In order to succeed in your business, you need to pay attention to some trends, as many e-commerce giants have already embraced them and are conquering the entire market. But don’t worry, because today, we want to show you a few popular strategies that don’t just apply to big players in e-commerce but also to small ones.
Based on the YOUWE report, we have gained the most important information about this topic and provided them below. Hope you enjoy!
Trend 1: Composable Commerce
Currently, most online shops use traditional platforms. But, a composable approach is the best way to create outstanding experiences – in the future, this approach will be chosen by more and more companies.
The concept of composable commerce is built on the idea of flexibility and composability in e-commerce. By having such a platform, marketing and development teams can operate independently and innovate at their own pace. Therefore, marketers and developers can now focus on innovation and higher-value tasks instead of submitting IT tickets for every change.
The unique complexity of your business and the ever-evolving needs and demands of your customers can’t be met by a single vendor. Unfortunately, a traditional commerce platform offered tightly coupled features and services as an all-in-one package, discouraging integration with existing systems and best-of-breed PBCs.
But, with composable commerce, you eliminate the risk of buying basic out-of-the-box capabilities and gain more control over your application’s functionality and performance.
Trend 2: Personalization
Personalization in e-commerce means dynamically showing content, product recommendations, and specific offers based on:
💰 previous actions,
💰 browsing behavior,
💰 purchase history,
💰 demographics,
💰 and other personal information.
It is more and more important to not only engage shoppers but also to increase repeat purchases, sales, and conversions. Do you want to make your customers feel special and give them the best experience possible? Well, this can be achieved through personalization.
How to make personalization play on your side? Think about:
âž¡ personalizing your content based on previously gathered data,
âž¡ personalizing your product recommendations,
âž¡ personalizing cart abandonment marketing.
According to Forrester’s research, 77% of consumers favor brands that provide personalized services or experiences. So keep that in mind for your business.
Trend 3: Total Experience
The total experience is a business strategy that accelerates growth across multiple touchpoints by integrating:
- employee experience,
- customer experience,
- user experience,
- and multi-experience
Like it has been said before: it’s all about experiences!
A great experience is what your customers expect and, most importantly, what they pay for. The competition is just a few clicks away if you don’t offer an excellent service. And meanwhile, the total experience through holistic management of stakeholder experiences can lead to greater customer and employee confidence, satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy.
Trend 4: Generative AI
Over the last couple of years, Artificial Intelligence has been at the top of every trend list. And it still will be.
You can take your e-commerce platform to the next level with AI solutions, such as:
- Dynamic Pricing,
- Demand Forecasting,
- and Customer Profiling.
Gartner predicts that Generative AI will be the big trend in e-commerce in 2022 and beyond. Moreover, according to MIT Technology Review, Generative AI is one of the most promising advances in AI over the last decade.
Some facts about Generative AI:
💥 The term refers to programs that generate plausible content from existing content, such as text, audio files, or images.
💥 By generating innovative new creations, it does not repeat the old ones. By learning the underlying pattern, computers can develop similar content based on the input.
💥 It learns about artifacts from data.
Trend 5: Hyper-automation
Using hyper-automation, you can quickly identify, vet, and automate as many IT and business processes as possible.
An orchestrated use of multiple tools, platforms, or technologies is involved in this process, including:
- Artificial intelligence (AI)
- Machine learning
- Event-driven software architecture
- Robotic process automation (RPA)
- Business process management (BPM)
- Intelligent business process management suites (iBPMS)
- Integration platform as a service (iPaaS)
- Low-code/no-code tools
- Packaged software
- Other types of decision, process, and task automation tools
There are more and more tools and systems available today. Increasing automation is necessary to make your organization as efficient as possible. And rather than tailoring solutions or using manual processes, you can use out-of-the-box solutions.
Trend 6: Visual Search Commerce
Online shopping possibilities such as Google Shopping and social shopping are becoming more popular every day.
In order to discover new brands and products, visual search and image recognition are becoming increasingly popular. Using machine learning technology, visual search and image recognition engines identify objects within images and search for images related to those objects.
With retail personalization, brands have the opportunity to foster deeper relationships with their shoppers by making it easier for them to find the products they need.
Those brands that adopt visual search first will redesign their websites, and the rest will follow in the coming years. Digital commerce revenue should increase by 30 percent as a result.
Especially fashion and home goods retailers will benefit from this.
Trend 7: Omnichannel Time
In the past, you needed to ensure that your brick-and-mortar stores and the online shop offered the same experience. Today, you need to maximize your omnichannel strategy to the fullest extent.
You should be present across every possible channel, and you should offer the same shoppable experience across all platforms. Online shops are just the beginning. Social media channels can be used as extensions of your online shop, where you can sell products directly.
But that’s not all.
An interesting trend to watch in 2022 is shoppable emails.
For the first time, AMP-enabled email clients will allow users to transact and complete purchases directly from their emails. As a result, buyers will no longer need to be redirected to the merchant’s website to complete their purchase.
Trends for B2B
#1 Direct-to-consumer
60% of millennials do their shopping online and are used to buying directly from brands.
Brands and manufacturers can benefit from direct-to-consumer (D2C) e-commerce platforms in the following ways:
💸 Connect with these buyers.
💸 Enhance the customer experience.
💸 Using data to innovate products, understand customer journeys, and market your products.
During the pandemic, D2C turned out to be an urgent need rather than a trend for most B2B companies. For a B2B company, changing its strategy to D2C has the following advantages:
- It eliminates the middlemen and results in a cheaper product, higher margins, or both.
- The end-users of your products are being contacted, not just the companies that transport or sell them.
- D2C allows you to not only sell directly to consumers but also to hear directly from them.
#2 Marketplaces
B2B companies can use this second B2B trend to start their D2C strategy: marketplaces.
In five years, McKinsey predicts that marketplaces will account for more than 30 percent of global corporate revenues. What’s more, B2C marketplaces are expected to reach $3.5 trillion by 2024, while B2B marketplaces will reach $12 trillion.
Online marketplaces are a clear indication that the marketplace revolution is already underway, so B2B companies should take advantage of it as well.
“Many B2B firms are experimenting with marketplaces, both selling their products through 3rd party marketplaces as well as augmenting their own product lines by offering adjacent partner products through their own online marketplace.”
– Peter Sheldon, Senior Director of Commerce Strategy at Adobe
To Sum Up
These are the most popular trends that your business can benefit from as well. The most important thing is to tailor them well to your brand and monitor the results to correct mistakes and make improvements on an ongoing basis. We hope you find this report helpful!
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