What Are The Latest Trends In E-Commerce In 2019?

If you’re looking for a time to up the ante on your e-commerce game, the New Year might be the time to do it. Whether you’re looking into a new e-commerce venture, or if you want to improve your business, knowing the latest e-commerce trends can do tremendous help to get you in the right “groove” and get the most returns. So what’s in it for you in terms of your e-commerce business this year?

• Global e-Commerce Changes
• A Deeper Dive Into Marketing And Sales
• Payments Will Take New Forms
• More Tech, More Personalization
• 2019 Is Still About Innovation

Global e-Commerce Changes

Before we dwell on specific trends in the realm of e-Commerce, it might help to look into global trends that can dominate the e-Commerce market. It might be of interest to business enthusiasts that a lot of rising technologies and trends may help you achieve e-Commerce success. For instance:

• Welcome the new AI retailers: Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) may soon allow the rise of AI retailers. Service providers of chatbots and related technologies may soon help you get an AI to be in charge of your e-Commerce sales – removing a lot of the work (and the costs) from you and your team.

• Shop wherever, whenever you want: You need to take advantage of today’s smartphone reality – almost everyone has a smartphone, and a lot of apps already make these smartphones do a lot of tasks for their users. You can utilize this and make your e-Commerce service much more accessible to consumers and their phones. This can greatly encourage them to make purchases through your service.

• Get items in social media: Don’t underestimate the power of social media! Social media platforms help you form a bridge between your platform and your customers. This also means helping your customers get encouraged to make a purchase as they don’t have to leave said platform at all.

A Deeper Dive Into Marketing And Sales

E-Commerce this year may see a lot of changes to our approach with regards to selling products online. This is especially with technology that allows sellers and distributors to have a better idea on how to engage with users and customers. For instance:

• Influencer marketing still rocks: Who better to endorse your products but influencers that can actually tap into your target market? Instead of getting high-end celebrities and largely unknown individuals to showcase your products, influencers with a sizable following in social media can definitely help your enterprise shine. This will be more evident in 2019, as the growth of influencers are still at an all-time high.

• Emphasize multi-channel marketing: If you’re looking into better marketing methods for e-Commerce, it helps to tackle a lot of channels at your disposal. Aside from influencer marketing, tap into mobile advertising and social media marketing. Try focusing on getting traction from media and channels that get the most exposure to your target market.

• Develop omni-channel personalization: You need to tap into omni-channel marketing and personalization. This means going beyond a particular marketing media and instead try to reach through all sorts of channels at once. You can start doing this by putting as much focus on your content as you do your service and products. Remember, your content breathes life into your product’s offerings – so you need to show users how awesome their lives would be with your products. What better way to do this than with a story?
• Analytics will constantly improve: Businesses, especially e-Commerce, will see a spike of improvement when it comes to analytics. This is important, as markets can get increasingly complex nowadays. Having access to information such as your returns, your costs, and your marketing methods can be extremely helpful. And more advanced analytics trends such as mobile and real-time assessment can make your e-Commerce business fly.

Payments Will Take New Forms

Changes won’t happen in structures alone, though. Payments themselves may have completely new forms beginning 2019, especially with various changes in the market. For instance:

• Smarter, Mobile Payment Processes? You should probably look into smarter, more mobile forms of payment processes. Digital wallets such as those from credit cards, and even options such as PayPal and PayMaya allow users to pay for their goods and services on-the-go. If your e-Commerce platform supports such a feature, you’re likely going to have a much better chance of attracting lasting customers.  

• Goodbye Free Returns? E-Commerce return rates happen 2 to 4 times more than traditional retail, and this has cost e-Commerce retailers a lot. Free returns and free shipping have caused an increase of managing returns. Companies like Amazon have announced banning “serial returners,” or people with a habit of returning their purchases.  
• Say hello to sales taxes? Aside from free returns, sales taxes might start to be a thing in a few years. And while shoppers may be discouraged from shopping from retailers charging sales taxes, a sales tax might be a norm in the future. If you do plan on implementing a sales tax in your e-Commerce venture, try to clarify with your state or region how exactly your sales tax will work so you can explain it properly to your consumers and customers.

More Tech, More Personalization

Aside from changes in the global e-Commerce scene, there will be a ton of changes in what exactly happens inside e-Commerce. These range from better technology, to more customization and personalization options for users. For instance:

• e-Commerce needs progressive web apps: A progressive web app (or PWA) allows your e-Commerce venture to be more compatible with mobile. This can save you a lot of money creating a separate e-Commerce website and mobile app. PWAs are more of a hybrid software that allows your users to receive push notifications from their phones, remove updates, have offline accessibility, and load much faster.

• Welcome chatbots, AI-assisted partners: Aside from actual AI retailers, there’s a high chance of companies actually relying on chatbots and AI-assisted partners to do various aspects of their e-Commerce venture. This greatly reduces time and costs on the long run, as an AI can be advanced enough to get trained on certain functions, and do them efficiently and with minimal supervision.

• Custom packaging is still awesome: Today’s market has grown to have consumers with a penchant for customization. Why settle for customizable products when packaging itself can be customizable? It might help your e-Commerce venture to have a plethora of options for customizing the way your products and services are packaged and delivered to your customers. A little goes a long way, and in e-Commerce, sometimes it’s the thought that can earn you profit.

• Voice search works: What better way to look for products to buy than to skip the entire long process of typing keywords? Voice recognition technology today may soon pave way to voice search, and it helps to make sure you optimize your e-Commerce offerings to be easily recognizable via voice search.

2019 Is Still About Innovation

Trends for your e-commerce business this year has a lot to do with innovation, perhaps more so in 2019 than in other years. The arrival of social media, networking, and digital marketing also means a lot more industries have become extremely accessible to everyone else. This means business owners have a lot to do in terms of making products and services much more innovative for the consumer. If you want to start an e-commerce business, you’ve got to make a lot of things much easier, much accessible, and much more responsive for your potential customers.