E-commerce expanded by more than 30% in 2020, spurred by the world pandemic’s unparalleled consumer demand. With orders from week to month shifting from home, many consumers have had to adjust to online shopping, which has led to enormous growth in the industry.
The pandemic has essentially hastened the indoctrination of more purchasers to the internet environment. E-commerce will continue in ways that, before the epidemic, seemed inconceivable, from increasing sales to new opportunities in niches that had hitherto been untouched by entrepreneurs.
Zulfiqar Anees, an entrepreneur and founder/CEO at FastTech Media, has been watching the e-commerce trends unfold. I spoke with him recently to get his insights into what 2021 will hold for the industry.
Aside from general growth, the top 10 E-commerce Trends have emerged that are set to define the marketplace in 2021 and beyond:
AI and AR Will Enhance the e-commerce Experience
By 2022, online sellers are planning to invest $7.3 billion in AI. By 2022, more than 120,000 stores will be using AR technologies to provide their clients with a wealth of purchasing experiences.
As an online business partner, artificial intelligence (AI) provides your customers with individualized guidance and recommendations. To display consumers’ things, they’re more likely to buy. AI uses the shoppers’ history and browsing behavior.
In contrast to traditional shops, internet customers can’t try the thing they want to buy and scrutinize it personally. Enhanced reality contributes to removing this obstacle, enabling customers to view how a given product looks at them before they buy the goods.
You can witness an increase in conversions and a decrease in the return rate by implementing AI and AR in your e-commerce store.
Related: Best eCommerce Ideas for 2021
Focus on Sustainability: E-commerce Trends
Consumers are increasingly concerned about social responsibility in companies. Research suggests that 87 percent of the population would be more loyal to a company that supports social or environmental concerns and would purchase goods for society and the environment if that were a possibility.
You can start analyzing your packaging if your company has no social or environmental engagement. Is there a way to make it more environmentally friendly and sustainable? In addition, email is the only option for sending receipts, rather than paper slips.
The next significant step is to decide how you will participate and inform your clients about the environmental situation.
Reimagined shopping habits
The industry’s capacity to break the long-term custom of physically visiting shops has always been the major fuel for eCommerce growth. Older populations that may have been cautious about online shopping before will love the new comfort and will remain eCommerce shoppers once brick-and-mortar businesses are reopened to their full capacity.
New Payment Options Will Emerge: E-commerce Trends
One of the key reasons for choosing a specific brand is the choice of payment alternatives. You won’t buy from your e-commerce site when you don’t offer your clients a preferred mode of payment.
From now on, most e-commerce companies allow, except for debit and credit cards, digital wallets (such as Google Pay, Samsung or Apple Pay, and PayPal). The benefits for online shoppers in cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, include reduced transaction costs and no reverse transactions.
To enable clients to make a payment using Bitcoin, for example, Overstock has teamed with Coinbase, a Bitcoin platform.
In 2021, we might see more e-commerce companies starting to accept transactions for cryptocurrency.
Heightened digital advertising competition
The pandemic has extended the market for e-commerce, but competition has expanded too. The incentives are increasing and becoming greater for companies and marketers capable of leading advertising content innovations.
Moreover, digital content is growing in importance and firms are gradually investing in this field. That was true before the pandemic, but the coronavirus hastened that investment, as with so many other things.
Large shops that had not adapted their business models to maximize Internet advertising before the pandemic either have left the business or have learned a hard lesson.
In 2021, eCommerce will be a top focus on all business agendas, which will accelerate the digital content arms race.
Related: How to Start a Small Business Online in Pakistan
Brands Will Continue to Adopt Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic pricing makes e-commerce retailers competitive and enhances customer attraction.
Even if you sell the world’s best goods, you won’t create enough sales if you don’t price it right.
Ensure that your products are priced correctly. By “right,” I mean the amount at which your product will best be sold and the highest profit is made.
To discover the ideal price for your products, use dynamic pricing software. These tools give you an in-depth insight into the prices, market demand, and perceived value of your items to calculate ideal pricing.
Increased demand within home-related niches (entertainment, home goods, sanitation)
While social distance can end shortly, the psychological impact of the epidemic will be everlasting on customers around the world.
This offers enterprising entrepreneurs many new chances. Electric niches with minimal traction throughout history can now become rich grounds of activity. Consumers, for example, would think entirely differently about cleanliness, which would probably boost demand for items that are designed to protect people from future epidemics. I’m not surprised to see a popular health subscription box becoming a dominant player.
As with any major disruptions, companies will have both challenges and opportunities during the following year. The proactive players are going to take the day, while complacent companies are going to be left behind—in 2021 and beyond.
Visual Commerce Will Get Bigger: E-commerce Trends
Visual commerce means the use of images not only on product pages but also throughout your shop to encourage consumers to engage and convert them.
For example, major shops such as Bose currently use visual businesses to influence buyers in the purchase process. They are provided with high-quality photographs and shortcuts for the product to buy immediately on their homepage.
Here are some great ways to leverage visual commerce:
- To increase quality and loading speed, change your standard products from JPG to JPEG2000 or WebP formats.
- Generate your top-selling product’s 360-grade photos or movies.
- Invest in a visual search tool to enable clients to search for photographs.
- To build attention, repurpose user-generated material on your product pages.
- Create Pinterest graphic shopping advertising to attract visitors and improve sales to your website.
Mobile Commerce Will Dominate e-commerce.
With increasing customer confidence in online shopping, individuals feel more comfortable shopping on their mobile devices.
By the end of 2021, almost 73% of total e-commerce sales are predicted for mobile devices. Moreover, if your website is not mobile-facilitated, 30% of online shoppers will probably abandon their carts in the middle of the purchase.
As an online salesman, you should focus on increasing mobile users’ customer experience.
Here are some great ways to prepare your e-commerce site for mobile devices:
- Examine your website with the Google Mobile-Friendly Test for convenience. Enter your URL in the tool, which shows whether your online shop reacts. It also reveals whether your website has any loading problems.
- Create your online store with a progressive Web app (PWA). PWA loads more quickly than a website and enables customers to view the pages they previously navigated over the internet.
- To buyers who visit your website using smartphones, implement mobile pages (AMP).
- Ensure an easy checkout procedure and investigate ways of further simplifying mobile devices.
- Manually test your mobile website. See whether navigating is easy. Check if products are easy to view on your mobile devices and if the option to zoom is available.
Voice Commerce Will Continue to rise
Increasing numbers of people use voice assistants such as the Amazon Echo with Alexa and Google Home, from waking them to purchasing. Up to 2025, 75% of US households will have smart speakers and voice trade sales will be estimated at 40 billion dollars by 2022.
You need to optimize your online store for voice search if this sounds like a chance to be missing. Below are the four ways to do it:
- To improve the probability of your website content being used for voice search inquiries,
- Add new know-how on voice assistants like Alexa and Google,
- Offer your website and mobile version voice-based navigation of the store;
- Easily purchase your things with a voice command and a simple flow.
Final Thoughts
E-commerce businesses that want to dominate the industry must be ready to accept the current e-commerce trends as quickly as possible. In 2021, it is anticipated that there will be a prevalence of voice trade, omnichannel shopping, AI, and AR. To encourage more customers to choose their brands, more and more online businesses are accepting cryptocurrency payments. Dynamic pricing will continue to be a good approach to attracting buyers.
E-commerce Trends in 2021: Infographic
