5 Powerful E-Commerce Development Trends of 2019

With online shopping market growing 23% each year, new e-commerce solutions are a must for everyone who wants to grow business in 2019. While the number of commerce sites increases day-to-day, following powerful e-commerce development trends that we describe below may bring you ahead of the competition.  

We, in Agiliway, carry out many e-commerce solutions for a wide range of industries using top technologies like Magento, Oxid, WooCommerce, Aimeos, OpenCart, Odoo, etc. We carefully follow the latest industry trends and share experience with other large players in the e-commerce world. In particular, Agiliway experts have just returned from E-Commerce Berlin Expo 2019, a large international expo and conference that presents a full range of e-commerce products and technologies. There, we exchanged news and discussed e-commerce development trends with experts from around Europe.  

Now, we want to update our readers on the latest trends and help them not to get lost in the wide range of new ideas. Thus, e-commerce experts from Agiliway have selected 5 powerful e-commerce trends of 2019 that should better be implemented as soon as possible:   

1. Personalization  

In the modern world, which is overwhelmed with information, the quest for the online purchase made in your web store becomes a quest for customer’s attention, which can only be gained when you serve the right product at the right time. Due to the evolving web development tools and technologies, personalization becomes a great way to increase website time, sales and customer retention.

As an e-commerce trend, personalization should be understood as real-time customization of the customers’ journey basing on their demographics and behavior. This may include creating a website personalization and serving each individual visitor with dynamic content, offers, and calls to action. For example, your e-commerce site can display different featured products, blog posts or images basing on the buyer’s demographic data and his previous browsing and purchases history. You may also make the actual user’s location determine a shipment rate that your web store displays. Pop-ups may be customized to effectively respond to the user’s intent, which is normally determined by factors such as click, abandonment of browsing, timing, moving to the tab to close it.  

2. Augmented and Virtual Reality  

The use of AR/VR that helps users to see 3D versions of products, “try on” clothes and cosmetics, or visualize furniture in their homes is revolutionizing customer experience. Experts predict AR/VR to spread to various niches and greatly affect ultimate buyers’ decisions, which makes it an important trend to follow.      

The distinctive feature of AR/VR is the shopping experience becomes close to just having fun. A video by the Fitting Reality demonstrates with very well. Who after all can resist the temptation of trying on Lacoste shoes if it’s as simple as looking at your leg through the smartphone’s screen? Overall, 30,000 users did that using the company’s app. We bet many of those could not resist buying the product that fits that so well. 

3. One-Click Mobile Orders and Payments  

While online purchase has been associated primarily with the desktop experience, in 2018, 40% of all revenues came from mobile shoppers. Having a responsive commerce site is only the first step in mobile-optimization. To succeed in 2019, e-commerce development strategy should include a one-click order and payment options for mobile users.

One-click orders allow reducing the whole stage in an online buying journey – adding the product to the cart and then going to the cart to pay for the product. Knowing that online shoppers abandon from 50% to 80% of carts, you may easily imagine the increase in sales if the buying decision is acted upon instantly.   

4. AI Chatbots  

Virtual assistants and chatbots have already established in the e-commerce world in recent years.  The reason is well-understood: they cut customer support expenses, facilitate leads and sales, and build long-term customer relationships. A powerful 2019 e-commerce development trend is using AI algorisms for virtual assistants and chatbots to analyze all queries and responses and learn to become even more helpful. 

This way, AI chatbots may not only guide users to the products they are interested in or provide common information on the process of purchase and delivery – they may learn to determine possible objections and effectively respond to them, just like your best salesmen do. Since AI chatbots need time to learn, a good decision will be to invest in one as soon as possible.    

5. Product Content Syndication 

Product content – description, images, specifications, attributes – is at the heart of online sales. Product content syndication allows to automatically spread the content from a centralized point to various platforms and channels. Such a solution allows achieving consistency across multiple commerce sites, which you might use to gain more reach, visibility, and conversions.   

Product content syndication software is also very helpful when used on the B2B level. For example, industrial suppliers may easily share product data with all their distributors, resellers and OEMs. The beauty of the solution is that the data source will be managed centrally; thus, if a manufacturer makes any changes, your site will update the information automatically.   

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Despite the fierce competition rolling out in the digital space, strategic e-commerce solution will help you stay up-to-date with the upcoming trends and reap all the benefits they offer. Our e-commerce professionals are ready to consult you on how to implement the latest tools and ideas.