Just like seasons, online trends come and go. Only a few remain that revolutionize the entire industry. Those trends are essential to follow-up, especially if you are running an e-commerce domain or looking to start one, and want to maximize your efforts for the greater good.
Following is the list of 2020s most viral trends that can help you to firm your e-commerce strategy for desirable results:
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Multi-Device Shopping
Before smartphones or iPhones revolutionized the world, the tech world was at the early stage of development. Reading content or surfing social media channels was easy, but filling out a long-form on a website was a complete pain.
Multi-device shopping has become so easy and addictive. Almost 85% of the time, people are online in one way or another. It indicates the relevancy of websites for desktops, mobiles and tablets, altogether. A perfectly blended and responsive website is needed, that offers all the necessary content without compromising on anything even if it’s opened on small-screen devices.
One thing that must be perfect is the synchronization because users will keep hopping from one device to another mid-purchase. Hence, perfecting the blend of everything to make a flawless e-commerce portal will surely increase your sales chance. Remember that users will hate if they add an item to the cart on their mobiles, later finding that their cart is empty on the desktop version.
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UI Patterns
Often many companies regard design as a complex mechanism that gets overlooked when it needs proper attention like at the coding stage. It’s the stage when you map out the pattern of shoppers’ journey and how each page will be perfectly synchronized with a similar feel and theme to bring the best business output.
Most importantly, a design involves reducing the fiction for the seamless scan, search, browse, select, and add new products to their cart.
Web design is not only an art but a science as well because its success determines not only beautiful outlook but an original pattern that enhances shopper’s journey.
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Personalization and Contextual Shopping
If you consider mapping out a regular UI pattern, then again, you may end up creating a website similar to others. Through a close look, you can find the similarities among various successful portals that are enjoying good traffic and driving conversions, but, design-wise, they still have a long way to go.
Thankfully, personalization has turned the tables. Now, a visitor can see the products that he explored during his last visit from his account. It alters the strategy in favour of a shopper, and he doesn’t have to start again from scratch to find products. It’s like a search history being displayed at your account’s home page. This type of marketing comes under contextual marketing, which means creating value for a better conversion rate.
Almost all global companies like Amazon and eBay are already making headlines by doing this for a long time. Gone are the days when businesses decided which things customers will see on their display screen of the site. Now, if you don’t treat customers as the ultimate decision-maker, then you are eventually falling flat on your face and will have to shut your business in the blink of an eye.
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Products Demonstration and Product videos
Creating an emotion among shoppers during online shopping is a real pain for any business. However, marketers have found a way to bring at least some sense to the product feeling by giving a demonstration of it from different angles.
Amazon hosts videos for various products that show the product from different angles. Since video content is becoming the next big thing with each passing day, there’s no excuse for not doing it. A blog of Shopify on video-importance throws light on the subject in a profound way.
Evodesk is a brilliant example that deals with high-end computer desks, etc. It gives you the freedom to customize the desk. Moreover, you can decide which customization suits your needs by preparing a demonstration. The company has opened its cards smartly, which outsmarted its rivals or companies in other domains. Even Evodesk has a video tab that demonstrates the company’s information and products for better understanding.
You just can’t ignore videos because they are the future of marketing. According to studies, more than 90% of people admitted that videos help them in decision making, and 71% think about the dire importance of videos to understand the product.
If we talk in marketing terms, 73% purchase the product after watching its video. Even a 30 seconds video can do wonders for the product.
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Multi-Channel Marketing
We live in a world where people hop from one device to another while surfing the web. It includes shopping, too, and how they switch devices before purchasing the product. The final statement is to bring equal joy on every device during the shopping journey so that the user doesn’t need to hop on the device to which he added the product to the cart for the payment process. If it occurs, then a lot of potential leads can be lost, because rivals are there to benefit from your weakness. Remember that.
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Social Media Advertising
Gone are the days when Facebook’s advertising wasn’t as effective as Google Ads. Seeing the increasing demand for new features, Mark introduced Facebook Dynamic Products Ads for e-commerce companies that remind users to complete their purchase on Facebook, which they left on the business’s portal. Ads are unique and retarget the potential customers for sales. Facebook has leaped in the marketing world by introducing this feature for e-commerce portals. As time is passing, Facebook is adding new features to business pages, which, later on, is going to become a mini e-commerce portal for companies itself.
These kinds of ads are specially tailored for mobile users and are designed to grow mobile e-commerce business multi-fold.
The Honest Company, owned by Hollywood Star, Jessica Alba, has gained much from this Facebook Ad feature by netting a 35% click-through rate increase with a 38% cost reduction at the same time.
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Marketing Automation
Email marketing is unbeatable when it comes to ROI because with every $1 spent on email marketing; it brings a 4300% return on investment. It’s hard to digest for a lot of companies, but it’s the truth and companies like Amazon have always done for ages.
Results aren’t even close when we compare social media with email marketing as social media suffocates, reaching 1% in terms of ROI. Unfortunately, email marketing is facing troubles, too. A lot of companies are focusing on strengthening their email marketing campaign, which floods promotional messages in subscribers’ inbox.
Seeing this rising problem, Gmail, and other service providers have introduced new features in a mailbox to filter those promotional messages, which hardly anyone visits. Here market automation helps. By building a powerful email template that’s not promotional, but information about the product can make you stand out from the crowd.
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Flash Promotions
Long before the digital world turned the things upside down or changed the marketing scenario; flash promotions were frequently used in the real world.
Companies thoroughly use black Friday for flash promotions. However, companies are extending their flash sales to a week or less due to cut-throat competition in the market.
This strategy has spanned its wings online, too. A lot of companies are using flash sales techniques to sell their products and highlight them in demand. Smartphones start-up such as Xiaomi has done this for its wide range of products and has always finished with ease. With this, the company’s stock clears within seconds, and people remain hopeful to see the next flash sale. It fuels intensity and drives massive traffic to the website, a ‘win-win’ situation for the company.
Hence, if you are looking to do flash sales; then, just map a calendar and prepare your strategy in such a way that you make a maximum of the holidays during your campaign.
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Location Targeting
2019 and a quarter of 2020 has witnessed the real strength of mobile devices as they have been surpassing desktops in terms of internet usage. It means more and more people are surfing the web through their smartphones. Location targeting helps find sellers for the consumers and vice verse. It encourages the local economy and micro-zones of exchange between the sellers and the buyers. Brands utilize this strategy to target a specific sect of the viewers and satisfy their local needs.
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Simplified Content
Content is king, and for some reason, if you use language what most people fail to resonate with, chances are; they will bounce to other products or even websites. If you write for yourself and not for your targeted customers, then your message can be biased, and you will write only what you love.
Structuring the sentences and words for easy understating can increase your chances of conversions. You have heard the phrase, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” which hits the bull’s eyes in the online content writing. If you fail to provide complete information about the product, then the shoppers will be confused and will question the product quality. Worse, they will doubt the very existence of your business and may feel it as spam.
If you are dedicated to enhancing your conversation rate, then giving away product information in a clear and precise manner should be on your to-do-list.
Show the pricing of products in various pin-codes and clearly, specify rates’ differentiation for different places. Moreover, bold the pricing of the product and describe the addition fee (shipping rates) if they are not included in the product price displayed on the page. It saves a lot of time for both parties.
