[3-minute read]
Shopping in the UK has changed forever. The jury is out on whether consumers will return to the high street to shop in person. One thing is for sure shopping online is here to stay. Digital transformation has not just become nice to have on your company website. It is driving ecommerce strategies and forcing the markets to reinvent themselves. Everything is affected, from the way we search, shop, where we shop, and how we pay. Let’s look at some of the key drivers that will keep you ahead of the race in 2022.
Composable commerce – not in a box digital
Composable commerce eliminates the risk of buying basic out-of-the-box capabilities and gaining functionality and performance in your shopping app. It’s a modern approach. And so it should be. The main feature of composable commerce is decoupling your backend from your frontend. It leaves your IT department to get on with developing your app while marketing and development departments can focus on customer service and product innovations.
Personalisation and generation AI
We’re not just talking about adding a first or last name to an email message here. We’re talking about personalising products, prices, customer journeys, content, and marketing material. According to Forbes, 77% of consumers choose, recommend, and pay more for brands that provide personalised services and experiences.
Welcome to the world according to me. I wake up to my favourite music provided by Apple, and my fridge displays the exact fruit I prefer. At work, my computer knows which windows to open, and ads to display. I get to pay with my preferred payment method without having to jump through hoops to tell every… new… site… that I don’t swipe but like embedded payments. The list goes on. AI and machine learning will be deployed on major shopping sites and marketplaces to do exactly what you want. Before you even know you want it. If they get it right, the world we live in will become a much less tedious place. Dynamic pricing, demand forecasting, and customer profiling are just some trends that are busy transforming ecommerce platforms. Watch this space!
Visual search: Look. See. Find.
Google and social shopping are growing by the day. Research has shown a growing interest in using visual search and image recognition to discover new brands and products.
Powered by AI and machine learning, visual search and image recognition engines identify objects in images and then search for images related to those objects. Roll on personalisation. This trend presents massive opportunities for brands to give shoppers exactly what they are looking for.
Ecommerce businesses in the fashion and home goods sectors are racing to enable visual search on websites and marketplaces. Let’s see who gets there first.
Brand. Customer – no stop in between.
Millennials want to shop online, and they want to buy directly from brands. A direct-to-customer (D2C) ecommerce platform is a great way for brands and manufacturers to connect with their customers, enhance their experience and collect data for product innovation, and insights about the customer journey. By changing your strategy to D2C you eliminate the middleman. That will lead to lower prices, higher margins, or both. Over and above the financial upside you can also speak directly to your consumer. Listen to what they need. Then give them what they want. You don’t have to rely on third parties to convey the data, or wait weeks to interpret it.
The last word
The last word on trends for this year is about fulfillment. Various trendspotters talk about fulfilment and how it is the key to any ecommerce business. There have been global challenges in supply chain management and shipping, giving rise to the shop local trend. Nobody knows when supply chains will recover or when the global shortage of semiconductors will resolve itself. You can future-proof your business against uncertainty. It includes inventory management, finding new suppliers, implementing warehouse automation, and working with partners to scale faster.
Have a look at the series of posts we did this month of various trends:
Top Ten Consumer Trends for 2022
Top Ten Payment Trends for 2022 Part 2
However you negotiate the year ahead, ensure you streamline payments. The more seamless payments are, the faster you get your money and the happier your customers are.
Truevo would like to help you with that. Contact us to talk about your specific needs. Few companies are iterating as fast as we do.
