With the end of 2018 already upon us, it’s important to understand that the year 2019 is just around the corner so if you aim to innovate your e-commerce website for the following year, now’s the time to do so. Of course, whenever one speaks predictively about e-commerce trends, one has to admit that there’s no 100 percent guarantee that the prediction will actually hold true. Still, based on the current data and trend movement, it’s quite possible that these several trends might be quite lucrative in 2019. Let’s take a look at the list!
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Augmented and virtual reality
The first thing worth considering, when it comes to e-commerce, is the fact that there are only two advantages that the traditional retail has over it. These two are A) the fact that one can take the product straight home without having to wait for delivery and B) the fact that a person can inspect the product up close. Fortunately, with the help of augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR), the digital marketplace of the future might resolve this second problem to everyone’s benefit. Namely, by being able to see what the product will look like in the real-life environment, even “try it out” first, customers will feel much less timid and much more eager to buy.
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Investment in mobile apps
One statistic claims that an average mobile user spends 90 percent of their time online on an app, while only 10 percent of their time on a browser. This is why your e-commerce business can’t miss out on an opportunity to make an app in 2019. Keep in mind that this is something that you can entrust to an app designer (the safer route), or do yourself with a simple drag-and-drop app builder (the more frugal route). Each of these methods has its perks and downsides, so you should choose based on your skills, preferences and budget.
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Multi-vendor platforms
What your audience wants is a variety, which is why you need to seriously consider running a multi-vendor platform. This will allow your audience to access to a greater variety of offers, even allowing you to tap into demographics who would otherwise go elsewhere in order to look into different offers. In other words, choosing an OMNYFY marketplace platform as the prime example of a multi-vendor store, you get to drastically reduce the bounce rate and increase the conversion rate of your e-commerce business.
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Voice search
The fact that the voice search is getting more and more used feature is quickly becoming a trend on everyone’s lips. This means that there’s a lot for you to miss out on if you don’t manage to adapt to this fact in time. The first thing you need to do is invest a bit of your time and resources into voice search SEO. Due to the fact that this feature is mostly used by mobile users, this will take you one step closer to fully benefiting from the growing trend of m-commerce, as well.
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Personalization
Both B2B and B2C marketing methods are quickly getting replaced by a far superior P2P (person-to-person) approach. With that in mind, you need to understand that the personalization of your business inevitably leads to higher sales. For this to work or even be achievable on such level, you’ll have to harvest an incredible amount of data. The easiest way to do so is to make your customers register, however, not having to register in order to make a purchase is one of the strongest selling points in the world of e-commerce. In this particular scenario, the best thing for you to do is to make registration optional but incentivize it to the point where your audience feel compelled to it.
In conclusion
While these five trends already seem to be a somewhat significant factor in the world of e-commerce, it’s expected that they might become predominant in the following year. Even though it’s never too late to hop on a trend, pioneering in it does have its advantages. Not only do you get a chance to get ahead of your competitors but you also have more time to fix some unexpected flaws in this new system. This allows you to consistently provide your users with a superior UX.
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Mike is an Australian IT support professional. He’s working with companies that outsource their IT maintenance. He often writes about technology, business and marketing and is a regular contributor on several sites.
