Over the past few decades, numerous businesses reserved their corner of the web and extended their activities online. As a consequence, many markets are getting saturated, and new eCommerce platforms start to emerge. Whether your eCommerce model is B2B, B2C, or C2C, it’s a fact that online retail relies on marketing in more ways than its offline counterparts.
Many people who shop online get targeted with advertisements for new online stores and products. As eCommerce is getting more popular, the competition is growing stronger faster than ever. Whether you prefer buying locally, overseas, or for instance in a Japan online marketplace, these marketplaces are booming, and so are the marketing practices behind them.
Augmented reality
AR has a wide range of possible applications from industrial design, architecture, and urban planning to video games and visual art. There is barely a department in which augmented reality is impossible to implement, and marketing is no exception.
Some brands have already enabled their customers to see how a piece of furniture would look in their home or how certain clothes would fit. Utilizing augmented reality in eCommerce can enrich the window-shopping or browsing experience, driving sales in the process.
Artificial Intelligence
While the idea of simulating human thought processes may seem like an overreach when it comes to marketing purposes, AI is not as complicated as it sounds. Natural language processing powers many technologies like Google search, and it’s the same technology that’s driving tools for analytics and targeting.
Machine learning is practically collecting data, analyzing it, and making predictions. Some websites’ cookies, if enabled, allow the website to collect non-identifiable information and use it to predict future behavior. As a result, users get a personalized shopping experience, and site owners get more data for retargeting.
Chatbots and Conversational AI
It’s not always financially optimal for a company to have customer support round the clock. Website users often have questions that the FAQ can’t address, and a simple chatbot can take a load off the customer support section.
Chatbots work by triggering a reaction to a specific action, so a question with a string of keywords can be met with a correct, automatically generated response.
New Social Media Features
Following the trend of behavior-driven implementation, social apps have started to implement shops for direct buying. This addition to social apps makes it easier to streamline social media advertising through the marketing funnel and significantly impacts sales.
Another feature that encourages conversions in social media shops is precisely their built-in messaging apps. With just a click or a tap, clients are more likely to get in touch, and it’s much faster to receive information than by writing an email.
New Payment Options
The lack of payment options was standing in the way of many online purchases around the world. Not all users want to check out directly with their credit card, and now there are plenty of payment processors as a safe intermediary. In addition, many are starting to accept alternative payment options like cryptocurrencies.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has added the much desired human touch to social media advertising, and many companies are replacing brand ambassadors with influencers. Influencer marketing makes shopping easier for people defending causes like green consumerism, sustainable development, and environmentally friendly products.
Visual & Voice Search
As seen in products like Google Lens, image recognition is becoming a big part of visual search-enabled applications. If a potential customer takes a photo of an item, some apps can point them to a shop where they could obtain it.
Virtual assistants and smart speakers are no longer a novelty, and people are relying on them for information on potential purchases. Optimizing for voice search can satisfy the vital micro-moments driving consumer intent, from satisfying curiosity to making repeat purchases.
Rising Technologies and the Future of eCommerce
Online shopping used to be a vague term until a few years ago, but things are changing, and some trends make for practices that are here to stay. Many of the new developments on the marketing front come about with eCommerce in mind, so it’s no wonder people are shopping online more than ever. While some situations call for the physical shopping experience, most people nowadays would prefer to shop in the comfort and privacy of their own homes.
There are many instances in marketing where trends quickly go out of style, but most developments emerge to strengthen the relationships with existing clients and form new ones. We can confidently say that eCommerce is past its beginner stages, and adopting current marketing trends is a worthwhile investment.