Revolutionizing Retail: Navigating the New Era of eCommerce

Written by Lily Hardwig, Copywriter
Researched by Cole Pawlaczyk, Intelligence Strategist

Within the past few decades, the virtual buying and selling of goods and services has become one of the most engrained facets of everyday life. As a society, we’re always looking for ways to make our daily routines as efficient as possible. One of the ways brands have helped weave convenience into our lives is through eCommerce. Think about it. If someone asked you how often you use the internet to purchase what you need, how often would you say? Every day? Every week?

Mobile Commerce

Because of our newfound appetite for uninterrupted mobile shopping experiences, retailers are progressively recognizing the need to enhance the mobile shopping journey. What is it that makes a customer more or less likely to buy their goods online? There is much to learn from different platforms’ approaches to skillful product display, search engine optimization, transaction processing, and customer interaction.

When we think about successful eCommerce, likely the companies that pop into your head include Amazon, eBay, and others. And it’s true, platforms like eBay and Amazon provide comprehensive infrastructural services and boast a substantial base of regular users. What can we learn from them? Let’s break it down.

Simplification of the Checkout Process

First, it’s been proven that customers appreciate the simplification of the checkout process, preferring fewer clicks or one-touch checkouts. No one wants to put their credit card information into every eCommerce platform. Streamlining the checkout process is essential for lowering conversion hurdles and enhancing the ease of online payments for shoppers. By streamlining the last few steps of the online buying process, companies like Amazon and eBay significantly cut cart abandonment. For example, Amazon makes the information that consumers want, such as reviews, discounts, delivery times and payment options, immediately accessible. This assuages the frustration and confusion of customers by shortening the checkout process without losing any details necessary for a consumer to make an informed purchase.

Delivery Optimization

Delivery optimization, or the redefining of traditional delivery methods, enhances the shopping experience and customer satisfaction. Innovations like parcel delivery lockers, precise delivery schedules for the working demographic, urgent drone shipments for critical items like medications, and same-day delivery options represent the cutting edge of delivery service enhancements. Logistics veterans, alongside innovators like Amazon, Uber, and newcomers like Shyp, are driving these advancements. Customers have come to rely on quick, simple and dependable shipping and handling.

Loyalty and Memberships

Because checkout and delivery processes are becoming more efficient, the market has grown saturated with competitive pricing, selection, and quality. This can make it difficult to compete and retain your customer base. As a solution, large companies are increasingly focused on fostering customer loyalty to boost engagement, purchase frequency, and basket size. By providing membership programs and benefits, sellers cultivate a loyal community of buyers. Amazon Prime sets the standard for such schemes. Nonetheless, niche players, particularly in fashion, are catching up, with Vente-Privee’s lucrative model standing out by offering membership options that makes the shopping experience of dedicated customers more even convenient. The success of Zalando Zet and Walmart’s ShippingPass also highlights the value of loyalty programs in eCommerce by increasing traffic through membership deals and perks.

VoiceCommerce

eCommerce does not only encompass buying and selling through a process of clicks. eCommerce has come to even include orders through the use of intelligent assistants such as Siri or Alexa. While VoiceCommerce is not typically ideal for first-time product searches, it is extremely useful for repeat purchases. Presuming these smart agents can learn from past orders and eventually handle a set budget, this could pave the way for a novel approach in merchant-customer interactions.

Headless Commerce

Additionally, Headless eCommerce has developed as a technology trend that empowers online businesses to craft highly tailored and engaging shopping experiences across various digital touchpoints. By decoupling the front-end presentation layer from the back-end eCommerce infrastructure, brands are liberated to customize how they showcase their offerings, whether through mobile apps, voice-activated assistants, social media platforms, or beyond. Companies such as Magento, Shopify, and Salesforce leverage headless commerce to assemble dynamic, fluid, and visually appealing online shopping experiences.

Dropshipping

Though incredibly well organized and efficiently structured, business giants like Amazon and eBay are not the only entrants into the world of eCommerce. Thanks to alternative delivery methods like dropshipping, new entrepreneurs have recently been able to break into the virtual world of buying and selling. Dropshipping, which enables sellers to send products straight from the supplier to the customer without holding stock themselves, has opened the door for small-scale operations because of its low barrier to entry and reduced financial burden.

Customer Journey

When engaging with eCommerce, each and every user has a customer journey that we can evaluate to improve the online buying experience. A customer journey refers to the path of interactions a customer has with your brand, product and services. Across various surveys, we have learned that 73% of customers prefer to use their mobile devices to participate in eCommerce, and 51% said that the driving force behind their participation is purely convenience. The platforms on which consumers most prefer to shop include Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Other platforms recruit buyers as well, just at a slower rate.

Holiday Shopping with eCommerce

Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday are eCommerce holidays that take place just after Thanksgiving and before the winter gift giving season fully commences. The holiday season, the season of gift giving, brings consumers from far and wide looking to order the perfect gift for their loved ones. Because of the aforementioned eCommerce trends, retailers jump at the chance to provide timely online shopping experiences that take advantage of increased site traffic. Whether the retailer is a single startup or a massive corporation, it relies on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to get a successful sales season underway.

Key Takeaways

Whether you are a business owner, a small scale entrepreneur, a consumer or even just a user of technology, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that eCommerce is going to remain central to the exchange of goods and services in our society. Because of this, it’s important that we all understand how this new system of trade works. eCommerce technology is here to stay. Once fully embraced, it has the potential to ease many of the stressors and complications in our everyday processes of purchasing goods. For ways to research, design and optimize your checkout’s User Experience, our team is here to help.