Ecommerce Future in 2021 – What To Expect and How to Be on Top

In recent years, we’ve observed an impressive brand evolution and online purchasing evolution. Due to some situations in the world and because of its convenience, the eCommerce market is flourishing. Thus, it’s essential to keep pace with progress. Let’s consider eCommerce future trends and some recommendations on how to create a modern website to succeed.

What Metrics Are Important for Ecommerce Future

In case you want to increase your income and brand awareness in 2021, you should pay attention to such four metrics:

• V – visitors (social media + search engines);
• CR – conversion rate;
• LTV – customer lifetime value for 60 days;
• VC – variable costs (total cost to get your product from the manufacturer into the hands of a customer).

There is a short formula for you to remember: (V x CR x LTV) – VC = $(profit). You can get more detailed information while watching the following video.

Also, the central ratio in the growth of a business is CAC( customer acquisition costs – total marketing costs divided by the total number of customers for a specific period of time). Now let’s proceed to the main trends in the eCommerce future.

Omnichannel Shopping

We are moving to a model of the client-vendor relationships revolving around the customers, not communication channels with them. Consequently, customers interact with the company, not within the framework of any separate channel but use the variety of them on their “path” to purchase. Thus, to optimize the consumer shopping process to the maximum, it’s essential to use several distribution channels simultaneously:

• offline stores and online marketplaces
• wholesale
• mobile devices
• social media
• TV.

In What Way It Helps

Omnichannel retail includes accounting and analytics of a complete list of consumer preferences, primarily the most frequent purchases, preferred marketing channels and ways of delivery, characteristics of behavior in the store, motivations, and primary drivers to purchase.

What Measures to Take

1. Use a single platform to build your business.
2. Analyze your store with eCommerce analytics tools like Finteza.
3. Make your website mobile-friendly. Think of eCommerce personalization, excellent customer experience, and various payments(we’ll discuss all these things below).

The last tip is “Think like a client.” Anyone who is able to provide the consumer with all possible formats of shopping and delivery will be able to increase sales significantly.

Ecommerce Personalization

Undoubtedly, a preference will be given to an online store where users can easily and quickly find the goods they need, buy more through cross-sell and upsell recommendations, and come for purchases more often. Ecommerce personalization is all about providing a personalized experience by analyzing browsing behavior, purchase history, and all information connected with shopping.

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There two possible stages:

1. Interaction with the user on the online store website(product output automatically changes depending on the user’s interest in certain products, categories, brands, price range, etc.).
2. Communication with the user after he closed the online store website (writing email marketing content that converts , sending newsletters, trigger letters, messages, and push notifications).

To manage it, consider where it can succeed most and define tools to help (marketing, CRM , A/B test , etc.).

What Your Site Gets

• increase of conversions
• boost of income
• better SEO (has a positive effect on the position of the site in the search results and ensures the growth of organic traffic)
• increased audience loyalty

All in all, with eCommerce personalization, site content begins to adjust to user preferences automatically and motivates them to make repeat purchases.

Use of Cookies

Another eCommerce future trend is the conscious use of cookies. To achieve better privacy and control of how personal data is used, Google is going to phase out the third-party cookies (files that are stored not by the site on which the user is located but by various advertising systems).

Mobile Shopping

Nowadays, the phone is the principal friend of the buyer and the retailer in the process of collecting information about potential customers. According to statistics , by 2021, the world’s e-commerce sales will make up 53.9% of all e-commerce sales.

How to Make Your Website Mobile Friendly

• First, test it to determine how things are with your site and get a green or red sign.

• Appeal to website optimization services.
• Create a progressive web app with incredible functionality and feel.
• Implement AMP(accelerated mobile pages; technology to accelerate the loading of mobile content, which allows you to load the page quickly even with a weak Internet).
• Consider a perfect mobile checkout (shopping cart, shipping info, payment details, order review, and order confirmation).
• Simplify navigation: place the menu, so it doesn’t disappear when scrolling. You can motivate people to keep searching with a visible search bar, detailed filters, and relevant results.

