The eCommerce industry is growing at a rapid pace after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the last year. Each year, a lot of retailers are shifting towards online selling. In this regard, many of the entrepreneurs are focusing on starting their eCommerce companies.
The revenues from the e-retail sector are expected to grow to about $6.54 trillion by the year 2022.
Although, the eCommerce sector can be called a rapidly changing industry. You will observe many new trends come up every year which can contribute to the growth of your business. Not only that, but all of these trends play a very important role to stand out from your competitors.
So, in case, you are focusing on hiring a WordPress eCommerce developer, then they should be well aware of the latest trends prevailing in the eCommerce industry. This is because only by this, they would be able to meet your unique needs.
You will get more information about this in the below-mentioned section.
Here, you will get to know about the top eCommerce trends which you need to keep in mind in the year 2021.
- There Will Be A Boost In The Voice Commerce
Nowadays, most people consider relying on voice assistance devices for doing almost everything. This includes Google Home with Google Assistant and the Amazon Echo with Alexa.
They use these voice devices while they buy online products. By the year 2022, voice commerce sales are expected to rise more.
Another important reason behind the popularity of voice commerce is the growing convenience and accuracy of the particular technology.
In this regard, both Amazon and Google are giving a push to the regional language specifically in their virtual assistant devices.
As a result, consumers can shop more conveniently by making use of these devices. Due to this particular reason, why you should always focus on optimizing your online store for voice search.
Also, there are many ways that you can use for preparing your eCommerce website for voice queries such as:
- Optimizing your content properly for enhancing your chances of appearing in voice searches.
- Ensuring that your products can be purchased with a simple flow by making use of the voice command.
- Offering voice-based navigation on your mobile app and website.
- Adding a new skill on Google and Alexa voice assistant devices.
So, these are some of the best steps which you can focus on following for optimizing your content for voice search.
- AR And AI Will Enhance The eCommerce Experience
It is predicted that by the year 2022, online sellers will spend about $7.3 billion on AI. Not only that, but more than 120,000 stores will focus on making use of AR technologies for providing a very rich buying experience to the customers.
In this regard, AI acts as your online in-store associate by providing customized guidance as well as recommendations to your customers. Other than that, AI also uses browsing behavior and past purchase history of the shoppers’ to show them those products which they might be interested in.
Again, the AI works are very different from the physical stores. Unlike the physical stores, online shoppers cannot try on or physically inspect the specific product which they try to buy.
On the other hand, AR or Augmented Reality works by letting customers know how a specific product would look on them before they purchase that particular product.
In this way, by implementing AR and AI in your eCommerce store, you would be able to effectively enhance the rate of conversion and decrease the return rate eventually.
- Omnichannel Shopping Will Rise In Demand
Omnichannel retailing helps to provide a consistent and seamless experience to shoppers across devices and channels. It is evident from a survey, that a lot of the people focus on making use of various channels specifically during their shopping journey.
So, with the rapid increase in the demand for voice assistants and mobile devices, it is expected that the number of omnichannel customers will increase more by the end of this year i.e. 2021.
If you want to get detailed eCommerce analytics, then you can focus on making use of analytics tools that will help you to identify the behaviors of the customers and track almost everything concerning the cash flow.
These insights will help you to provide the exact products which your potential customers are looking for. In this way, you would be able to provide a seamless omnichannel experience to the shoppers.
- Brands Will Carry On To Adopt Dynamic Pricing Strategy
Nowadays, eCommerce retailers are focusing on making use of dynamic pricing strategies. This particular strategy helps them to attract more and more customers. Not only that, but it helps them to stay competitive.
Even if you are involved in selling the best product, then also it is very important to price that product correctly. Otherwise, you would not be able to generate enough sales for your business.
So, it becomes very important to decide the right price for your products. In this regard, you should focus on making use of dynamic pricing software which helps you to determine the best price for your products.
These tools contribute to providing real-time insights into the prices of your competitors, market demand, and perceived value of your products. As a result, you would be able to properly determine the optimal cost with the help of this tool.
- Sustainability Practices Will Persuade Sales
There has been a rapid rise in green consumerism in the current days. So, to stay competitive and relevant, the brand should focus on acting quickly.
Talking about this green consumerism, it is such a situation in which the customers look for those products which are produced in an eco-friendly manner. As a result, this should involve recycling or preserving the environment.
In the current days, a lot of consumers focus on buying products only from a brand that promotes sustainability. This focus on green consumerism indicates that the eCommerce brands promoting sustainability will dominate the market in the upcoming years.
