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
- Online sales will reach $523 billion by 2020 in the U.S.
- Forrester says the number of consumers browsing and buying online will hit 270 million by 2020, driven largely by activity on mobile devices.
- Forrester’s data projects that mobile devices influenced more than $1 trillion in total purchases in 2015 between online and offline transactions.
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
Statistics https://www.internetretailer.com/2016/01/29/online-sales-will-reach-523-billion-2020-us
Dynamic Personalization and Customization
E-Commerce market trends: A case study in leveraging Web 2.0 technologies to gain and improve competitive. Authors- Ching-Chieh Kiu (Taylor’s University) and Chien-Sing Lee (Sunway Education Group)
Six key ingredients in the personalization in the Personalization Journey by Valiance Solutions – www.valiancesolutions.com
http://www.cio.com/article/3050920/analytics/starbucks-cto-brews-personalized-experiences.html
Mobile Payments
https://letstalkpayments.com/11-quotes-payments-fintech-money-remember/
http://www.shopkeep.com/blog/payment-trends-to-look-out-for-in-2017
Predictive Analytics
https://www.tableau.com/sites/default/files/media/tdwi-predictive-analytics.pdf
https://conversionxl.com/predictive-analytics-changing-world-retail/?hvid=352IDw
Customer Analytics for Dummies – Author – Jeff Sauro