The staggering manner with which E-commerce is growing in 2020, the multi-trillion industry may explode to unbelievable figures, given the raging top ecommerce trends 2020. Don’t believe us, do you? Well, the prediction of figures of 4.206 trillion USD for retail E-commerce sales worldwide in 2020, up from 3.53 trillion USD in 2019, is a colossal figure to fake and forget.
We notice a dramatic change in the purchasing power of China, India, and South Asian consumers due to growing Internet penetration and mobile device accessibility. That’s quite a significant shift there from the United States and Europe to the eastern side. Responding to a cutting-edge virtual retail space, entrepreneurs have eagerly joined the race with dynamic advancements in technology, marketing methods, and personalized delivery. So, watch out these top eCommerce trends 2020.
- The Diverse Potential of Virtual Reality
Online shopping provides the instant gratification of saving time and money, especially with the privacy of researching products, checking prices, and observing feedback, but it also lacks one important facet – look-and-feel of a real product.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual (VR) are distinguished advancements of technology for visualizing products right at your home. AR technologies may arm E-commerce stores for providing excellent, rich, and firsthand buying experience. Some estimates tell us that over 120, 000 stores will have the game-changing AR technologies by 2022.
E-commerce giants, such as Amazon, already feature 450 startups as VR technology companies and 200 VR headsets that enable virtual showrooms for real-life visualization of products and high-quality shopping experience.
- AI and Machine Learning for eCommerce
A customer’s journey from exploring products to buying them gives actionable insights. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning drive E-commerce campaigns around them, studying repetitive human habits and patterns of shopping.
From product and search recommendations to enhancing the shopping experience through personalization, these technologies facilitate eCommerce companies to display relevant results according to a customer’s profile.
However, the current rosy picture wasn’t the same before the inception of modern algorithms. Customer preferences cover a broad range of elements, particularly in color, taste, budget, gender, etc. Inefficient techniques and irrelevant recommendations, even cross-selling, didn’t work in this manner for delivering quality shopping experiences.
- Voice-based Commerce
Commerce… uses voice? Be it Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri or Google Voice Assistant, the remarkable rise in voice-based searches also indicate a trend of shopping using voice. With billions of Smartphones embracing voice assistants for users, the growth of voice shopping is pegged at 40 billion consumers by 2020.
From exploring sports store to checking food menu items, the multi-tasking people use this hands-free, intuitive method for ordering products. Equipped with improvements in algorithms for accents, languages, and voicing patterns, voice assistants can become the coolest features for eCommerce buying experiences.
- Headless and API-driven eCommerce
Not in a gory manner, but headless eCommerce removes all design constraints for small retailers to develop their own customized space with a simple API and alluring front-end. The restrictions of pre-defined experiences for end-users and administrators go for a spin-ride as creativity sets in.
Database and platform editing and coding span a large amount of time, which hampers the already complicated, latched up front-end and back-end development sides.
The decoupled front-end presentation layer opens the gates for the store to run uniquely strategized SEO, digital marketing, and content marketing campaigns.
- Heterogeneous Mobile Payment Systems
One of the recent top ecommerce trends 2020 suggest a multi-fold increase in mobile device shoppers. In only America, 4 out of 5 people shop online, where 50% of them use a mobile device. Europeans are a notch higher with 64% people shopping online and 55% doing that using a mobile device. Various E-commerce giants and startups have inducted user-friendly mobile payment systems for improving payment experience.
We can consider the case of popular apps like Swiggy, which offers various payment platforms, including UPI payment gateways like PhonePe and Google Pay, Card payment platforms, e-Wallets, Net-banking, Food Cards like Zeta, Sodexo, and so on. People enjoy the convenience and paying money using a secure payment system is one of them.
- Short Video Marketing for Consumers
Wyzowl reports that a whopping 87% businesses use video for marketing. And, guess what? It works! 62% of consumers declare that they watch product reviews before selecting a product for purchase. As the perfect marketing tool, short videos can enrapture audience attention quite easily.
Being an E-commerce business owner is difficult with the contemporaries charming their way off to customers and sealing their loyalties. Enticing short videos (considering the low attention span of consumers) can increase conversion rates to higher figures.
- Big data for Personalized Experiences
Can data and privacy go hand-in-hand together? Rather a controversial topic this one, it has made both people and marketers intrigued and surprised at the same time. Technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning cast data collection in a different light.
Some may cast aspersions about using valuable data from people’s lives, but it offers the advantage of providing highly personalized shopping experiences. The double-edged sword that big data is, the ramifications and benefits will be known in the future of E-commerce industry.
- Environmentally-friendly Shopping by Customers
Environment-conscious customers are looking for eco-friendly alternative products from the sellers or manufacturers. They would prefer spending higher on a sustainable, biodegradable product than buying those that lay waste on the ocean and disrupt aquatic life.
Some brands have reworked their strategies by enrolling sophisticated technology stacks for producing efficient, humane, and reliable commodities for the public. Starting with sustainable manufacturing to zero-waste packaging, brands have come with new guidelines for environmentally-mindful products.
Big brand names like Amazon and Walmart rolled out their specific guidelines regarding packaging for sellers and are charging fees for non-compliance. The pioneering or emerging E-commerce brands should adopt this practice too.
- Social Media E-commerce
Commerce over social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. isn’t anything new, but it is a trend definitely to watch out for. As we move into the middle of 2020, direct purchases from social media will gain immense traction. Startups are using the best eCommerce platforms and implementing this strategy successfully.
Brands need to realize their base of customers on various social media platforms. For example, if a lipstick brand observes a huge flock of customers being active on Instagram, then they are most likely to purchase it from there.
Businesses need to captivate their consumers from the social networking channels using different features and functions provided on the platforms and spur conversion rates. Tools and technologies play a pivotal role in engaging the audience and understanding their expectations through interactions.
- PWAs and AMPs for Ecommerce
One of the top eCommerce trends 2020 highlights the incorporation of Progressive Web App or PWAs by a myriad of eCommerce websites. Be it Aliexpress or any other eCommerce retailer, PWA helps them bring optimal usability through brilliant look-and-feel just like the native mobile applications on Smartphones or Tablets.
Ecommerce giants have begun packaging PWA and AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages for instant loading on a mobile-first approach. Google’s mobile-first indexing lays priority on mobile optimization in search results, where users directly receive better answers for their queries and businesses increase their conversion rates.
What we are witnessing in Ecommerce trends right now doesn’t stop at this. The evolving customer behavior leads to high-tech innovation and personalization, evoking creative disruption in the sector for opening never-seen-before like opportunities and threats and inspiring challenges.
If we have missed out any major eCommerce trend this year, do comment below & let us know!
