Top E-commerce Trends to Fuel Your 2018 Marketing Strategy

 

More than half of the world is making online purchases, with more than 60% of millennials preferring online shopping over the traditional in-store purchases. While most businesses have a retail store, besides their e-commerce shop, dropshipping is becoming more and more prevalent among retailers due to large stocking options and reduced, if not eliminated costs for storing products. As e-commerce and m-commerce continue to grow, so will the number of stores with more than 50,000 different items “in stock”, resulting in a widespread adoption of stable, scalable e-commerce systems such as Magento. But what are the other trends e-commerce is likely to experience in 2018?

 

 

Multichannel shopping to improve due to increased mobile shopping

Today, the average isle-browsing shopper is most likely to grab their phone and do a quick search for additional product information while still inside the physical store itself, then return home and finish complete their order using a laptop. Couple this with the fact that we pick up our smartphones around 200 times per day, it becomes clear that brand’s and retailer’s next move will be to improve their overall shopping experience and reduce as much friction when it comes to multichannel shopping. We’ll likely see companies invest significant portions of their budgets into developing smooth, safe and secure apps for tablets and mobile devices.

 

CRO becomes a top priority as designers focus on mobile shoppers

Despite numerous technological advancements in the world of e-commerce, cart abandonment remains one of the biggest issues business owners and retailers face as more than half of all shopping sessions end up without an actual purchase. As popular as m-commerce may be, a large percentage of consumers still end up finishing their purchase via a desktop or a laptop, as most e-commerce websites were developed for desktop use in the first place.

 

 

This means that developers will have to focus more on mobile-first consumers by identifying the crucial mobile elements first, and then work on adding additional functionality and responsiveness for desktop users. Even the desktop users need to be taken care of. Those relying on drop shipping methods are likely to switch to Magento as their platform of choice and invest into magento web design to ensure both their desktop and mobile users will be greeted with the best possible user experience.

 

AR and VR will paint the future of e-commerce

Apple’s breach into the AR market was nothing short than brilliant. While AR and VR are nothing new per se, their development and commercial use seemed to be lagging, to say the least. That is, until Apple announced their new AR development platform developers can use to create AR-enabled apps and games. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if Apple doesn’t already have millions and millions of devices already in the hands of consumers.

 

 

AR and VR-enabled commerce allow retailers to reduce, if not completely eliminate construction costs for a physical store, rent and utility expenses, staff and maintenance costs and open a virtual store with no apparent limitations in regards to location and storage. Even a single product can easily be presented over a number of different marketing channels to every client, partner, retailer, and customer at the same time. IKEA is one of the first to embrace the power of AR and VR. The furniture-selling giant has already developed AR-enabled app customers can use to browse different pieces of furniture and superimpose them inside their own living rooms.

 

The inevitable rise of interactive and user-generated content

Having in mind that half of the entire globe now has internet access and that more than 20% of world population has an active Facebook profile, you will quickly realize that user-generated content is becoming one of the most powerful allies for social media advertisers. It creativity often surpasses the over-produced content made by large brands and corporations and as such, acts as social proof and a testimony of brand influence. On YouTube alone, UGC accounts for around a third of top content while on Instagram, more than 60% of consumers in the UK and the US state that they trust user-made photos more than those made by large brands and retailers.

 

 

AI-enabled one-to-one advertising

As e-commerce continues to dominate offline purchases, creating a seamless customer experience across different channels and devices and providing completely individualized and personalized experience for each customer can only be accomplished with the help of artificial intelligence. AI and deep-learning solutions will be used to analyze massive amounts of user-data and provide individualized interactions at a scale previously thought unattainable by the standard, rule-based solutions. This will finally help marketers realize their dreams of one-to-one marketing in real time and make their marketing efforts efficient than ever before.

 

Trends come and go and the most successful marketers are those that rely on every marketing means at their disposal, whether they are trendy or not. While some trends are more likely to survive in 2018 than the others, it’s important to realize that the best e-commerce strategy will always revolve around the customers and provide them with the best possible user experience. Which trend will you use to achieve that is completely up to you.

 

Author Bio:

Oscar Waterworth – a digital nomad, writer and senior editor at Technivorz. By working with product development teams for nearly a decade now, he has gained a great deal of insight on remote team management and project operations in the startup sphere.

 

 

 

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