eCommerce is growing rapidly and so is the competition, especially during the holiday season. If you want to stay ahead of your competitors, you need to follow the latest eCommerce trends for the best possible results. No matter if your business is small or big, make sure you prepare a winning eCommerce marketing strategy to stay afloat in the cut-throat competition during the upcoming fourth quarter. This includes engaging with new customers as well as retaining the old ones, and expanding your business in all directions. At Vertical Sight we are fiercely testing and implementing new strategies to keep our ecommerce clients on top. Many of our customers have tremendous site traffic, which provides us with a strong amount of data. We pour over this data and analyze it to find any inefficiencies in our campaigns, and in the competition’s campaigns and capitalize on them.
As we get close to the fourth quarter 2017, it’s the right time to analyze and explore the newest eCommerce trends that have emerged this year. A brief listing of such trends are detailed below, with an aim to help eCommerce site owners to stay on the top and generate quality leads for their business.
1. Mobile shopping is skyrocketing
As mobile Internet usages have crossed desktop searches, it is important for E-retailers to ensure that their site is fully responsive so that it can work smoothly on different devices and screen sizes. It is estimated that smartphones and other new-age mobile devices will be the major source of traffic (up to 60%) for eCommerce website by the end of 2017.
Key points to note:
- Creating a mobile responsive site won’t be enough. If you want to boost your sales and increase conversion rate, then you need to integrate mobile wallet functionality into your store – this will make it easy for your potential customers to make the payments against their online purchase through their smartphone on the fly using mobile wallet.
- Create a mobile application of your eCommerce site to drive a large number of online shoppers who use mobile apps for online shopping. Most of the big brands like Amazon, eBay, Alibaba etc. have their own mobile based applications that have contributed a good share of revenues.
2. Social selling is continuing to grow rapidly
Social selling is growing rapidly and this trend is likely to continue throughout 2017. Most of the big online store owners are promoting their brands on popular social media platforms. And hence generating a good chunk of social traffic to increase revenues and sales for their web business. So, ensure that you plan a robust social media marketing strategy for your products and services.
You can use Facebook Live Videos to showcase your products features or even announce an upcoming event to your targeted web audience to get their attention at a first sight.
3. Streamlined Product Return Policy
Online shopping comes with both the perks and disadvantages. There are many web customers who don’t get satisfied with the products which they purchased from a specific web store. And this is where you can offer those customers a good product return feature so that they can return it, without any difficulty. The trend of product return policy has been gaining a lot of popularity among web business owners and it increases the trust amongst the customers.
So, make sure you create a clear, concise and prevailing return policy to give your customers a sense of relief and security. Whenever they buy something from your store, they will get the actual product, or else, they could return it easily.
4. Multiple Options in Payment and Shipping
Make sure you increase the payment options in your E-store if you want to maximize your sales in 2017. When you allow your customers to make payments (for the products and services they buy from your site) through various payment options, it helps you to generate leads in bulk.
Apart from this, you also need to improve your shipping features because online shoppers expect their purchased items to be delivered as soon as possible. If you have the necessary arrangement and resources to dispatch the products to your customers within 24 hours (once the order is placed), you will be able to boost your E-business to a great extent.
5. Personalized online shopping experience
Almost every eCommerce store owner knows that personalized shopping is the most excellent way to introduce new products, hot deals, etc., to your customers (based on their previous purchasing, browsing habits, and anticipated needs) and encourage them to make buying decision instantly. This particular trend will definitely increase in 2017.
With the availability of lots of technologies, brands can easily make sincere efforts to increase suggestive selling. As customers are kings of any trade, you can thrive in eCommerce and encourage them to purchase your products immediately.
6. Fraud Management tools
There are many buyers who hesitate to shop online because of privacy and security concerns. This sort of behavior will also continue in 2017. So, if you want to increase the volume of your E-business in 2017, you need to use some fraud Management tools to track and sort out fraudulent activities. If you ensure that your E-shop is completely safe for online shopping, it will offer a secure and positive shopping experience to all shoppers.
7. User-friendly content will increase your site’s traffic
User-friendly and engaging content encourage visitors to spend more time on your website, get the information they need and make smart buying decisions. Other eCommerce trends may come and go, but the requirement of quality and engaging content has stood the test of time.
You can engage more and more web visitors towards your e-store by creating engaging and captivating content related to your products and services through setting up a blog on your website. You can also communicate with your potential web customers by sending out them professional looking newsletters, or even generate live chats, Q&A sessions to better user engagement.
8. Voice search facility
Previously, voice searches are considered as a tool for having fun. But, now it has become an effective technique that can boost your sales up to a great extent.
In order to maximize the benefits of voice searches, you need to optimize your website with attractive content and conversational long tail request so that they may appear in Google search results when shoppers search for products and services using Google’s voice search facility.
According to Google’s research, 20% of all search requests are placed through voice search and this trend is likely to surge in 2017. If you implement this functionality into your eStore, then you will be able to drive more traffic to your website.
Quick Recap of fourth quarter 2017 eCommerce tips
eCommerce business is all about stiff competition, risk and challenges. In order to stand out from the crowd, one needs to trail the changing trends prevailing in an eCommerce industry business. All the trend mentioned above in this blog post are likely to dominate eCommerce business in 2017. So, if you want your E-business to grow faster, make sure that you adopt these trends as soon as possible, or contact us at Vertical Sight to have our award winning team boost your sales volume.
