A wise proverb holds that trying to predict the future is a fool’s errand. That being said, such fields as finance, business, and commerce are constantly relying on predictive analytics to make better informed decisions. And ecommerce is no exception. If you’re also looking to make some educated projections about the future of your ecommerce venture, you may want to look at some important trends that are likely to shape the ecommerce landscape in the next couple years.
Increase in Online Shopping
It’s not a secret that almost half of the Internet users note that they will continue to shop online, the habit massively adopted during the pandemic. It comes as no surprise that the e-commerce share of retail sales globally has skyrocketed and is projected to grow in the next years. A series of lockdowns have necessitated the greater adoption of ecommerce and consequently resulted in the creation of new retail ecommerce companies and small online stores. With this in mind, you may want to conduct your own research to decide whether or not creating an ecommerce store or expanding your B2B business is worth a shot.
Automation is a Key to Success
As e-commerce continues to thrive, more and more businesses tap into the power of modern technologies to enhance their productivity. And today, internet commerce may benefit greatly from automation, whose purpose is to reduce human intervention to a minimum and help companies boost their overall efficiency. To streamline their business processes, automate redundant and tedious tasks, free up employees for more important assignments, etc, many companies start using dedicated applications or design their own solutions to address their individual needs. By the way, if you’re looking into the possibility to build a unique tool to help your business scale, be sure to make a rough estimate with the online calculator by LITSLINK.
Chatbots, project management tools, online conference apps, task schedulers, smart calendars, and sales forecasting solutions are the most commonly talked about apps that enable modern ecommerce companies to operate more effectively. These and other tools, including much hyped AI and machine learning solutions, can really go a long way towards helping you eliminate or substantially shorten workforce functions, scale your venture, channel resources more efficiently, increase sales revenue, and much more.
Mobile Commerce
If you’re no stranger to mobile app development, you might have heard of progressive web applications. These tools are widely adopted today to create robust, fast, and native-looking applications for businesses. Thanks progressive app solutions, more people now get a chance to deliver a better online experience to their users on mobile. PWAs are widely used for its ability to increase mobile traffic, improved load and installation speed, lower bounce rate, app-like look and feel, and much more. But the best thing is that the cost of developing a PWA is much lower compared with traditional apps or native mobile apps.
Since shopping on smartphones isn’t commonplace nowadays, you should definitely give some thought to PWA development. This will help you attract more potential customers and increase sales via mobile devices.
Emphasis on Customer Experience
Since without loyal customers any entrepreneurial venture, including e-commerce one, is doomed to failure, brands work harder to deliver the best possible online shopping experience. For this, more and more ecommerce platforms and online stores look to innovate and employ state-of-the-art solutions to provide more compelling UX and increase conversions. Thus, companies use augmented reality, 3D modeling, and AI-powered solutions to attract a wider audience and allow them to make better informed buying decisions. Some retailers go further and introduce online-ordering and curbside-pickup options, which helps meet the needs of more customers. Finally, it would be a wise decision to use video chats to help each individual customer with their buyer’s journey.
Now you know what trends are poised to dominate the ecommerce landscape. Hopefully, this knowledge will help you capitalize on the aforementioned trends and increase sales online.