Hot E-commerce Trends to Watch Out for in 2020

1979 was the year when the idea of online shopping first came into existence. Michael Aldrich, an English inventor, innovator and entrepreneur, was the first to invent online shopping. Amazon was one of the first companies to enter into the world of e-commerce back in the early ’90s. During the earlier stages, e-commerce was an American phenomenon and everyone was doubtful about the future of e-commerce industry. But as the influence of the internet grew, the e-commerce industry also started to grow. With the changing e-commerce trends, at present e-commerce websites have become an integral part of everyone’s day to day life. It is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world with the e-commerce market amounts to US$1,800,517m in 2019. The e-commerce industry is expected to witness massive growth in the upcoming years as well. According to a report by Shopify, retail e-commerce sales is expected to reach $4.9Trillion by 2021. The e-commerce industry is going through a revolution, we can expect a lot of new e-commerce trends in the year 2020. E-commerce trends mentioned below will help you understand the value of the current and future of the e-commerce market. By taking the below mentioned e-commerce trends into your development and marketing strategy will help you to ensure steady growth.

1. Omni-channel Retail Experiences

Single-channel retail was the traditional retail model. In the single-channel model, there used to be only one channel, either a shop or an online website for selling products or service. Slowly multi-channel retail started gaining momentum since it offered more convenience. In the multi-channel model, both brick-and-mortar-stores and an online website were present at the same time. Multi-channel retail has helped to boost the sales drastically since it offered more flexibility compared with the single-channel model.  But of late customers have become more demanding and hence the need for Omni-channel retail model came to the picture. Digitalization also played a crucial part in making it happen. Omni-channel shopping experiences extend from physical store to mobile-browsing, marketplaces, social media, retargeting etc. The retailer makes use of multiple channels to offer a unified experience to the users in the Omni-channel retail model. The average percentage of people spending time on social media is on the rise every year; hence eCommerce businesses can make social media as a channel to market their products and services. Gone are the days where people make use of a single screen to complete their purchases. Digital world consumers have plenty of options to reach to your products or services. Digital users have much higher expectations on retailers and are expecting a seamless, unique experience which is not limited to the quality of products alone. Based on a report, around 76% of mobile users purchase from store after doing research online. To attract these audiences to your store you need to have a strong omnichannel presence. If you are planning to start an e-commerce business in 2020, it is advised to keep an Omni-channel presence to boost your sales and to offer a unified experience to users. Without any doubt, we can say that the future of e-commerce businesses and their success depends mainly on Omnichannel retail experiences. It is one of those e-commerce trends which is more likely to leave a much greater impact in the years to come. Webandcrafts is one of the best e-commerce website development company that can brighten your future of e-commerce business.

2. Easy Checkout Process

The most challenging thing for an e-commerce business is to reduce the rate of cart abandonment. Most number of cart abandonment happens during the checkout process. Simplifying the checkout process can be used as a method to reduce such incidence of cart abandonment. Even a 90 second waiting time at the traffic signal annoys the present world people. Most traffic to e-commerce business is from mobile phones, and these users prefer everything to be completed in just one click. The one-click checkout process will be the future of e-commerce industry. To impress such users, you need to offer a simple and secure checkout process that doesn’t make them spend more time in finalizing the order. According to Shopify, directing your customer straight towards the final checkout page helps increase sales conversion and reduces the cart abandonment to a considerable extent.

3. Dropshipping Model

Dropshipping model is one such e-commerce trends we can expect for the year 2020. It is a type of business model in which the store doesn’t have to keep the stock of products it sells. When the store receives an order, it purchases the product from a third party seller and gets it directly shipped to the consumer. In simple words, You receive an order, place the order with the supplier and the supplier gets the order delivered.

Pros of Dropshipping

1. Low startup cost since no warehouse is required to stock the products.
2. Letting a third party handle all the responsibilities of delivery help reduce order fulfilment costs.
3. In the dropshipping model, you only have to pay for what you sell.

4. Augmented & Virtual Reality

You might have come across a situation where you are planning to buy furniture for your living room, but you are confused about how well it will look in the room. Customers not being able to see the product before buying has been a significant concern that needs to be addressed by the e-commerce businesses at the earliest to offer an excellent customer experience. Option to preview before buying furniture can be made possible by making use of Augmented reality and virtual reality. AR and VR methods help customers virtually try a product without actually touching them. L’Oréal has recently started providing the facility of VR which allows people to digitally try the makeup before buying them. We can expect such e-commerce trends to gain further momentum in the year to come.

5. Cryptocurrency as a Payment Method

People are starting to know more about cryptocurrencies and its benefits. In 2019, cryptocurrencies have been the talk of the town. With lots of giant companies already willing to invest in blockchain technologies, we can see a rising increase in the demand and awareness about cryptocurrency in the next year. Cryptocurrency makes online transaction completes faster and will most likely be the future online payment method that will attract new customers.

Based on a report by Statista, there are around 4.68 billion mobile phone users in the world. With mobile e-commerce making more than half of the online sales, businesses should concentrate more on optimizing websites or apps for mobile phones.  The rise in popularity and usability of mobile phones have resulted in increased e-commerce traffic from just 31% to more than 55% as of now. Simplifying the buying experience for mobile phone users should be the emphasis of e-commerce business in the years to come. All the points mentioned above are some of the e-commerce trends that are likely to occur in the next year. Omni-channel retail model and m-commerce strategies need to be planned properly and effectively keeping in mind the importance of user satisfaction.

Want to Learn More?

12 Best Front End Developer Skills that we should consider in 2019
Top 22 Free SEO Tools to help you improve your workflow
Increase the conversion rate of your e-commerce website with these 13 simple tips