All in all, mobile stores continue to grow. Brands with the best customer experiences, from visiting a home page to checkout, will have the edge over the competitors.

AI – Essential Ecommerce Future Trend

Convenience and immediacy are the key factors users appreciate. Artificial intelligence isn’t a novelty, but it’s going to be a powerful tool in 2021. Let’s consider some effective ways to use artificial intelligence in the eCommerce future:

• think the way customers do – track what users might want to buy, and present them with recommendations;
• provide customer-centric experience;
• implement virtual assistants, in-app messaging, chatbots, dialogues, etc.

Chatbots

Another 2021 trend for improving user experience and generating leads is intelligent chatbots that can:

1. Answer questions 24/7.
2. Respond instantly, save customers’ time and increase their loyalty.
3. Save resources – a chatbot on social networks and instant messengers can process up to 30% of typical requests, which means you will unload first-line operators.
4. Collect information about customer preferences and contact information.
5. Transfer requests to the required group of operators.

You can edit code manually to add a chatbot or use various platforms for their creation(f.e.ChatCompose offers a free plan for one chatbot and 10$ for five of them). Also, MotoCMS is always ready to help you with anything considering your website.

Augmented Reality Becoming More Popular

AR becomes a new trend for attracting customers and leading your business to another level.

Some Examples of How It Looks Like

An online hat store, Tenth Street Hats , offered customers virtual wearing of hats without leaving their house. As a result, the conversion rate was increased by 52%.

Also, the IKEA Place app allows customers to place furniture in their houses to choose the appearance, color, and assess compatibility with other home furnishings. The application projects furniture and interior elements in seconds and looks as believable as possible. Such a decision made a company more popular and boosted its profits.

Undoubtedly, AI and AR provide a more efficient sales process.

Visual Ecommerce Among Ecommerce Future Trends

Besides various visuals on websites, posting user-generated content is in demand. In such a case, your customers interact with you by sharing their experience with the brand(feelings and photos). Nowadays, about 90% of users trust testimonials, so it’s essential to have lots of good feedback.

B2B eCommerce In the Lead

In 2021, business-to-business online sales are projected to be two times higher than B2C and reach 1.2 trillion U.S. dollars , up from 889 billion U.S. dollars in 2017.

To promote your business and become successful, keep in mind such necessary steps as:

1. get started with public relations ;
2. focus on Marketing(+PR, Technical side, and Support);
3. concentrate on clients who have a real interest in buying what you offer;
4. follow a strategy that all employees know and share, create a corporate culture;
5. provide quality interaction and analytics ( CRM tools are what you should pay attention to).

Search with the Help of Voice

This trend develops and continues to impress with its accuracy and convenience. Nowadays,  Amazon and Google have the best voice assistants.

Here are ways to prepare your site for speech search:

• Optimize your content with the help of relevant keywords.
• Analyze the style and length of requests(usually in the form of a question).
• Check whether you have a good page speed.
• Add requests to URLs.
• Ensure it works.

AOV Optimization

In 2021 it’s also essential to pay attention to AOV rates. AOV is the average order value or the average check and one of the critical performance characteristics of an online store for those who don’t know.

To increase the level of AOV, you can start with many different techniques:

• provide additional sales and promotions to attract customers
• introduce new payment methods
• add a new range of products
• start advertising expensive products or bestsellers first
• create a set of products and sell it at a discount
• create a loyalty program, etc.

However, before taking action, it is necessary to analyze statistics(e.g., with Google Analytics) and choose the most appropriate optimization method.

Let’s lead to trends in payment.

