The e-commerce industry has shown steady gains year after year. The phenomenal increase in the number of online shoppers across the globe says it all. The future looks bright and optimistic, as the industry is poised to grow by leaps and bounds in 2017 too. It is important to know about the trends which are likely to set new benchmarks for e-commerce in the current year.
Here are the e-commerce trends that are going to be hot in 2017
1. Mobile Engagement
In 2017, the focus is going to be on mobile engagement. Smartphones are more accessible to a larger segment of users as they are less expensive compared to computers. Also, mobiles and tablets facilitate shopping on the go. Therefore, online sellers would be looking to cash on the trend and have mobile apps for reaping the benefits of the boom in mobile transactions. Additionally, they want to provide a seamless mobile experience to the buyers.
2. Use of Social Channels for Content Marketing
Online sellers are now aware of the crucial role that social channels play in the marketing process. As a result, they are investing in high-quality content that drives interaction and discovery via social channels. Till date, only a small proportion of sellers have been advertising on social channels such as Pinterest, but more of them are likely to increase the budget for paid social media in the current year.
3. Use of Analytics for Understanding the Customer Behaviour
Another trend that is going to make it big in e-commerce industry in 2017 is that of analysing and using data and statistics for understanding the customer behaviour. The data related to products and customers is collected and compiled. It is used to predict the buyers’ behaviour and focus on personalised selling. The idea is to make use of improved analytics algorithms to ensure that every individual buyer gets a unique, tailored experience.
While these are the trends that are hot, there are others that are not:
4. The Amazon Obsession
Unlike the previous years, the Amazon obsession is no longer hot. Challenges like the capacity to scale in the global markets and shipping obstacles are bigger issues for online sellers as compared to competition from Amazon. As a result, more of them plan to invest for competing with challenges other than Amazon.
5. Hyped Technologies
Surveys have shown that online sellers are not showing any interest in the much-hyped technologies such as AR, VR, IoT, 3D Printing and 2-hour shipping. Conversely, emerging technologies such as predictive pricing and mobile payments are expected to do a little better as a majority of merchants are planning to invest in trials for these technologies.
6. In-Store Digitization
In the past few years, vendors have been exposed to a myriad of solutions for digitising their store experience. However, these have not given them great results in terms of ROI. Consequently, only a small percentage of the vendors have deployed clienteling tools or have an active mobile point of sale (mPOS).
It is important to know about all these trends and consider them while investing in e-commerce website development in 2017. If you want to have an e-commerce website developed according to these latest trends in the industry, get in touch with our expert developers.
