The eCommerce space never falls short of new trends. Rapidly evolving consumer behavior and the innovation spree of brands to get their lion’s share of customer attention keep the excitement alive.
Technologies form the backbone of every effort made by businesses to cater to the changing demands of their consumers or improve their experience. So, as an online business owner, you have to catch up with a few emerging eCommerce technology trends in 2020.
Headless Commerce – Your first armor to take on cross-device purchase journey
Headless Commerce is decoupling of the front end (the customer interface) and the backend (the technical infrastructure) of an eCommerce system to have more flexibility in content management and customer experience.
For example, a store can have Magento as its backend and Adobe Experience Manager or WordPress as its frontend. APIs are used to pull data from the backend and show at the storefront.
The Headless Commerce approach, irrespective of the size, works for every business to which experience matters the most. With loosely coupled frontend and backend systems, online store owners can have more creative freedom to improve the end-user experience and, at the same time, manage operations easily with a sturdy, built-for-commerce system pillaring the backend.
The frontend flexibility can prepare retailers to take one of the challenging buying behaviors, the ‘cross-device buying journey.’
Cross-device users make 1.4 times more purchases than other customers via mobile apps, websites, and social networks – atinternet.com
You can have endless customizations to determine what kind of experience your storefronts should offer on web, mobile, and social platforms to cater to the fragmentation of digital buying journey.
Voice Commerce – AI and Human – Bringing the best of both worlds for a superior customer experience
Among the increasing number of customer touchpoints to interact with a brand and make a purchase, the most frenzied in the recent past is ‘Voice Search.’
Smartphones are already providing voice-enabled search, and also, the increase in the number of smart speakers (Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod, and Google Home) has given rise to what is known as “Voice Commerce.”
Voice-based shopping is expected to jump to $40 billion in 2022 – Prnewswire.com
62% of voice-enabled speaker owners have bought items via voice commerce (Invespcro), and 55% of teenagers are using voice search daily according to Quoracreative. Such statistics indicate the fact that voice is the new mode of research and buying online.
More online shoppers will be catching up with this engaging shopping experience in 2020. Meanwhile, technology giants (Amazon, Google, Samsung, and Apple) are working on improving factors like the accuracy of searches, multi-language support, dialect detection, and more to make users’ efforts worthwhile.
Visual Commerce – Blurring the lines between in-store and digital buying with AR
Visual contents shoulder the responsibility of providing an attractive quotient for users while shopping online as unlike in-store buying; users don’t get to witness the product directly. Using technologies like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, brands can blur the lines between their offline and online experiences.
63% of customers are sure that augmented reality may buff their shopping experience – Thinkmobiles.com
Using Augmented Reality, online stores can reimagine their product viewing experience. AR’s Product Visualization feature enables users to mount virtual products in real-world environments. Product Catalogs with AR can provide a 3D model rendering with 360-degree viewing capability if scanned with a mobile phone’s camera.
For instance, users can place the 3D model of the furniture into their living room space to see how they fit, check for dimensions and color combinations. Multiple overlays help users to place more objects and visualize the output even before they could buy it.
Such AR experiences could assist brands in telling better stories and create a higher sense of ownership for buyers. This will help users make factual judgments, which eventually increases conversions and reduces returns.
Internet of Things Commerce – Amplifying chances of conversion across every touchpoint.
Internet of Things Commerce is another addition in the list of digital touchpoints through which shoppers can access a brand online. Connected devices in the household are increasing every year.
The average American household contains five connected devices now, and that number is expected to rise by 180 percent in the next five years – Contentstack
The ecosystem of connected smart devices like smart speakers, TVs, wearables, and kitchen appliances generates valuable data that can help online retailers connect with users at the touchpoints where they are more likely to buy (micro-moments). With such information in hand, retailers can personalize experiences, encourage repeat buying, and also simplify buying processes.
Apart from the customer-facing end, IoT can help retailers to create and manage a clutter-free supply chain system as well. From supply chain management where this technology facilitates picking and packing products to logistics where fleet movements can be tracked in realtime to keep users informed, IoT can play a significant role in running an organized fulfillment system.
Behavior-driven Commerce – Focusing on the often overlooked data for smarter ROI-driving insights
Imagine the number of digital interactions that every user makes while browsing on your online store. On the contrary, conversions don’t happen much.
Global average eCommerce conversion rate is 1.71% for July 2019 – irpcommerce.com
Looking at this data, do you feel like there is some untapped potential that can be used to improve conversions of your website?
Most of the online stores focus only on key metrics like traffic, return visits, bounce rate etc., They forget in-site behaviors like heat maps, contents users are looking for, frequently asked questions to customer service reps etc. Here is where behavior-driven targeting chips in.
Behavior-driven commerce is making informed changes by diving more than skin-deep into user behavior and comprehending their journey in and out of your eCommerce store using advanced analytical tools. For instance, HotJar can help retailers with users’ heat maps that reveal which areas they have found to be more engaging.
AI-driven Commerce – Unearthing the true potential of your commerce with AI and ML.
It’s hard to miss out on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning when it comes to eCommerce technology trends. eCommerce is one of the early adopters of AI and ML.
Artificial Intelligence is evolving at a rapid pace with cognitive capabilities to solve more complex business challenges. Brands are now able to take full advantage of these technologies by deploying them into internal and customer-facing web and mobile-based applications.
The evolution of Big Data and advanced analytics have enabled Machine Learning algorithms to crunch more data and derive meaningful insights, recognize complicated patterns, and so on.
AI-powered automation approaches like RPA (Robotic Process Automation) can help eCommerce store owners automate mundane back-office tasks releasing talents for more crucial tasks.
Chatbots will become more commonplace in 2020. As Chatbots have evolved becoming smarter, it is up to the companies to decide the role of a chatbot in assisting customers in their buying journey and when human intervention should happen.
Closing words
Now is the time for you to consider the various technologies to adopt into your system. Remember to assess the maturity of your business before you decide to adopt any of these.
If you feel we’ve missed anything, let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
