There’s no doubt that 2021 has left a remarkable trail in eCommerce in its wake. With Covid-19 being a norm in our lives, the eCommerce landscape has undergone a massive change to cater to a whole new lifestyle. This year, in 2022, the world continues to see a shift in eCommerce trends and behaviors. From artificial intelligence to automation and augmented reality, one can see that we’re slowly moving away from a brick-and-mortar dominated retail economy and into technology-driven one. Here are 5 trends we think will shape eCommerce in 2022.
Voice recognition functions have been on the rise since 2020, and its prevalence in our lives has only deepened since then. This is strengthened by the presence of famous, voice-powered assistants in the form of Siri, Alexa and Google, all which have found a way into our daily lives through tech gadgets. In fact, prominent websites such as YouTube have been experimenting with voice recognition on their search bars too.
Voice recognition technology brings convenience into our life through the simple use of a voice command. “Google, please search for the nearest takeout to me,” or “Siri, find me the cheapest delivery service in my area” are all examples of technology simplifying our lives. In eCommerce, this is accomplished through use of matching keywords and phrases to the user’s queries.
Buying an item and being done with it just doesn’t cut it for customers these days. Today, people are looking for a touch of individuality to stand out from the crowd, and what better way to reflect that through their personal possessions? Providing customers with the luxury of customizing their products is a great way to ensure customer satisfaction, it also boosts customer loyalty. A very simple example of personalized designs include designing your own t-shirt under a retailer, or getting a customized jewelry from a jewelry maker. Personalized designs have been around for some time, only they have now made their way to major retail names.
Another prime example of something that has been around for quite some time but has risen to prominence over the recent years as a result of Covid. In 2021, mobile shopping alone contributed a total of 3.56 trillion to global trade revenue, and experts expect the figure to grow by another 21.5% by the end of 2022, bringing the total sales to approximately 4.01 trillion. The growth in mobile shoppers has prompted many users to optimize their webstore for mobile usage. Mobile optimization also comes along with diversified payment options such as paypal and e-wallets. It’s all hard work but if you fail to optimize for mobile shopping, you’re basically setting yourself up to fail.
People are looking to shop from the comfort of their devices these days, especially when Covid is still making waves in every corner of the world. With eCommerce being a thing now, many shoppers are still worried about a product’s authenticity and quality. Enter VR-powered shopping. VR shopping puts you in a simulated environment where you can look at your products in the flesh (almost) and have a better idea of how it’ll fit into your lifestyle.
Chatbots are incrementally being used by big businesses to handle customer queries. Most of the time, the bots are coded to provide standard answers to customers pertaining to their products. This helps a business save cost in the labor department, as hiring thousands of customer service agents to take on thousands of standard queries per day just isn’t feasible, and it isn’t particularly pragmatic if most queries merely concern product information, both which bots can be trained to handle with ease. More importantly, the advantage of using bots is they can gather feedback, recommend further products to customers, provide information about ongoing sales and promo, and answer FAQs with ease. In short, chatbots speed up a business’ efficiency and help to facilitate prompt response with thousands of customers in one-go with zero errors.
Another thing on the list that is already being practiced by a fraction of businesses worldwide. Ominchannel is here to stay and the trend is slowly catching on. Many businesses are aware of the importance of expansion, and they want to create awareness about their brand through the presence of multiple marketplaces. Omnichannel advertising is also a great way to remarket products to people, as it is found that people are more likely to purchase a product the more times they see an ad associated with it.
It is undeniable that technology is closely interwoven with our lives. In this age and time, many businesses and organizations are relying on the power of technology to do their bidding, simply because it is a great way to save cost and minimize human error. With each passing year, we are brought a step closer to a technology-driven era. Like it or not, there will come a time we will also have to embrace a technology-enriched lifestyle.