eCommerce industry experienced a huge change in the year 2017. This year, it is expected to grow at an annual rate of at least 19.11 percent. eCommerce industry is becoming a trend among the shopping world.
In the world full of advancements in technology, it is essential to have a global exposure for the online eCommerce business. Marketing in the eCommerce industry is something that is going to evolve in the year 2018. Trends in the eCommerce are decided on the basis of the customer’s behavior, from how they shop, what they buy, how they respond to the tactics used by the business. Since few years, the industry has been experiencing a large number of new trends in the e-commerce business.
Let us discuss the latest marketing trends to work on, in 2018.
Contextual Advertising
Ads are supposed to gain noticeable rise this year. Social media platforms have begun to revamp their designs in order to cater to the trends. The programmatic advertising uses the datasets in order to decide the target audience.
The concept of ads is to show to the audience chosen that are at the base of consumption, post that, it is retargeted in a certain period and generate more ROI. The top facebook advertising agencies will help to get ROI for your business.
Contextual advertising is totally about attracting the right audience at the right time with the right type of ad. E-commerce store owners can have a great advantage of this technique to reach out to a large amount of audience.
Automation in Marketing
To anyone out of the marketing field, automation in marketing may mean automating email marketing and scheduling social media posts. Automation is much more than that. Marketing automation has become the new trend. The newest automation covers the areas of customized landing pages and easy-to-access shopping carts.
When you properly implement the marketing automation, it will make your lead generation task easier and better. You will be able to send out customized emails specifically tailored for each of your customers.
Retarget customers for necessary product sales whenever required. You are allowed to customize the store offerings for all your customers.
Advanced Shipping & Easy Returns
Shipping and logistics are the areas where e-commerce industry need to have some improvements. The idea of same-day delivery offered a drastic change in the e-commerce industry.
Shipping costs are a key consideration for customers. The return policy is always something that gains the attention of the customers. Hence the e-commerce store owners may need to make advancements in their return policy and shipping options.
Enhanced Mobile Experience
Making your online store mobile-friendly is one of the biggest ways to create a global exposure and experience the sales growth. With a mobile-friendly store or a mobile application, the store owner also experiences noticeable sales growth in the e-commerce store.
Every year, the retailers make sure to increase the mobile transactions. If your e-commerce store is not responsive yet, now is the time make it responsive. People tend to get highly exposed to their mobile devices with the advancements taking place in the mobility of the devices.
According to a report by Gartner, e-commerce shopping through mobile will be the highly utilized way in the year 2018.
Product Visualization
AR will be the future for an enhanced experience of product visualization. When an e-commerce store offers an augmented reality supported product visualization, the customer gets attracted towards the product and helps in a faster decision-making process.
The AR e-commerce trends will be seen to have an upward shift in the year 2018 due to increase in adoption of smart devices.
Voice Search
As it might be known to all, voice search is the technology for this year. In every field, voice search seems to take a noticeable place. E-commerce stores should also start optimizing their store for the ever-evolving voice search technology.
It is said that content for voice search must include textual content in the paragraph form. These things can let the e-commerce website appear in the rich snippets and the knowledge graphs.
Using tables and pictures won’t be benefitted anymore in the search engines. Increase in use of voice-enabled buttons may lead to higher conversions, thereby improving the figures of the e-commerce stores.
Revived Traditional Models
The traditional brick-and-mortar market experienced a major come back in the year 2007. Now, in the coming year, this traditional model will come back with a change.
These retail stores are planned to provide in-person digital experiences without any actual inventory. Virtual Reality will be playing a major role in the upgraded brick-and-mortar model.
For an instance, a customer can enter a shop and use the virtual reality headset to see the 3D version of the related product.
Chatbots will Ease the Experience
The key to successful e-commerce marketing lies in providing extraordinary shopping experience and satisfactory customer service.
You must put the customers first and ensure that the customers do not face any trouble. AI-powered chatbots will be seeing a rise. This will help increase the user-engagement as it provides the relevant options to the customers.
Chatbots are predicted to be seen as cheaper, smarter and globally expanded this year. Voice, as well as text-based chatbots, will be available.
Blockchain, The Game Changer
Though Blockchain is still not a full-fledged technology available, it is creating a great impression in the E-commerce Web Hosting as well. As the blockchain-based apps seem to be more promising than any other technology so far, it is expected that the entrepreneurs will be giving a new shift towards the technology in 2018.
The upcoming year will bring up more examples of blockchain-based e-commerce platforms and marketplaces, inventory management systems, and various other cryptocurrency payment systems.
Payment Options to be Updated
Whether social media payments or any other personalized payment option will pop up in the upcoming eCommerce trends. There are many options such as digital payment methods or cryptocurrencies, for the better implementation as well as the development of the personalized payment option.
Moreover, with mobile commerce taking a huge place, payments made at a mobile stage will play a huge role in the eCommerce industry.
Ultimately, eCommerce will be getting better in various ways. Better the shopping experience, bigger the sales growth.
Author Bio:
Mr. Mitul Patel, CEO & Founder of ProtonBits – A leading Magento Development company based in India & USA. From the past 7 years under his leadership, the company has delivered unparalleled and challenging custom eCommerce software to the global clients.
