What are the technology trends in ecommerce?

The Growing Share of Mobile

According to media buying agency Zenith forecast, 75% of internet use will be mobile in 2017 as the growing number of consumers around the world will access the web via their smartphones or tablets. Does it mean that desktop websites will look like an app? Big chances are that, eventually, they will. For instance, Google search engine already removed their ads from the right menu, so the trend is already here. Each and every brand wants its customers to use the same interface without the need to learn a new one each time they use a different device.

The Gartner’s research indicates that e-merchants in the USA are expected to increase their revenues from targeting mobile phone users by solid 50% in 2017.

Here’s another great insight: “as device manufacturers and application developers improve usability and functionality and address users’ security concerns, devices will become even more of an essential tool for customers. This is particularly true of the younger demographics. Customers who were born and grew up utilizing the Internet as a communications, information and transaction platform, and tethered to their mobile devices, will demand that service providers and retailers deliver on the expectation of connected and channel-agnostic commerce experiences”.

Zenith even predicts that mobile advertising expenditure in 2018 (yes, it’s a bit far by now, whatever) will total $134 billion, which “is more than will be spent on newspaper, magazine, cinema and outdoor advertising put together”.

At present time, people are more exposed to their mobile devices than they are to their computers. Another fact is that in some developing markets (and countries), more people have mobiles instead of computers as they are more affordable.

Micro Moments

Micro moments – a Google’s concept, this notion is about “the other moments—the I want-to-know moments, I want-to-go moments, I want-to-do moments, and I want-to-buy moments”. So Google calls these “micro-moments,” and it seems that they are going to change the game for both consumers and brands.

(Picture source)

The following practices will help you to control these moments:

• Mobile search engine optimization: if your potential customer searches for a product or a service you are offering, make sure to do some search optimization, so (s)he will easily find and choose your store over your competitors (we’ll talk about this point in the final part of the article).
• Information: in most cases, before the actual purchase takes place, your potential client may simply look for any valuable information about this particular product. Buyers are generally curious about its features, its cost, whether it’s on special offer or not, etc.This way, as a solicitous shop owner, you have to provide full and detailed information on the product so your customer won’t look any further than your store. Bingo!
• Customer groups: you have to know your target groups: their way of thinking, their location, the way they use their phones, their methodology for searching – perhaps, this is the only way to come up with the special strategy for “taming” your customers.
• Think outside the box – this segmentation doesn’t have to be based on only demographic and other similar data: you have to know the intention of the users that you may guess of course based on their activities. It’s not that you have to know in advance what a given potential client is about to do – however, you need to recognize the patterns, namely how the customers with various intentions usually get to you (or to your competitors), and you have to enter into that process at the appropriate point.

Conversational UX

In the same report, Gartner draws attention to another intriguing fact: in 2017, the revenue generated by digital mobile assistants may reach 2 billion dollars. Chatbots are trendy themselves, so this is a trend in a trend which significantly facilitates the potential customers’ path to conversion.

Thus, conversational UX will be the most interesting trend to watch in 2017. With the fast development and growth of messaging platforms and chatbots, it’s clear that it’s going to play a major role in the future of UX. Just check this table:

Chatbots open lots of new possibilities how you can interact with users. On the other hand, it will be a huge challenge for UX designers as it’s very different from what we were building before and will require new skills. Still, it looks very exciting and promising!

Here’s what Bill Bodin, a former IBM CTO, and industry guru, said on the matter:

“Mobile app UX will transform with the help of chatbot and artificial intelligence in 2017. We’ve seen chatbot technology integrated into consumer apps for quite some time now. For example, the capability to order a pizza through a conversational interface in a mobile app, but we’ll begin to see this technology move into other industries. One example is retail banking. Once started as a cool niche feature, will become the norm. We’ll be able to connect to artificially intelligent customer service representatives on our mobile or connected devices to check account balances, report lost cards, and many other features that may not exist in the conventional user interface, like advanced portfolio analysis based on “what-if” scenarios provided via voice by the customer”.

Based on statistic provided by Statista, customers use around 5 apps per day, and one of those apps is a messaging app. Why not provide your services where your audience are active? It is only natural for businesses to try and capitalize on this tendency.

While the development of chatbots is still in its initial phase, but in 2017 we will observe more and more creative products that take chatbots to the next level.

User Experience Innovation

The report states that by 2017, 50% of consumer product investments will be spent on customer experience innovations. Due to the insane competition, companies across all industries are literally fighting for customers and customer experience is the new competitive battlefield. Traditional product and service advantages are not sufficient anymore.

Naturally, companies focus on product innovation to get this competitive advantage and accelerate the commoditization. Customer experience innovation remains the secret ingredient to secure the lasting brand loyalty. User interfaces are becoming simpler and simpler, just as well the purchasing processes – users are getting more and more used to the simplicity (e.g. tap, swipe, pinch, drag and drop etc.).

This user experience influences customers’ expectations in a significant manner. Secondly, the mobile has an impact on the desktop: if you can purchase on the mobile with only a couple of finger movements, from now on, the long checkout process on the desktop will seem uncomfortable. This way, providing optimized customer experience will prove to be an essential criterion for online stores looking to decrease cart abandonment.

The Rule of Social Media

Nowadays, sales on many platforms can be “outsourced” – it’s possible to purchase directly on Facebook, Pinterest or on other platforms, where you can sell products and services in a way that your customers won’t even have to leave the website.

As a result, companies are going to look to how it can be financially beneficial for them. According to research by Statista, 93% of millennials are spending their time on social networks, so it’s evident that businesses crave to capitalize on this trend.

We have already observed the rise of WeChat social commerce. In April 2016, 31% of users made purchases on WeChat, which is twice as many comparing to 2015. And the list is growing. Twitter has already tested a ‘buy’ button. There are now over one million businesses on Pinterest, with almost 75% of users having bought something they saw on the platform.

It seems like by the end of 2017, some of the major platforms may enable users to:

• Create and share video content
• Create and share live video content
• Discover news based on location

An ingenious e-merchant can easily find several services that will help him strengthen his presence on the social sites, automate the processes so that the click-through rate increases. This way, with the increasing popularity of mobile browsing, it can be expected that social commerce will only continue to increase.