Due to this particular reason, a vast majority of the eCommerce brands have started or are planning to implement more sustainable practices specifically in their business to achieve the desired result.
For example, a leading global eCommerce brand named Amazon has taken the initiative to bring their carbon emission to zero by the year 2040.
Below are mentioned some of the most important and effective ways with the help of which, you would be able to attract consumers to your eCommerce business:
- Looking for environmentally friendly alternatives to the existing products. To encourage sustainability, you can also focus on adding completely new products to your store.
- Reducing the consumption of energy as much as you can. In this case, you should focus on switching off equipment whenever it is not in use.
- Instead of using paper slips, you should focus on sending receipts only on emails.
- Another important approach that you can consider involves switching to eco-friendly packaging.
In this regard, you should make use of only such products for packaging which have a low impact on both the environment and consumption of energy. Some of the examples of such products involve cloths or recycled wrapping sheets.
- Deciding on the sustainability approaches which you are going to adopt, how you will work to save the environment, and a lot more.
In this way, you would be able to let the world know about the approaches that you are adopting for successfully achieving your goal.
6. There Will Be The Emergence Of New Payment options
Payment options are considered to be one of the most important reasons why customers go for a certain brand. So, if you are owning an eCommerce store, then it becomes very important to offer customer’s preferred payment options.
Otherwise, they would not purchase from your store. Currently, most of the eCommerce businesses are focusing on accepting digital wallets such as PayPal, Apple or Samsung Pay, and Google Pay along with credit and debit cards.
Another emerging option includes cryptocurrencies especially Bitcoin. This possesses several important benefits to the owner of the eCommerce store like no reverse transactions and low transaction fees.
In this year i.e. 2021, it is expected that the eCommerce businesses will start accepting cryptocurrencies for transactions.
- The Dominance Of Mobile Commerce In The Field Of eCommerce
Currently, there has been an enhancement in the trust of consumers in online shopping. They are presently feeling more comfortable making purchases by using their mobile devices. By the end of this year i.e. 2021, the mobile devices are expected to make most of the eCommerce sales.
Every day, a lot of online shoppers end up abandoning their carts in the middle of shopping specifically if they find that the particular website is not responsive.
Due to this particular reason, your main focus, as an online seller, should be to effectively improve the customer experience for mobile users. Below are mentioned some of the best ways, in which you would be able to prepare your website for mobile devices:
In this regard, you can make use of the Google Mobile-Friendly Test for examining the website for responsiveness. All that you need is to enter your URL in this particular tool.
This will let you know if your eCommerce store is mobile-friendly or not. Not only that, but this tool will also show if there are any loading problems on your website or not.
- Another important thing is to manually test your website and check whether it is easy to navigate or not. You should also check whether you can easily view all the products on your mobile or not.
- You should again focus on implementing AMP or accelerated mobile pages for the shoppers who consider making use of your website using mobile devices.
- Other than that, you should always ensure a smooth checkout process on mobile devices.
- Visual Commerce Is Expected To Get Bigger
Talking about visual commerce, this particularly involves making use of imagery on the entire eCommerce store along with the product pages. This tempts users to engage and also convert.
Many of the key players in the particular industry have already started to make use of visual commerce which will effectively influence the shoppers. The HD images present on their homepage and also the shortcuts help them to buy the product straightforwardly.
For leveraging visual commerce, you should focus on creating visual shopping ads for effectively driving traffic to your eCommerce website.
Thereby, it results in increased sales. Another important approach is to invest in a visual search tool. This type of tool allows customers to search for specific products by making use of images.
- The Importance of Minimalist Design
Consumers always love to buy products from pages or websites that look simple and clean. Most of the popular eCommerce designs of the last year specifically included a minimalist design.
This trend is expected to be ongoing this year i.e. 2021. Due to this particular reason, you should focus on introducing minimalist palettes which include tan, white, grey as well as other neutrals in your website design. So, the minimalist design particularly focuses on:
- Central search
- Minimal navigation items
- Simple graphics and plain text
- Centralizing the navigation menu
- Neutral backgrounds
- Clear and simple product pages
- Presence of pop-under descriptions on the product page
Final Words
So, the above-discussed ones are some of the eCommerce trends which you need to watch for in the year 2021.
It is also evident from the above section that the eCommerce stores that are looking forward to dominating the market must focus on adopting these latest trends as soon as possible. As a result, all of these approaches will help them to see significant changes in their businesses.
Some of the most prevalent trends in the year 2021 are considered to be AR, AI, omnichannel shopping, voice commerce, and a lot more. In this regard, dynamic pricing will continue to remain an effective strategy for attracting shoppers.
