INTRODUCTION:
The ecommerce industry has been experiencing steady growth over the past few years.
So, in the coming years, we should expect to see continuing growth with more businesses joining the market.
This, however, translates to more competition. And for ecommerce merchants, this means staying on your toes to get ahead.
You need to be well-versed in the latest ecommerce trends, which are often a result of advancements in technology and changes in CONSUMER PREFERENCES AND BEHAVIOUR.
Ecommerce Trends in 2019
Dropshipping:
Dropshipping or Drop Shipping can be a profitable business model for ecommerce businesses that don’t have much capital to start with. It involves acting as the middleman between the manufacturer or supplier and the customer.
You process the purchase, but the product gets shipped directly to the buyer without you actually handling the physical product.
This business model is easy to start, involves less risk and has many advantages:
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- You’re only going to buy the product after a customer places an order
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- You don’t have to spend money on storing inventory
- You’ll have lower overhead costs
2: Multi-Channel Selling
People aren’t using just one channel to make their purchases online.
According to the same report of 2018, consumers spend 69% of their discretionary income to shop in-store. Also, 56% of Gen Z makes purchases from brick-and-mortar stores.
These numbers show just how profitable it can be for ecommerce merchants to cater to the needs of omni-channel shoppers. So we should expect to see a rise in multi-channel selling in the coming year.
To grow your business as an online merchant, you need to make yourself available across all of the channels that your shoppers use. Aside from your own website, this could be on social media and brick-and-mortar stores as well as other online stores.
Consider using popular channels such as applications named eBay, Amazon, Google Shopping, and Jet. And don’t forget about popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, which also support direct sales.
One of the most important reasons why ecommerce merchants shy away from multi-channel selling is that, they also have difficulty in managing all of these channels.
But ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce can provide a highly effective solution to this.
You can use it to sync your inventory with the popular channels that your customers frequent, and process every order from a uniform location.
3: Smarter Payment Processing
The payment process is the final step in the customer journey, and it is a vital stage that could make or break a conversion.
The customer has gone through many stages, also including awareness and consideration, and has finally made the decision to buy your product.
But if the experience at this stage isn’t effortless and smooth, you could still end up losing the potential customer. So it is kind of compulsory to have your payment process damn easy, soft and comfortable. It has many different payment applications which is online as well as offline. Some of the applications also include paytm, debit card, credit card and so on. Thus one should not be confused and irritated with the payment process itself or else it would make a drastic negative change on your business.
4: Omni-Channel Personalization
We already talked about the omni channel, however, it’s not enough to just be available on multiple channels.
You will also need to provide a cohesive brand experience by personalizing your interactions for each customer across all of those channels. In other words, you need to recognize the customer as the very same person across all your channels.
Otherwise, you could end up offering irrelevant experiences, which can be too intrusive or annoying. And it’s a well-known fact that personalization is imperative for the success of businesses today.
5: Custom Packaging
Customers tend to perceive packaging as a part of the product.
In fact, according to a Dotcom Distribution study, 68% of shoppers felt that a brand became more upscale due to its packaging.
Based on this study, there seems to be a growing interest in customized packaging among consumers.
So, any ecommerce business that wants to set itself apart in 2019 should be creating custom packaging to make their brand or store more recognizable.
Third-party solutions such as Packhelp can make this job easier for you.
They offer durable packaging that can be customized for businesses of all sizes. You can easily customize your packaging on their web app and check out the prices.
Their 3D visualization tool will give you a better idea of how your packaging will look even before you finally place the order.
AI CHATBOTS
Virtual assistants and chatbots have already established in the e-commerce world in recent years. The reason is well-understood: they cut customer support expenses, facilitate leads and sales, and build long-term customer relationships. A powerful 2019 e-commerce development trend is using AI algorisms for virtual assistants and chatbots to analyze all queries and responses and learn to become even more helpful.
This way, AI chatbots may not only guide users to the products they are interested in or provide common information on the process of purchase and delivery – they may learn to determine possible objections and effectively respond to them, just like your best salesmen do. Since AI chatbots need time to learn, a good decision will be to invest in one as soon as possible.
6: PRODUCT CONTENT SYNDICATION
Product content – description, images, specifications, attributes – is at the heart of online sales. Product content syndication allows to automatically spread the content from a centralized point to various platforms and channels. Such a solution allows achieving consistency across multiple commerce sites, which you might use to gain more reach, visibility, and conversions.
Product content syndication software is also very helpful when used on the B2B level. For example, industrial suppliers may easily share their products data with all their distributors, resellers and OEMs. The beauty of the solution is that the data source will be managed centrally; thus, if a manufacturer makes any changes, your site will update the information automatically.
Conclusion
The ecommerce industry is transforming dynamically every year.
With the advent of AI, it’s further moving towards personalization and creating new experiences for consumers.
Through omni-channel marketing and consolidation of payments, you can manage your ecommerce business more effectively while reaching more people.
Author Bio:-
Merry Waren is a Marketing Manager at AIS Technolabs which is Web design and Development Company, helping global businesses to grow by Node Js Development Services. I would love to share thoughts on custom ecommerce development company and Game Design Development etc.
