Imagine going to a store just to check if there is something you could buy – how barbaric! But seriously, eCommerce has massively shifted the model of purchase and the expectation of consumer experience all over the world. From personalized shopping experiences and high-speed transactions in the convenience of your own home – eCommerce revolutionized the game of consumerism. It provides numerous advantages, such as versatility, speed, and widespread coverage, to both provider and consumer ends.
And what’s more, the eCommerce business is still steadily growing as more people are shifting towards a more comprehensive and convenient method of shopping. Current and emerging businesses are rapidly jumping into the trend, trying to adapt to market demand. To be on top of the field, it’s important to be aggressive, agile, and well-informed in this dynamic and fast-paced world of the eCommerce business. QAWERK provides comprehensive QA services and effective solutions to product development in terms of quality assurance testing. Check out their services if you plan to build on fun and innovative user-prompt programs to your software.
Whether you’re planning to start or improve your own eCommerce business, or just simply want to try out the new gimmicks and trends in shopping, this is a great read for you. In this article, we’ll explore how a disruptive industry gets disrupted once again with the latest and most creative ideas!
What’s New in eCommerce?
Customized Shopping Experience
Ever had one of those dumbfounded moments where you see ads of something you were just thinking about?
Nope, you’re not getting hacked! It’s just an intelligent business strategy that provides an online shopping and advertising platforms with an algorithm to receive and process specific information about you, so that it can better recommend products and services you might like and that have high chances of you buying.
The innovation strategy is driven by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and complex computer programming to effectively channel and process information such as personal details (age, gender, profession, hobbies), transaction history (recent purchases, frequent buys, recently viewed), and social circle (what your friends are into) – to effectively adapt to specific customer expectations.
Through this approach, the desire to purchase products or services is induced among customers before they even know they want or need it.
The AI scheme aims to nurture a healthy and conveniently casual consumer environment wherein customers feel special and unique, and hence, more likely to stay and conduct future transactions.
AI technologies have the capability to expand to wider and more complex roles to enhance and personalize customer experience and satisfaction. More than just product and service recommendation, AI can improve other important business aspects such as selective marketing to focus on a specific population and voice-command to initiate transactions.
Voice-Command
Voice-commands are no longer seen as a status symbol for those people who can afford voice-command applications. Rather, it is becoming the norm in user-device interactions due to its convenience and versatility.
This is especially helpful to accomplish those spontaneous buys or cravings that last for a short time until the hype dies out. For instance, you’re craving for one of those plant-based burgers that everybody has been talking about, but you soon lose interest as clicking and scrolling through your phone seems just too tiresome (how uncivilized!). Voice-command shopping reduces the rate of transaction abandonment as it provides quick and swift transactions through an effortless voice prompt.
Customer loyalty is also enhanced as they can easily reorder their favorite picks as recorded in the transaction history.
Moreover, getting feedback from customers to help your business improve or promote achievements in customer experience is made easier for customers as they can quickly utter their reviews verbally, instead of logging information by hand.
Voice-command is an extremely tricky feat due to the diversity in speaking. It’s a challenge for programmers to enable a comprehensive and versatile processing unit and algorithm to accommodate various languages, slang, accents, pitches, and tones.
Geotargeting, Location, and Real-Time Advertising
With over 5 million people worldwide having access to mobile phones, it’s no wonder businesses aim to connect with potential customers through their mobile devices. Businesses realize that mobile phones are more than just a device for texting, playing games, and browsing for news. Frankly, it’s conservative to say that these devices are simply an extension of an individual since it’s seemingly weird in most lifestyles to not have one.
Geotargeting, or geotargeted advertising, makes use of an individual’s location to selectively promote advertisements. The marketing approach is simply transmitting messages or push notifications to people within an area of influence (often residents, passersby, and travelers) through their mobile devices.
For example, if you have a fast food or breakfast business, you can target commuters or workers near your store to capitalize on spur-of-the-moment decisions, especially on busy mornings. Another is notifying passing customers of your store’s promo deals and discounts to catch those impulsive sale shoppers.
The innovation allows businesses to strategically focus attention to populations that are most likely to buy due to factors such as geographic proximity, demand, and timing.
