eCommerce Trends in 2017

It is that time of the year again when the web weaves its predictions. As one wise man said, ‘It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future’. But, we have always been enamored by predictions as it offers a semblance of control and certainty.

Experts have predicted many trends like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data-as-a-Service (DaaS), Same-Day-Delivery, Social Commerce, unified commerce etc including the ones given below.

We have merely singled out the below trends because we believe these trends will become mainstream in the coming year.

ECommerce merchants must be ready to adopt them as soon as possible.

Before We Begin – A Few Statistics On eCommerce

Trends For 2017

Dynamic Personalization and Customization

In a tailor-made service, you fit the cloth according to the size and taste of the customer; not just the taste and strength of the designer.”- Dateme Tamuno

Personalization and Customization are already happening but this technology will become more refined.  It will become highly relevant and personalized, location-specific, guided by social connections, delivering real-time information to the customer’s device.

Content Personalization and Product Customization will become a powerful marketing strategy. Products customized on the basis of the preferences of the customer will bring about significantly higher benefits for customers in terms of willingness to pay, purchase intention, and attitude toward the product than standard products.

Starbucks

With about 90 million transactions a week, Starbucks knows a lot about what people are buying, where they’re buying, how they’re buying and it combines this with other data like weather, promotions, inventory, insights into local events, consumers’ purchase history with location and time of day and uses this to make suggestions to deliver better personalized service to customers.

Statistics 

Companies using online personalization deliver 5-8x ROI on marketing spend and lift sales by 10% or more.

Mobile Payments

By mobile payment, we mean the use of an application-enabled mobile phone as a payment form, substituting for a check, cash or a card, to eventually create a mobile wallet.

Adoption of m-payments will enable merchants to create deeper relationships and richer individualized shopping experiences by offering value added services such as digitized loyalty cards and coupons. M-payments would also allow customers to make payments anytime and anywhere.

Apple, Google, and Samsung have developed applications for their phone users.

MasterCard

As a precursor, MasterCard has rolled out of what is colloquially refers to as ‘selfie pay’ (aka MasterCard Identity Check). It enables app users to confirm an online payment by showing their face to their smartphone’s camera.

Statistics

Non-cash transactions are likely to grow at 10.1%, surpassing 426 billion transactions globally.

Predictive Analytics        

Predictive analytics, simply put, is just a way to help identify the probability of future outcomes based upon historical data. It can be applied in a myriad of business areas including predicting customer behavior or the effectiveness of a marketing campaign or drive operational efficiency.

According to a research done by TDWI Research, the drivers of Predictive Analytics were predicting trends followed closely by understanding customers and predicting behavior.

With Predictive Analytics, it is possible

• To identify the most and least profitable customers
• Improve market focus
• Predict future purchase patterns
• Build loyal relationships
• Price products differently
• Develop better products and customize products or services differently

Magento analytics is one such platform that helps eCommerce merchants to acquire, convert and retain customers.

Amazon

Amazon uses predictive analytics for recommendations based on customer’s past purchases, items customers have rated and liked, customer’s past purchases compared to similar purchases by other customers and items in virtual shopping carts.

Statistics 

85% of business leaders believe big data will dramatically change the way they do business.

For the past 11 years, DCKAP has been knee-deep in delivering eCommerce projects and keeping up with the trends. Productimize is one such customization application that we developed ahead of the curve.

Wishing all our readers a Happy 2017.

References