of the environment. Because of this, consumers are being more conscious about where they shop and the impact it has on the environment and related effects. Many businesses are finding ways to be more eco-friendly by going paperless when possible, using biodegradable packaging, and using recyclable supplies. Getting potential customers to your site is one task but getting them to convert is another.

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