Nasrullah Patel — May 23, 2020 E-commerce is taking over the conventional drudgery of the brick-and-mortar stores just like any other trend with profound impact. It is gradually transforming the way people interact with their day-to-day requisites.
Penetration of the smartphone is, in turn, making a significant impact on the success of e-commerce. According to Statista, by 2020, the number of mobile users worldwide would surpass the mark of 3.5 Bn.
It won’t be a surprise for the physical stores if e-commerce would someday hammer a nail to their graves Yes.
E-commerce is the sole future of business and individuals are getting accustomed to using it. Every year, sensing the huge traction that e-commerce has on the state of mind of individuals, businessmen strive to distinguish their e-commerce platforms by adopting technological and marketing trends. In previous years, we saw a significant rise in modern payment methods, which was intended at offering consumers with the ease of shopping with check out ’at a tap’.
The trend is perpetually turning towards digitisation in true sense. And yet, there is a large base of businessmen, who still operate offline and hope to skyrocket their sales prospects.
Now, working offline is not an issue, the real issue is in getting lucrative sales opportunities. So, e-commerce is not any other revenue stream; e-commerce, in today’s time, is the revenue stream for any business. On account of growing favourability towards online shopping, it is imperative that businessmen seek e-commerce app development to keep their business up and running, even in the auto-pilot mode.
8 Trends that are Going to be Influential for E-Commerce in 2020
The question in the recent time is not how to switch to online business from an offline one, the question is, how to stick to the online model and progress from there on. While e-commerce is seen as a cash cow of business, players are also successfully driving cross-border sales.
If there is one thing that is clear from the trends observed in 2019, it is that e-commerce is definitely not a hype and not a fad. It is here to stay and influence the businesses of tomorrow, which is why you need to develop an e-commerce app at the earliest to gain the early slice of success.
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If you are still on the fence regarding the future course that e-commerce would be charting, below are the trends that you need to adopt ‘now’, to have a seamless sail and sales in 2020.
Check it out:
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Delivery to Become Fast, Faster, Fastest
In recent times, consumers have become more conscious of the time it takes to receive their deliverables. Add to that, the lack of patience that they possess, and e-commerce businessmen are sure to feel the pressure of making ‘instant’ deliveries.
Though the time taken to instant delivery is subject to numerous variables, such as time of order placement, location of warehouse, location of consumers, stock in inventory, and last-mile delivery, businessmen will leverage the prowess of technology and upgrade their last-mile delivery software to achieve delivery as fast as they can.
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Mobile Shopping to Take Over Website Shopping
In recent times, all that consumers seek is convenience. This is why, there is a marked shift in the way consumers choose to exhibit their shopping behaviors. While, the last decade saw the growing prominence of an e-commerce website, mobile apps hold the realm of the future shopping behaviours of consumers.
Mobile apps are being simpler and simpler by the day, which is attracting a large pool of audience to interact with them and create huge sales prospects for businessmen. Besides this, websites have the limitation that is being gradually bridged by mobile apps with their utmost convenience.
So, if you are looking at a website to begin your digital journey and achieve e-commerce success, you need to leap higher towards the mobile app to get the desired business outcomes.
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Shopping at the Voice Command
Call it Alexa, Ok Google, or Siri, the advent of voice command technology is gradually making inroads towards the ecommerce landscape to highlight the convenience feature for consumers.
The last year saw a rise in the use of voice command for shopping; however, the year 2020 will see a significant adoption of voice command technology, which will make it necessary for businessmen to incorporate this technology in their e-commerce mobile apps.
This is just a small scenario to the growing popularity of voice command. In the future, with the increasing adoption rate of voice assistant devices, forget mobiles, these voice assistants will be the real rulers, who will determine the sales of your ecommerce business.
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Social Commerce will be the Go-to-way
As data is the real asset of the e-commerce website, the data extracted from the social media usage of individuals will continue to play a significant role. Currently, Instagram is gaining traction as a key e-commerce mobile app. The contribution of Facebook to e-commerce sales can also not be neglected.
Besides e-commerce, social media also serves as an influencer to the purchasing behaviour, or rather an impulsive purchasing behaviour of consumers. In the future, social commerce or evolution of social media as a key e-commerce platform will remain integral for businessmen.
Connecting with friends and suggesting great stuff to buy and try will be the key feature that businessmen should look at incorporating in the e-commerce app they develop.
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Cryptocurrency on the Horizon
From cash on delivery, to net banking, credit cards, debit cards, and wallets, the way that consumers make payments for their purchases has truly become easy or as they say, it has become one tap checkout system.
Currently, a large number of individuals rely on e-wallet and PayPal accounts to make payments, which shows a shift from paper-based cash payment model to digital payment model. In 2020, the trend of using e-wallet will gain a significant momentum; however, some e-commerce giants will also make a shift towards embracing the future of payment models – cryptocurrency.