Virtual Payment

Nowadays, the opportunity to pay for purchases using ApplePay, WhatsApp Pay, GooglePay, Facebook payments, and Twitter Buy is a must. Also, among the trends for eCommerce future payments, you’ll see some familiar ways to pay for products/services, and some of them may be new:

• local payment methods (LPMs)(bank transfers, e-wallets, cash-based digital payments, and local credit cards);
• real-time payments (RTP);
• processing payments via cloud system;
• open banking ;
• biometric authentication(fingerprinting scanners, facial recognition, iris recognition, heartbeat analysis, and vein mapping);
• cross-border transactions;
• distributed ledger tools ;
• e-wallets;
• prepaid cards.

Besides, MotoCMS provides advanced eCommerce functionality. With eCommerce website templates , you can create a high-converting online store easily!

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Enjoy such features as:

• products’ catalog with filtering and search options
• secure payment gateways
• tax and shipping settings
• a secure checkout
• flexible payment options and methods: Manual Payment (order details will be e-mailed to website owner without payment been made), Authorize.NET, LiqPay, iDeal, Mollie, PayOne, PayPal Express, PayU, PostFinance, QuickPay, Skrill, Sogecommerce, Stripe, 2Checkout, WebMoney, YandexMoney.

Buy Now Pay Later Option

BNPL is a new consumer-friendly way of purchasing that has appeared on the market. It allows users to pay in up to 30 days. Thus you get more potential sales, clients and build trust. In case you want to integrate such an option into your checkout, there is some software for your convenience(f.e. the leader on the market – Klarna , offering you to pay the way you want).

Dynamic Pricing

In 2021 real-time adaptation of prices to market conditions will play a significant role. Try to optimize your prices immediately(even every day/hour), pay attention to price bounds, market demands, and seasonality. For example, according to customers’ behavior and competitors’ prices, Amazon changes the cost of goods every 10 minutes .

Creating Reliable Shipping Conditions

Could your parents imagine that it’s possible to order something and get it in 24 hours? Nowadays, it isn’t easy to surprise customers. You’ll quickly irritate them in case the buying process isn’t fast and convenient. Nevertheless, news about drone delivery by Amazon was unexpected and thrilling. Consider making your customers’ shipping experience convenient(precalculating the costs, providing all possible delivery methods, so they have what to choose from, offering discounts and special offers like free shipping in case of buying two products, etc.).

Global Accessibility and Convenience

This year, adapting to global business is going to take shape. Thus, if your online store has already conquered the local market, it’s high time to bring your business to a new level. And an excellent opportunity is to enter foreign markets:

• consider the market of what country to pay attention to (China/USA/ neighboring country);
• analyze competitors;
• find your targeted audience;
• try to promote your products/services on some platforms (f.e. Amazon, eBay) first, and after some successful projections, launch a multi-language website (it’s essential to adapt the language to the country where you promote business);
• take care of local currency, as well as local payment systems;
• delivery and storage are the next important factors to think about.

Using Social Media for Website Promotion

Nowadays, social networks are no longer just a site where you can chat, post photos, or share some information and channels with the help of which you can effectively promote your online store and get steady traffic to your website.

Facebook is considered to be the top organic and paid social media platform that generates the best results. Thus, if you still don’t make the most of it, you lose a lot.

Powerful Strategy That Never Fails

The eCommerce future is based on a strategy governed by AIDA analytics:

• attention: make a potential buyer pay attention to your ad;
• interest: interest the consumer with a unique selling proposition;
• desire: form a desire to own a product;
• action: push to the desired action.

Best Ecommerce Website Builder

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MotoCMS is an excellent choice for beginners & small businesses. It impresses by:

• variety of eCommerce templates
• convenient eStore features like shipping cost calculation, store working hours setup, invoice generation, etc.
• the simplicity of use – no programming/coding skills
• 1-year hosting and domain name support
• SSL certificate
• a complete website setup from our expert team.

All in all, you can reach out to our team in the most suitable way – by chat, email, or otherwise and get answers to all your questions. We hope our tips will help you follow the trends and present customers with the best user experience. If you still don’t have an online store, you can start an eCommerce business right away with MotoCMS.