Riding the Wave: The Latest eCommerce Trends You Can't Ignore

It is important for you to explore how the world of eCommerce will adapt to upcoming technologies and trends in the near future. Also, it is equally important to get an insight into how sellers try to stay updated with the customers by improving the shopping experiences and technical aspects of business, while customers expect their customer journey to be seamless and unique one. So, let's enrich your awareness of the latest eCommerce trends and the corresponding improvement areas.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is the integration of digital information with the user's environment in real-time. Unlike virtual reality (VR), which creates an artificial environment, AR users experience a real-world environment with generated perceptual information overlaid on top of it [1]. AR has several prospects in the retail sector, especially regarding eCommerce. Because even if eCommerce has become increasingly common, there are still some purchases for which we require a little more detail, and AR closes this gap. This specific technology allows customers to visually perceive the item they purchase, facilitating the buying process. Augmented reality significantly enhances the purchasing experience in particular industries, such as fashion and home decor, as it enables clients to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the product even without physically viewing it.

Hyper Personalization

Hyper-personalization is the technique of showing carefully selected products and content to customers utilizing AI and real-time data. Because each consumer is treated as an individual with unique tastes and preferences, brands and merchants are able to provide them with a customized shopping experience. With hyper-personalization, the website messaging and the process for discovering products are individually customized for the needs and preferences of each customer. That is how traditional personalization and hyper-personalization differ from one another. Customers can receive more context-sensitive product recommendations based on their interactions with the brand rather than typical ones.

Voice Search

Using the voice to communicate with devices like smartphones or smart speakers, such as answering queries or giving instructions, is known as voice search or searching by speech. eCommerce businesses can benefit from voice search in a number of ways, from giving customers additional options for customizing their shopping experiences to enabling them to find the products they want from any location. Customers are able to go through a brand's numerous product collections, select the product's size and color, and ask questions right there in the store. Major corporations like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple have made significant investments in voice search and voice recognition technology, which has greatly improved the outcomes.

Headless eCommerce

In its simplest form, headless commerce is a separation of the front end and back end of an eCommerce application [3]. The "front end" is what customers interact with – the user interface, product pages, shopping cart, etc. The "back end" is everything that happens behind the scenes – inventory management, order processing, and other logistics. In traditional eCommerce, the front-end and back-end are tightly coupled, meaning changes to one can often affect the other. But in a headless eCommerce system, the two are separated. They communicate with each other through APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Headless eCommerce can provide a range of benefits for businesses, including better employee adoption, time savings across IT tasks, cost savings, and multi-channel selling.

Chatbot Interaction

eCommerce chatbots are computer programs that interact with website users in real-time. They provide customer service, answer questions, recommend products, gather feedback, and track engagement [2]. The present consumer demands the ability to locate and purchase a product in a few clicks, and they become dissatisfied if they can't. A chatbot could intervene at this point to keep the deal going. Chatbots converse with online customers like that a salesperson in a physical store. Popular businesses using chatbots online include Starbucks, Facebook, Lyft, Sephora, and Lyft. Various industries, including the airline, food, financial services, and healthcare sectors, increasingly use chatbots for business to meet their marketing demands. For more valuable insights regarding eCommerce trends, be a part of our eCommerce Online Training.

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References

[1] https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/augmented-reality-AR

[2] https://blog.hootsuite.com/ecommerce-chatbots/

[3] https://www.salesforce.com/blog/define-headless-commerce/

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