Top 10 E-commerce Trends To Look Out For In 2021 [Infographic]

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, seems 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, top 10 E-commerce Trends have emerged that are set to define the marketplace in 2021 and beyond:

AI and AR Will Enhance the Ecommerce Experience

By 2022, online sellers are planning to invest $7.3 billion on AI. By 2022, more than 120,000 stores will be using AR technologies to provide their clients with a wealth of purchasing experience.

As an online business partner, artificial intelligence (AI) provides your customers with individualized guidance and recommendations. In order 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 the goods for society and the environment if that were the possibility.

You can start analyzing your packaging if your company has no social or environmental engagement. Is there a way of making it more environmentally friendly and sustainable? In addition, receipts can only be sent on emails rather than paper slips.

The next significant step is to decide how you 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 buying before will love the new comfort and will still 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 from 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.

In order 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 eCommerce, but competition has expanded too. The incentives are increasing and 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 to the pandemic, but the coronavirus really hastened that investment, as with so many other things.

Large shops which have 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 the 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 eCommerce 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 price software. These tools give you an in-depth insight into the prices, market demand and the perceived value of your items in order to calculate ideal pricing.

Increased demand within home-related niches (entertainment, homegoods, sanitation)

While social distance can end in the near future, 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 different about cleanliness, which would probably boost demand for items that are designed to protect persons 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 business 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.
• Creates Pinterest graphic shopping advertising to attract visitors and improve sales to your website.

Mobile Commerce Will Dominate Ecommerce

With increasing customer confidence in online buying, individuals feel more comfortable shopping on their mobile devices.

By the end of 2021, almost 73% of total ecommerce 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 ecommerce site for mobile devices:

• Examine your website with 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 some 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 Rising

Increasing numbers of people use voice assistants such as the Amazon Echo with Alexa and the Google Home from awaking them to purchasing. Up to 2025, 75% of US households will have smart speakers, and voice trade sales will estimate 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 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 the voice command with 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 feasible. In 2021, there is anticipated to be the prevalence of voice trade, omnichannel shopping, AI, and AR. Crypton payments are being accepted by more and more internet companies to encourage more clients to decide their brand. Dynamic pricing will continue to be a good approach to attract buyers.

E-commerce Trends in 2021: Infographic