Ecommerce has seen a meteoric rise in recent years, especially in 2020 during the pandemic. Customers and clients expect to be able to get products, goods, and services with a few clicks of a mouse. If you own an eCommerce business and want to position your company for success in 2021, it helps to stay abreast of new trends. Below, we’ve rounded up some of the new technologies in the eCommerce industry may want to adopt in the coming year.
Keep reading to learn more.
Voice search and SEO trends
Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are all changing the game in our increasingly digital world. These virtual personal assistants are not only helpful partners in people’s day-to-day life, but they’re also changing search trends. Instead of typing a question directly into Google, people are asking their virtual assistants questions out loud. As more and more people rely on voice search to find answers, SEO will see a shift in the types of phrases being searched.
Automated everything
Automated marketing is a great way to modernize your business and speed up manual tasks.
Don’t know where to start with your automated marketing? Check out some of the ideas below and consider implementing the relevant ideas.
- Automated and schedules social posts: With automated social media posts, you can strategize your calendar and posts ahead of time. This can help you if you want to send out posts during a certain time period or before a big release.
- Anniversary or birthday emails: Anniversary or birthday emails are a great way to show your clients’ recognition and appreciation. To get this information, you need to ask for a customer’s birthday and email. When their birthday is coming up, you can send out a discount with a special birthday message. And, you can send this same type of email out for any anniversaries as well.
- Engagement emails: Did a customer abandon their online shopping cart? Did the customer end up completing a purchase? In both of these situations, you can use automated engagement emails to sweeten the deal. A well-timed discount code can be the difference between a purchase and no purchase.
- Surveys: Surveys are a valuable tool to find out more about a customer’s experience. Did the customer successfully find what they were looking for? Did the customer have a good experience? You can even showcase great survey responses on your main web page.
- Newsletters: Newsletters tend to be more labor-intensive because they’re longer and move involved. However, they’re an excellent way to keep customers interested in the happenings at your company. You can send out newsletters weekly, monthly, or quarterly, depending on what makes the most sense for your business. Newsletters can cover what’s going on behind the scenes, new products, new services, and just a general overview of company happenings.
- Welcome emails: When a customer subscribes to your email list, don’t just ignore them. An immediate, automated welcome email with a discount is a great way to show your gratitude. Plus, it can encourage the customer to go to your website to shop and complete a purchase.
- Automated chatbots: Chatbots deliver the information customers need and answers to commonly asked questions.
Retention strategies beat out the acquisition.
When it comes to finding new customers, costs are rising incredibly fast. To combat these rising costs, brands are starting to prioritize customer retention. Instead of spending advertising budgets trying to attract new customers, companies invest that money into incentivizing their existing base of customers to go back to their websites and spend more.
Retention improvements of just 5% typically increase profits by 25% to 95%, from a historical standpoint. Using a subscription model is another way to improve retention and recurring income. To engage with your current customers, consider personalizing your email campaigns and sending direct text messages. Personalized emails can drive much more revenue than generic ones.
Another way to focus on and boost retention is by incorporating a rewards program. Customers who join a rewards program are much more likely to come back and make another purchase. Here are some tips for making a loyalty program effective:
- Offer customers VIP access to special discount codes, product launches, and other exclusive offers.
- Make sure any rewards points can be redeemed immediately.
- Introduce time-sensitive offers to encourage customers to buy within a certain time period
New Consumer Behaviors
Before COVID-19 made its appearance globally, certain items like groceries and hygiene products were rarely bought online. However, the pandemic has changed pretty much everything when it comes to consumer behavior. Now, consumers expect quick, convenient online shopping for their products.
The top online shopping products include food, health items, home essentials, and hygiene products. The top reasons consumers bought online items included lower prices, direct delivery to home, convenience, and 24/7 availability.
Another interesting factoid about the changes in consumer behavior is that when shoppers go into stores, they buy more at once to make fewer trips out overall.
Besides buying more online, shoppers also tried new brands and stores. After the pandemic is over, many shoppers agreed via surveys to continue to shop online more frequently.
To take advantage of these changing consumer behaviors, consider implementing the following changes:
- Simplify and enhance your checkout process: Allow shoppers to save their information and enable one-tap checkouts.
- Expand checkout options: Give customers multiple options for getting their products like local delivery or local pickup.
- Allow installment payments: Give shoppers the option of buying products now and paying overtime by incorporating installment payments.
- Precalculate shipping expenses: Make sure your customers know exactly what the total amount they will pay is.
Wrapping Up: The Future of Ecommerce
Nobody can predict the future with certainty, but it’s almost a guarantee that the eCommerce sector will continue to grow as online shopping growth is here to stay. If you’re looking to increase your own eCommerce business growth, you can use this article as a jumping-off point.
