E-commerce marketing has changed dramatically in recent years and the rapid progress does not show any signs of slow down. According to Statistica, the e-commerce industry will rise to over 4.8 trillion US dollars by 2021. With its overwhelming growth, the industry also experiences major changes that are exciting as well as unnerving.
Many new trends in B2C e-commerce are still awaited and expected in 2020. B2C e-commerce stores need to keep up with the new trends to remain competitive and drive the business forward.
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Here are 5 top e-commerce trends to look out for in 2020:
1. Social Commerce
The concept of social commerce has evolved with the popularity of social media platforms as it provides a personalized and targeted in-app shopping experience for customers. The content gets viral on social media due to the very nature of these platforms and ultimately, plays an important role in word-of-mouth marketing. The social commerce platforms include buying buttons, retail store pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.
It is becoming one of the newest B2C e-commerce trends because it has a myriad of benefits like increasing website traffic, customer engagement, sales, and revenues. It is no longer a platform where people only post the products for advertisement but they can buy the products quickly and conveniently from their preferred social media platforms. Today, most of the social media platforms have included social selling features like discount codes, buying buttons. This trend reduces the time and effort of shoppers to buy online, and improve their e-commerce experience.
This trend will continue as we move into 2020 and online retailers will need more creativity and innovation to leverage the social selling trend. On that note, you will also need to invest in technology and tools to engage with the maximum audience on social platforms. The top e-commerce platforms like StoreHippo offer easy solutions for defining your brand presence on social platforms. You can easily set up your stores directly on these platforms and improve your traffic and conversions.
2. Product visualization and interaction
Exploring the products is very easy for customers but most of them hesitate to buy products because they are not sure if the product exactly matches their needs. The high-quality images, well-written product descriptions, online reviews, and recommendations are not enough as buyers want to see and feel the product to eliminate all their doubts before purchasing the product.
In B2C e-commerce, the importance of images cannot be underestimated as 59 % of customers consider images as the topmost important factor while making an online purchase. The trend of 3D imaging, virtual reality, and augmented reality is gaining popularity in the B2C e-commerce industry as it supports the overall customer journey. The right product visualization boosts sales and decreases the product return rate. The interactive product visualization provides access to the product in an innovative manner and lets the customers explore the products online. These experiences empower consumers to interact with the products to get every detail, visualize the interior parts, animate the moving parts, customize components, switch among material and color options, and much more.
Going forward, product visualization and interaction will parallel various technical developments in context to augmented and virtual reality, 3D rendering to provide a more realistic touch of products to the consumers. The product visualizations are increasingly coming to mobile space and technologies will allow exploring these areas via mobile devices.
3. Personalized pricing
The concept of personalized pricing is as old as commerce or B2C e-commerce itself. A small shop owner judges a prospect based on certain factors like the dress, way of speaking, requirements, etc. and then, offers a special price – “This price is only for YOU”.
And today, customers are used to standardized pricing based on the logic that the price for the same products should not vary on different channels except shipping, distribution and taxation costs. Nonetheless, most of the online retailers are returning to the tactics of personalized B2C e-commerce pricing by leveraging the power of data generated by the digital footprints of customers on the site. This data is further used to set personalized prices for different customers.
There is a huge rise of personalized pricing in the retail industry because businesses can customize the shopping experience of customers by using the data, which is more likely to achieve customer satisfaction. Most of the retailers following this technique offer customized prices based on their assessment of customer behavior. In the era of gaining customer loyalty, the idea of personalized pricing is to give better prices and deals with highly loyal customers and preferable sent one-on-one.
This will be one of the hottest trends of 2020 in the e-commerce industry. The top e-commerce platforms like StoreHippo provide dynamic features for optimal product and price management. By optimal, it means the price of selling the product to customers while making the maximum possible profit from the sale. As we move into 2020, personalized pricing will continue to be an important factor for the e-commerce industry.
4. New payment modes
There are some features that a B2C e-commerce store cannot do without, payment modes,top the list of such features. In the competitive online marketplace, online retailers need to provide several payment options for a better and frictionless checkout experience.
The process of buying plays an important role to complete the order. The rate of shopping cart abandonment is one of the crucial issues faced by the e-commerce industry. Over 70% of buyers having clear intent end up not completing the order due to barriers in the checkout process. A good payment gateway ensures an intuitive process that allows you to capture most of the sales. Well, it is possible to get a quick checkout by providing the user’s favorite payment method on e-commerce sites. It is necessary for B2C e-commerce players to follow this trend as it pushes the customer to complete the order. If customers do not find their preferred payment method, they are likely to drop the process right away and end up buying nothing. Most of the e-commerce businesses are utilizing regular payment methods of debit/credit cards, internet banking along with a variety of digital wallets. The trend is growing and will continue in 2020 and beyond.
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5. Multi-platform customer journey
The next year will be all about “capturing the right audience, wherever they are”, which means multi-device and multi-platform e-commerce. The online journey of a customer is no more linear as the prospects keep on switching between different platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Email, Snapchat, SMS and so on. Providing multi-platform messaging experience to the customers have enormous benefits and one of the biggest advantage is – “Getting the right target audience at the right time, at the right audience, with right action”.
Here, we are not only talking about multi-platform messaging but the catch is Platform-specific messaging. A simple example here is individual seeking a long-form of content will like informational newsletter on email and other individuals may like quick-hitting information via SMS or push notifications. The main point in this trend is adopting the approach of multi-channel in B2C e-commerce. For this purpose, you will need to know how to use specific channels, how to provide what customer desires, how to engage and nurture them on different channels.
Storehippo offers unified notification which includes SMS, email, browser and web to help you engage, retain and convert your buyers.
Wrap-up
The future of e-commerce is being transformed by new technology, tools, and trends. To stay ahead in the competitive online market in the coming years, you will need a better, customized, and interactive e-commerce platform service that can help you with your business. Looking ahead, 2020 will bring a lot to the B2C e-commerce world. be well-prepared with StoreHippo and stay ahead of the competition. Sign up Today and get a FREE trial of 14 days.!!
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