However, the success in the E-commerce business depends on how well you are aware of current E-commerce trends and how you implement them in your day-to-day business activities. So, we will review the top 8 most significant E-commerce trends 2018. Let's start the journey.
Personalisation Will Bring More Business Opportunities
Personalisation will be the main factor to fetch more business opportunities in 2018. As per several surveys, 82% of buyers say that personalised content is very important when they decide to buy products online. So, Customers will look for an individual shopping experience based on their interests and buying behaviour in 2018. It will help online stores that want to increase their sales. So, all online store owners must create a unique way of personalisation for their customers in 2018.
E-commerce Sales Through Social Networking Sites Will Grow
If you review Facebook Posts of E-commerce companies carefully, it becomes clear that social networks are gradually becoming a platform for online commerce. So, after seeing this trend, Facebook introduced the Facebook Marketplace for all e-retailers.
It will allow them to create social ads and target more customers easily. This new tool was successfully launched in the US, UK and Australia. Recently, its geographical coverage has expanded and now it is available in 17 other European markets. So, in 2018, retailers and brands need to intensify their SMO activities to establish amicable relationships with customers and generate social leads easily and quickly.
Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform the E-commerce Business
Chatbots and AI will dominate the E-commerce world. Because of chatbots, artificial intelligence is being used by almost all leading E-commerce companies to perform all kinds of tasks that help them serve customers easily and quickly. In this process, they also use natural language processing, machine learning and live operators.
In 2018, it is expected that chatbots will help E-commerce companies in their cost-saving efforts. Facebook Messenger, Skype, Viber, Slack, Kik, etc, are some popular chatbots, used by several big and small E-commerce brands to easily communicate with their targeted audience, solve their problems on the spot and increase the chances of sales.
Mobile Checkout and IoT Will See Explosive Growth
The growth curve of the mobile payment market has been steadily increasing since 2015. In 2018, this trend will continue as usual. There are different mobile payment platforms that are used frequently by online shoppers apart from credit/debit cards and crypto-currencies. It seems that the era of cash is coming to an end in the E-commerce business.
IoT will develop further in 2018 and make the life of e-retailers and shoppers more comfortable. So, be active and gear up to capitalise the huge flow of business opportunities flowing through small screens. Just take your business to the small platform and allow shoppers to buy from you using mobile devices.
ROPO Trend Will Get Increased
ROPO seems to be a real revolution in online shopping technologies. In this process, potential buyers study products online and buy them offline in more favourable price tags. As per the data compiled by the Absolunet e-commerce agency, 82% of consumers use their mobile devices to know more about E-commerce companies and their products/services.
Approximately 18% of all local search queries lead to sales within 24 hours. Using different tools and indicators (such as social integration, consumer purchase history, geolocation tracking, the point of sale, CRM systems, mobile payment data), entrepreneurs can easily create a detailed profile of online buyers that conduct online research before making offline purchases. This helps them will to generate revenues both online and offline mode.
Big Data Will Help E-retailers To Expand Their Business Operations
There are several E-commerce brands that use Big Data for real-time analysis. It helps them to increase the E-commerce sales and increases profit by studying the problems. Big Data allows companies to track customers from start to finish in an online shopping process and classify them into different categories. This helps them to understand the customer's buying strategy easily. So, they can easily launch specific sales campaigns to increase profits during the holiday season, sales and regular sales.
It will also help them to analyse and optimize more trends in e-commerce in 2018. Big data can help them help forecast demand and optimize prices accordingly to increase sales up to a great extent. It is very important because a 1% of price decrease leads to an average profit increase of 8.7% in most of the cases.
Video Description Will Boost the chances of Sales
In E-commerce business, Video description of products matters a lot. It is perhaps the best way to show your products to customers in a video description. This description of the goods contributes to an increase in conversion and a better understanding of the product. According to statistics, the sales level increases by 70% if you use video content on your E-commerce website.
Voice Shopping Will Grow
Google, Apple and Amazon made a big bet on voice management as a driving force for e-commerce. Each of these companies has already laid out a lot of money and prepared steep new technologies for this direction. For example- Alexa reflects Amazon's ability to cater to the needs of the consumer in terms of speed, convenience and simplicity, and at the same time is an innovative way to buy goods. Alexa is able to play music, schedule appointments, switch TV channels and much more.
A new report from the Digital Transformation Institute, Capgemini indicates that consumers tend to move from purchases through applications and websites with the use of voice assistants. It is estimated that 61% of all shoppers will use voice search to buy products online in 2018. So, you need to optimise your E-commerce website for voice search to provide consumers with a convenient shopping experience with speech.
