5 Ecommerce trends that are important for business
In this Blogpost I would like to talk with you about ecommerce strategy. Nowadays, ecommerce is used in almost everyone’s daily life. Ecommerce companies invested a lot in their websites and did much research in customer experience to optimize click rates and maximize sales. Ecommerce is important for information strategy, because it is the way to connect with your customers, even if you have physical shops. Coolblue, for example, advised laptop producers to develop a certain model, because certain specifics were selected by customers in a combination that wasn’t available in a specific model at that time.
In this blogpost I would like to discuss 5 important trends for ecommerce companies, to improve their strategy and sales for 2021.
Personalization of online sales environment (with use of big data)
Due to big data combined with AI it is possible to adapt the webpage to each specific customer. This way, each customer sees an overview of the products he/ she is likely to purchase, based on data gathered out of cookies and social media preferences.
Augmented Reality
AR will improve the “offline experience” during online shopping. In normal ecommerce, wrong interpretations often create frustrated customers and bad experiences. Photographs can be easily manipulated and are hard to verify. Augmented Reality ensures a real visualisation of what the buyer is buying.
Voice help/ assistance
The increase in usage of Smart Speakers (e.g. Alexa, Google Home) are a major opportunity for ecommerce webshop. They have to ensure an errorless integration and API regarding people ordering by voice, talking to their smart assistant. This entails privacy regulation as well, because voices need to be recognized to make sure you are ordering for the right person.
B2B ecommerce is becoming more than a niche
B2B businesses are often less fast adapting new technologies and opportunities due to existing business models and the difficulties when changing them. The past few years, B2B businesses are increasingly noticing the advantages of ecommerce for themselves and for their customers. To increase sales and get done what is expected, a perfect integration between ERP systems and webshop is necessary. Software is being created and is becoming more and more SaaS for B2B firms, with the reliability they wish for. This will be increasingly adapted in the next year.
Mobile first
The great advantage of ecommerce is the fact that you can order everything from everywhere. This will continue in the next year, with more mobile shopping than before. The ease from shopping online, as it is displayed in apps like WeChat, will be implemented in more apps with solid APIs and other integrations.
References:
Meyer: top 14 trends in ecommerce https://digitalstrategy.rsm.nl//
Sendcloud: top 15 trends in ecommerce https://www.sendcloud.nl/e-commerce-trends-voor-2020/
B2B ecommerce trends, Arno Ham: https://www.sana-commerce.com/nl/blog-nl/b2b-ecommerce-trends/
Augmented Reality in ecommerce
https://www.nextechar.com/blog/3-advantages-of-augmented-reality-in-ecommerce?utm_term=&utm_campaign=Leads-broad&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=2775768637&hsa_cam=9722331722&hsa_grp=106444862811&hsa_ad=437443628157&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=dsa-393571677529&hsa_kw=&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=CjwKCAjwzvX7BRAeEiwAsXExo8Mv2peWOssAikZUHszHEYxQPmUqtZhA0dUXpY44DkoM9vdaM4UENhoCT-YQAvD_BwE
Dear Michiel,
Your article highlights how dependent of technology we are becoming. When reading your different points, I realized that these are all five things that I am exposed to every day. One interesting point that you mention is that business to business is becoming a niche. I do agree with that. Due to their slower innovation, they are less able to adapt to the one-one marketing and offering first price discrimination techniques that could help their revenue grow. Managers should be aware of the change happening in the world and adapt accordingly !