High-Speed Delivery
If you’re already satisfied with a 3-day delivery lead time, then you’re not seeing the bigger picture. As roads become more congested with cars and pedestrians, on-land deliveries are slowly losing in the game of speed.
Drones! – yup, those things that were used for warfare espionage, high-quality geographic mapping, and all those big-deal projects, they’re going to deliver you that Air Fryer you just saw on a Facebook Ad.
The lead time in days can shorten to as much as hours or even minutes. Delivery charges are obviously going to cost more than usual, but anyone would be happy to pay for the experience of a package delivered to them through a drone. Eventually, sky-way delivery prices will normalize as the drones become more commercialized for simpler activities – such as, you know, delivering an Air Fryer.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality is the future, and it is here! For quite a while, augmented and virtual reality services have been with us in projects that seek to provide immersion to artificial sensory environments and close-to-life experiences. Such applications include training simulations and the gaming sector. Now, AR/VR has found its way into the retail industry.
For so long, people have been contented with merely envisioning the ownership of a product – imagining how a dress would look on them, or how a piece of decoration would go with the rest of the room. This gap between purchasing and owning has led to countless failed transactions and disappointments. This predicament is emphasized during the online shopping experience where customers can only see the product’s image and not the real thing. Not only does AR provide customers with a more sophisticated and reliable way of trying out the product, it also builds the connection between product and customer which subsequently enhances chances of a successful and satisfying purchase.
The main challenge to AR/VR technology is, of course, the degree of realism in aspects dealing with object dimensions, physics, colors, and other subtle details. High-sophistication technologies such as AR/VR require intense coordination with a larger body of resources; as a consequence, are more prone to technical problems, bugs, and glitches.
Effective and time-efficient QA testing is crucial in the process of incorporating and implementing high-sophistication technologies in your services. In product display, customer experience is top priority to promote sales conversion. QAWERK uses up-to-date tools and proven and reliable testing methods to successfully prove AR/VR technologies and enhance customer immersion.
One-Click Hassle-Free Shopping
One of the most common frustrations online shoppers have is the hassle of having to poke and scroll your way out of the mobile shopping app. There are lots of things to finish before issuing an order command: Filling out personal information, choosing a selection of similar products from multiple vendors, choosing a charge route and filling credit card details, and some more. Not to mention, in some instances when an internet connection fails, you have to go through the tedious steps again. This is the best way to deter customers from accomplishing an order and abandon a purchase attempt.
eCommerce is designed to make shopping more convenient. Why not take it further?
One-click shopping is a great tool for those customers who are in a rush, and equally when businessmen want to capitalize on spontaneous purchases as it provides a one-pager transaction so that the customer can lock-in the order as soon as he/she decides to do so.
Social Media Marketing
Since its mass spread and utilization in a great portion of our world’s population, social media has become an indispensable tool that’s used to extend an individual’s voice, image, and influence. Businesses all-over have learned to take advantage of social media giants such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube to reach a huge volume of audience in a cost-efficient way.
As an example, Facebook offers a neat function, called “Facebook Marketplace,” where it can host an active community where sellers can showcase their products, and buyers can scan through the available listings. It’s a great start for small eCommerce businesses as these social media communities are free, and sellers and buyers can immediately and directly contact each other.
For larger eCommerce companies calling for broader publicity, they have the option to work with social media platforms and apply for a paid advertisement embedded in the platform or directly deal with influencers and social media celebrities to promote their products and/or services.
Marketing through social media helps foster a healthy community of entrepreneurs, promoters, and consumers that contribute to the growth of a virtual economy. Establishing a trustworthy impression of your connections can lead to an exponential growth of followers and potential customers. It’s important to be consistent and service-oriented as customer reviews and feedback can make or break your business in an instant.
What’s Next for eCommerce
Ecommerce still has lots of room for growth in the next few years as the rapid technological growth serves as a catalyst to set the next wave of exciting innovations in the world of online businesses. Artificial intelligence, automation, and high-speed interaction are the foundation of business advancement, while market competition drives the transformation. With the utilization and development of new technologies in eCommerce, high-quality product testing is needed to stimulate customer satisfaction and business growth.
Shopping cart icon in hand -DepositPhotos