Though cryptocurrency wouldn’t be a profound trend as of yet in 2020 it will surely make a prominent mark and make its presence felt as an emerging payment model.
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Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality to Take Customer Experience to Another Level
At the end of the day, e-commerce platforms are developed to take the customer experience to a new level. If there is one thing that distinguishes physical stores from online commerce portals, it is the touch and feel that customers can experience.
However, e-commerce mobile apps have been falling short of this experience, which has been gaining ground to brick and mortar stores. In the year 2020, e-commerce mobile apps will experience a transformation with a touch of artificial intelligence and augmented reality.
Customers will be able to upload their pictures to the e-commerce mobile app and get a glimpse of how the clothing or makeup or accessories would look on their body. Such an experience is sure to increase customers’ interest in e-commerce mobile apps.’
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Personalisation will Become the New Standardised Strategy
While the e-commerce websites and mobile apps of the last five years would offer nothing more than a shopping experience to customers a stir has been observed in the e-commerce arena, wherein the e-commerce businessmen are getting to know their customers better.
So, instead of consumers coming to the mobile app or website with their requirements, The smart businessmen are making deals and offers, on the basis of information extracted from the consumers in the form of the demographics such as their age, sex, location, weight, height, choices, search results, past purchases, et cetera.
The personalization of e-commerce, in turn, serves as a crucial marketing strategy for businessmen, who are looking at pushing their sales and getting better at customer retention. The personalization offers twofer benefits for e-commerce portal in terms of increasing sales and driving the attention of consumers with the help of push notifications to ensure better sales prospects in the future.
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Subscription-based E-commerce is the New Addition
Ever wondered, what makes e-commerce mobile apps so different from the conventional brick and mortar stores? It is the attraction of deals and discounts that these online channels have to offer.
The reduced cost of operation, which significantly lowers the overhead cost of running a business, gives an edge to an e-commerce businessman to make a profit even without squeezing some of the operational cost. On the other hand, the brick and mortar stores already suffer from high overhead cost which ranges from land, power, workers etc.
While deals and discounts will remain the routine feature of e-commerce mobile apps, the year 2020 will also witness a spurt in the subscription-based shopping for consumers who buy the same products frequently. The trend will have a high prominence on the sales of baby food items, pharmaceuticals, et cetera.
A Word of Caution
While the trend of e-commerce continues to get bigger and better sales-driving opportunities for businessmen, it is important for businessmen to understand the underlying asterisks that could impact or be a causative factor for the low down.
If there is one thing that could get eliminated from e-commerce, the entire concept of e-commerce would be redundant. That thing is data. If businessmen use data in a legitimate manner, their business expansion is ensured. But if the data is used as a greedy means to invade the consumers’ space and take their privacy for granted, the same data can create havoc to e-commerce businesses. The term that you are looking for is – GDPR.
The importance of GDPR is high in the developed regions such as Europe, North America, however, it is fast making inroads in the developing regions such as Asia Pacific and Latin America as well. This means that businessmen should take ample efforts to ensure the safety and security of their customers to avoid falling into the trap of legal issues.
What Should be the First and Next Step for Businessmen Seeking Consolidation in 2020?
Having analysed the trends that are potent enough to change the very facet of e-commerce portals, it is crucial for businessmen to understand the first and the very next move that they need to embrace to make a mark from here on.
If you are already an e-commerce player, you need not have to put in a lot of effort to embrace this trend. All you have to do is hire a dedicated mobile/web developer team and explain to him what are the trends that you wish to see in your e-commerce portal.
However, it is essential for you to do it as soon as possible because 2020 is not that far and the sales opportunities are up and running. Allocate a separate budget for your means, which will make it for the year 2020.
You are all set for an upgraded version of your business. All the best!
However, the real adventure begins if you don’t have an online presence. While the development of eCommerce website is a relatively old school, you can directly switch to develop an e-commerce mobile application to take your business to the next level.
The first step to getting an e-commerce mobile app developed is gathering the requirement with the very essential features that you would wish to have in your e-commerce portal. It completely depends on you if you need an advanced mobile app or a basic one to experiment with and gradually shift towards the higher version when you feel the need of a feature.
Alternatively, you can also try to start with a basic version of the app and integrating a few features, very specific ones, to be able to leverage the sales generated from the success of e-commerce in 2020.
For example, you can target the wallets or incorporate net banking in order to offer your customers the choice of payment model. In addition, you can also rely on social media sign-in process to extract crucial data of your customers to offer them a personalized experience.
In the future, as and when you see your business making it to a crucial position, you can target advanced features. However, building a basic app with a couple of advanced features will help you in experimenting with your demographics, especially when you are at the start of an online business.
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