Many companies have appreciated the benefits of e-commerce in the past few years and decided to transfer their products and services to digital. Now, most entrepreneurs are primarily thinking about how to sell on the Internet, not offline. Together with Retail-Loyalty, NIX Solutions‘ team will provide an outlook of e-commerce’s near future.
According to international statistics services, in 2018 the retail e-commerce market amounted to $2.9 trillion, and last year’s growth brought this figure to $3.5 trillion. The Asia-Pacific region has the largest dynamics – 25%, followed by Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, North America and Western Europe.
If we talk about countries, the leader in e-commerce sales is China (total retail sales of about $2 trillion), while only last year the market there grew by 27%. The United States ere in the second place ($600 billion) with an increase of 14%, followed by the United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, Canada, India and Russia ($26 billion, only the product business and digital downloads are considered, without accounting for the market for ordering food, travel services, tickets and money transfers) with an increase of 18.7%.
E-Commerce Trends
Convenient payments
The trend for mobile purchases and payments is actively growing. More and more customers “live” in mobile devices, so companies are more likely to think about using and setting up payment services.
Voice assistants
The number of online platforms that use voice assistants is also growing. The trend will only develop in the future: by 2022, goods or services ordering by voice may become widespread.
Robots
Chatbots, machine learning, artificial intelligence and personalization are increasingly used in e-commerce. Machine learning and big data will allow you to simulate the entire process of communication with the client, and a properly configured chat bot will allow you to put this process into practice. Thanks to this, the conversion will become higher, and staff costs will decrease.
Many companies resort to personalizing their offers to customers. By collecting data, conducting surveys and tests (including using chatbots), you can not only identify the needs more accurately, but also offer the client an individual product.
For example, Scent Bird examines your tastes and preferences through surveys and machine intelligence, and then sends a sample of perfumes that you will probably like. Some services will create them for you personally.
The same goes for online clothing platforms. The buyer no longer needs to sit for hours, choosing products from thousands of offers. An experienced chatbot learns about your preferences and picks up a wardrobe in seconds. The trend for personalization will only develop.
Pay in installments
Many companies introduce installment plans for purchases. It is an installment plan (issued as a subscription by credit card), not loans. Thanks to this, conversion on sites increases to 30%.
Parallel reality
Virtual and augmented reality technologies are being actively introduced. This allows the client to examine the product online in detail, which also increases the conversion.
What will happen
The e-commerce market is growing every year and will continue to grow. However, the growth rate will decline. For example, in 2017, the market growth was 30% compared to last year, and in 2019, the indicator dropped to 21%. This suggests that the market has a “ceiling”. Market volumes will increase due to the fact that more and more companies will develop in the digital environment.
Fulfillment and logistics give a powerful impetus to e-commerce. The more developed the logistics infrastructure, warehousing, order processing and delivery are, the better the online sales industry is developing. More and more companies are improving their systems, which also indicates the future growth of the e-commerce market.