In the e-commerce arena, the pace of development is very fast. This industry is ever-evolving, constantly bringing new trends and emerging technologies to the forefront. So it is important to be ahead of the curve as an online retailer and remain competitive in the e-commerce sector.
With knowledge of what is on the horizon, planning your business strategy appropriately will empower you to be competitive in this ever-changing landscape. As such you may wonder, what are the key e-commerce trends worth paying attention to in 2022? Keep reading to find out!
Table of Contents
Implementing sustainable e-commerce
Flexible payment options
Quicker and easier order processing
The use of video content marketing
Engaging customers with social commerce
Improving customer experience through personalization
Optimizing mobile commerce
Context-sensitive pricing in real-time
Efficiently communicating delivery times with customers
Increasing analysis of the customer journey
With the recent distancing measures, the most noticeable shift that is affecting the e-commerce arena is a fundamental alteration in consumer buying patterns and behaviors. It has generated heightened expectations around people’s online experiences. So how is this playing out in 2022? Below are the 10 e-commerce trends to watch out for to remain sustainable in the industry.
Implementing sustainable e-commerce
If you want to earn the confidence and loyalty of your existing (and prospective) customers, it is important to consider how you, as an e-commerce business, will be more efficient in terms of energy and environment. More sustainable business practice for any vendor is to use greener packaging or shipping supplies. This can be done through the removal of plastic and containers made from many miscellaneous materials, thus making packaging easy to disassemble and ultimately recycle, and reducing. Thus making them difficult to disassemble and ultimately recycle, and reduces the overall packaging volume of the filler material and its oversized nature.
Flexible payment options
Providing shoppers with a range of payment alternatives, notably contactless for a convenient and agile payment experience, represents an additional powerful development destined to be sustained in the foreseeable future.
Providing a wide variety of payment methods on your e-commerce site tailored to individuals’ needs creates a winning formula to maximize conversion rates, more so when purchasing through mobile devices.
Affording multiple financing solutions at the checkout process effectively is a must, as well as a plus, as customers can selectare likely to claim the privilege of selecting the method they prefer to pay for their purchases. For instance, it has been observed that numerous online businesses now provide installments’ payment options through platforms such as Klarna. This payment method seems to become more and more popular in the e-cCommerce sector.
Quicker and easier order processing
Over the past 3 months, e-commerce has seen over 10 years of tremendous expansion. As a result of this rapid acceleration, the number of orders has skyrocketed, the supply chain has been disrupted, patterns of customer behavior have shifted, and many other things have occurred.
Arguably, shortening the click-to-customer lifecycle will have the greatest influence on shaping the omnichannel supply chains of the future. Increasingly, the benchmark continues to be set higher for business-to-business (B2B). Throughout the year 2021 and onward, shoppers— – private consumers and corporate buyers combined— – have come to expect speedy, seamless distribution. Accordingly, the onus will be on B2B companies to accommodate and establish a speedier fulfillment ecosystem. Research from McKinsey has revealed that of the nine key factors that shape customer value in omnichannel commerce, five are logistics-related.
Advancing the omnichannel fulfillment roadmap in 2022 involves addressing friction in the areas of the process that matter to customers. Discover exactly the things that truly count for shoppers when they place their orders.
The use of video content marketing
The latest Moz study indicates that as many as 67% of consumers are easily swayed by online reviewsvideo testimonials. As such, as explanatory product videos and promotional video testimonials relieve shoppers of the puzzle of placing an order for a commodity they have never seen before, this makes perfect sense.
Consequently, by displaying authentic customer reviews, the investment in video marketing will enable you to showcase social proof and drive easy and vibrant involvement. It also significantly mitigates the potential for pricey returns, as customers can be assured of what exactly they will be receiving.
Engaging customers with social commerce
Social commerce harnesses the power of social media platforms intending to promote new products, merchandise, existing services, and more directly through a platform’s app, rather than redirecting to another website. It streamlines the buying experience and ultimately lets customers easily and quickly locate whatever it is they want to purchase.
Improvinge customer experience through personalization
In e-commerce, personalization focuses on delivering a personalized experience to shoppers during online shopping by employing a variety of different marketing efforts, for example, posting content, new product endorsements, and delivering tailored offers in response to users’ previous activity, and shopping behavior, spending history, and private data. Now that the pandemic has established a new shopping habit, e-commerce personalization is increasingly vital to not only entice targeted customers but simultaneously significantly boost the customer’s conversion ratio and repetitive purchases.
Optimizsing mMobile Ccommerce
Mobile commerce refers to digital transactions, invoice processing, and handheld devices such as smartphones and other tablets. In 2021, Statista revealed that more than 7 billion people operated cell phones, a figure that is expected to rise even further in 2022. With such a level of widespread use, the optimization of e-commerce sites to mobile is imperative to reach a broad audience.
Context-sensitive pricing in real-time
With inflation forcing businesses to face a critical decision, maintaining competitive pricing strategies has never been so vital. The contextual-timeline pricing approach empowers upstream suppliers with the ability to both leverage and customized prices. As well, at the same time, it provides competitive pricing adaptation across clients and channels in real-time. As a result, you can compete for more favorable pricing and foster custom loyalty.
In the upcoming year, contextual pricing is expected to be critical. At its most basic level, it empowers B2B companies to deliver, and personalized pricing for customers. To do this, the companies have to get an insight into the customer’s consumption patterns throughout the entire buying process. The growing expansion of mobile payment works best in conjunction with e-commerce analytics and the personalization trend in commerce.
Efficiently communicate delivery times with customers
Notifying your customers of dispatch delays is vital to delivering an optimal customer experience. One of the best approaches including setting clear and realistic expectations with customers can be one of the most effective ways to reach out to them, most notably regarding delays in shipping orders. Keep them informed about potential issues and delays and do not keep them wondering.
Increasing analysis of the customer journey
At the heart of customer journey analytics lies the science by which customer behavior is analyzed across various touchpoints, and the impact of that behavior on business outcomes is then measured over time.
Being able to gather and learn all kinds of online data is among the major rewards of B2B e-commerce. You can use e-commerce analytics to enhance the functionality of your web store.
Let’s see how you analyze customer journeys.
#1. Determine the touchpoints by journey stage.
- Awareness: customers click on your link from an affiliate website.
- Interest and cConsideration: watching a product demo video
- Conversion: configuring a paid account
- Service: customer support interactions with the client
- Advocacy: using discount codes for existing customers.
#2. Customer interaction measurements
Recognize all the communication avenues through which you engage with your leads and existing customers (e.g., through social media, email marketing, or via your website) and integrate them into a custom business intelligence platform. Once you have done that, get started with benchmarking engagement rates between multiple channels and determine which measurements matter most to you in terms of your business objectives.
#3. Use dDevelop a customer journey map with the collected data
With data derived from the customer journey analysis, a customer journey map can be developed which usually describes the end-to-end customer experience, while others highlight the uptake of the new functionality of the product.
Conclusion
E-commerce is changing swiftly, yet being prepared for these changes has the potential to help you deliver enhanced experiences and cultivate stronger, deeper, and enduring relationships with your customers. Merging customer experience with a great selection of products is thus paramount to your business. Open doors to a future of great business profits by buying trendy products on Alibaba.com today!
