E-Commerce Trends in 2021

18th March 2021, 11:11pm in Business by Shauna Mulholland

Ecommerce is constantly evolving. Despite 2020 being a hard year, emarketer.com revealed that ecommerce had a 27.6% growth. New buying habits have been formed during COVID-19 and it looks like they're here to stay. Online businesses have more competition than ever before, optimizing your online presence and offers could help you stand out from the crowd. Let's have a look at ways to keep one step ahead this year.

Personalisation

Survey results released by invesp show that 59% of online shoppers believe that it is easier to find more interesting products on personalised retail sites.

What is Website personalisation?

Website personalisation (Personalised eCommerce) is showing customers individualised product recommendations, offers and content that is unique to your visitors interests. These are based on their browsing behavior, purchase history and previous onsite actions.

By implementing personalisation to your site - you are improving your customers shopping experience. Customers with good shopping experiences are more likely to return.

Improved online purchase paths

Shopify's cofounder believes that, "As a result of the pandemic, websites have become the primary purchase path for many brands - rather than a secondary or alternative method to in-store. The best technologies will temporarily draw higher conversions until they are widespread and something else becomes an advantage." So, staying innovative and on top of trends will help have a competitive advantage.
Some of these are:

Enrich purchase information - Improve size guides, implement instant chat, and try augmented reality.
Improve site speed loading - A slow site is one of the main reasons for an increased bounce rate.
Increase customer touchpoints - Trigger relevant chat or email messages when users engage with your site or thank you emails, post purchase.

Interactive Product Visuals

During the pandemic, companies were finding ways to bridge the gap between in-person and digital retail experiences. This has made digital buying experiences more 'the norm' for customers. Quite quickly, some real estate agents and car dealerships were offering viewings through video calls. This has led the way for programs such as Augmented and Virtual reality to come into the market. While it's not the same as going and experiencing the product in real life, it could be the insight a customer needs to make a purchasing decision.

Recently, IKEA released an app that lets you virtually 'place' furnishings in your space. From sofas and lamps, all of the products in IKEA place are 3D and true to scale so you can make sure it's just the right size and design for your room.

Social ecommerce

Social media continues to evolve year on year. It has grown from a text based platform to socialise with friends and family to a visual, interactive platform where you can have an end to end brand experience without leaving the app.

According to 70% of people discover new products on their platform Instagram shopping now allows your customer to shop and checkout directly from the app.

Diversity among payment options

One of the main reasons for shopping cart abandonment is the unavailability of multiple payment options on the checkout page.

Up until recently, payment options on ecommerce sites were limited to Credit and Debit cards. But since the introduction of digital wallets such as Google pay and Apple pay, things have changed a lot. Financial services technology leader, FIS, forecast that by 2023, that 52% of payments will be made through ewallet.

It was also outlined in the FIS Worldpay report that another rising payment trend is "buy now, pay later" products like Afterpay or ZipPay. Nearly 2 million Australians used a BNPL service in 2020 it is predicted this will double in the next three years.