What eCommerce trends are making headlines in 2021?
The world of eCommerce is fast-paced and always changing.
Blink and you’ll miss the enormous number of technological tornados that blow every which way as trends rise and fall faster than the speed of light.
As an eCommerce store owner, or someone thinking of taking your business online, it’s crucial to be in touch with the times, hence our article today.
From AI-powered recommendation engines to augmented reality shopping, you’ll learn all about the modern advances that are shaking up the eCommerce landscape.
As a result, you’ll be better placed to make important decisions on how to reap your share of the productivity harvest from prevailing eCommerce trends.
In this article, we’ll be discussing 5 interesting eCommerce trends to watch out for in 2021.
Let’s get started:
1. Rise of Social Proof
Did you know that customer reviews are critical to purchase decisions?
It’s true.
According to a 2020 BrightLocal Consumer Review Survey, close to 8 in every 10 people trust online reviews.
Hence, there’s a need for eCommerce stores to have an appealing and effective review list, just as much as it is vital to offer quality service or products.
Consequently, many Shopify stores are turning to social proof platforms to improve review layout and generation for better lead conversion.
These enable B2C businesses to have better control over their review process, and build customer trust and loyalty.
The typical social proof app includes certain pre-set skills to get you started.
From there, you can manage reviews, offer review incentives, and choose appealing review design layouts, all in one place.
The platform then learns from the feedback of these actions through the power of machine learning algorithms. Over time, it gets better at selling as it feeds on market data to craft better social selling strategies.
In a nutshell, social proof apps are emerging as one out of the standout eCommerce trends of 2021, enabling online stores to better manage and automatically grow reviews.
2. Rise of Voice Search
Voice search has become part and parcel of our daily routine.
It is estimated that over 72% of voice-activated speaker owners use voice search in their day-to-day affairs, a large portion of which is devoted to queries related to online shopping. This is according to a Google report titled “Think With Google.”
Because of this growing popularity of voice search, brands are also starting to consider other aspects of branding beyond visualization.
Voice Search Optimization is becoming a big concern for the modern-day eCommerce store. It no longer cuts it to only practice regular SEO best practices like keyword placement, backlinking, etc.
Additionally, your business has to consider the audio perception of landing pages and optimize for voice search.
Voice search optimization is a big deal in 2021, and you can learn all about it with these advanced AI training tutorials, which covers many other AI trends modern businesses are rushing to implement today.
Do you have a voice-search friendly website?
If not, click on the link above for a beginner-friendly course that covers how to customize your business website to the trends of today.
You’ll get the full scope on how to easily add a voice search API to your website.
3. Augmented Reality Shopping
If you’ve snooped around the Nike website lately, you might have noticed a VR shoe testing experience where you can have your shoe size estimated with a simple phone scan.
This is one of many instances of AR product testing in action, as the concept starts to live up to its billing by enabling leads to visualize a purchase before committing.
In 2019, Gartner gave a huge endorsement to AR shopping.
The planet’s largest advisory company estimated that 100 million shoppers will embrace AR shopping by 2020.
From what we’ve seen in 2021, you’d be hard pressed to argue against Gartner’s statistics.
Take Home Depot, for example. This home improvement giant uses augmented reality to enable you to visualize your interior design choices.
Factoring in the dimensions of the target room, including shadows and furnishings by the power of computer vision, the Project Color App virtually layers paint choices on your walls.
It does this by combining actual real word elements with CGI, or computer-generated imagery, with the final image processed via an optical combiner, in this case, your phone’s camera.
As a result, you can see home improvements through your phone before making any structural changes.
4. Smart Product Recommendation
Does your store have an AI-powered product recommendation engine?
If not, you’re missing out on a huge number of complementary sales.
No longer is it only a reserve for eCommerce giants, production recommendation engines are an important part of marketing strategies for businesses both big and small.
Through the power of machine learning, AI-driven recommendation systems analyze historical behavior and interests.
For example, if a buyer purchases carrots from your store, the ML engine suggests buying cabbages and oranges as well because many other customers did the same.
The algorithms learn from past purchase histories of previous customers to offer suggestions to new buyers following in the same pattern.
Is a product recommendation system something that could benefit your business?
Then you’ll find this article on how to learn AI from scratch in seven simple steps very useful.
AI, and machine learning specifically, is at the heart of product recommendation engines. With a better understanding of the concept, you’ll be able to better learn how to finetune your recommendation system to better tap into your market.
5. Chatbots For Sales
How are chatbots firing up the sales process for online stores?
AI-powered chatbots are helping businesses with lead conversion by turning wandering purchase interest into actionable buying intent.
First, these chatbots provide an incredible first impression to break the ice. They enable your business to interact with customers more intimately, acknowledging first-time customers by name and making them feel welcomed.
Additionally, chatbots increase retention time by speeding up live response times.
About 20% of customers will go back on a buying decision if responses aren’t timely, states a Forrester survey. By accelerating conversations, chatbots increase purchase success rates.
Here’s an example of Chatbots in action. My experience with Seattle Ballooning’s Chatbot.
From a predetermined database, the above chatbot was able to turn causal browsing into a solid offer, complete with a service link.
Beyond this example, chatbots also reduce cart abandonment by offering discounts on shipping or promotional offers like “buy now, pay later,” etc.
Additionally, Chatbots take charge of frequently asked questions (FAQs) and can also collect feedback by imploring product reviews.
Chatbots are only one way artificial intelligence is making businesses reliant on eCommerce more successful. For more options, you should check out this article highlighting 7 key pointers for eCommerce web development that produces results.
Complete with information on how AI can help your business with better customer targeting, this helpful piece illustrates how artificial intelligence can work for you.
Conclusion
Did you find an eCommerce trend you liked?
Will you be moving forward with its business implementation?
Even if you won’t be tapping into some of these applications right away, I hope that this article on interesting eCommerce trends to watch out for in 2021 will still be helpful to your business nonetheless.
With many B2C businesses embracing digitalization projects, eCommerce is at the pinnacle of its importance today, especially so in a society where plenty of sales take place online.
By understating the latest in technology, consumer expectations, and retailing trends, you can better finetune your sales and marketing strategies to generate more leads and grow loyalty to your brand.
Additionally, you can identify cost-saving opportunities, and increase conversion effectiveness through discrete marketing tactics.
No longer the future but the inevitable present, eCommerce is an integral part of running a successful business in the digital age.
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