The future of e-commerce is sure to be full of changes. As technology advances, businesses will continue to find new and innovative ways to increase efficiency and reach more customers.The possibilities for e-commerce are endless, from virtual stores and augmented reality to automated shopping and delivery robots. Consumer preferences and expectations will drive these changes as well as the need for more secure and user-friendly processes. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, e-commerce will need to keep up with the demand for faster, more secure and convenient shopping experiences.
We’re seeing more and more businesses become “Content Savvy” and build content and production teams capable of challenging really big creators with their quality of content. This is causing content production to become increasingly competitive which means that in order to have successful visit videos and successful marketing strategies online, you need to be an expert in short form.
You’ll have to spend more time developing hooks, creating incredibly interesting ideas themselves and creating more content around marketing materials in general. As you can no longer just have an ad concept and put it into content instead, you need to build your content around your ads.
Everyone knows that short form content like Tiktok has been taking over the media space. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube are losing users to Tiktok due to their short form content. This competition is great for everyone from the consumers to the content producers because it means the platforms need to continue to innovate, especially more established ones like YouTube and Facebook.
As big corporations have started to catch on to the short form wave, they’ve begun building content and production teams capable of creating high quality short content. Now while most of these companies are very late to the game and are likely to take several more years before they fully adopt short form content into their marketing strategies.
Short-form Video Revolution
There are two things that you could see happening with this short form revolution:
As brands, companies and content creators continue to make increasingly high quality content, the competition and the quality of content in general increases. This leads to a higher barrier of entry and less viral growth across the platforms.
If you made a video on Tiktok and posted it a few years ago, it was incredibly easy to reach your audience and it still is but it’s becoming increasingly harder. One potentially concerning fact about this is that as more content is produced, more people need to consume it and if a platform like Tiktok, Facebook or Instagram has already hit close to the maximum number of users in the world that they could possibly bring on. Then where you start running out of people to actually consume that content.
If content production continues to increase but the amount of people that consume that content is not increasing at the same speed, the amount of people that can actually see each video on average declines which means that successful videos become harder and harder to achieve and content competition increases. While this will eventually lead to companies and content creators that cannot keep up with the quality of content that the rest of the market is creating will eventually go bust. In 10 years from now if a major corporation does not have content at the core of its business, it’s going to be incredibly hard for that business to compete in the market.
How People Retain Information in the Future
You might have heard that people’s attention spans are getting shorter. Due to the social media platforms and the accessibility of content and information the next generation is supposedly losing their ability to focus their attention on a certain piece of information. Most people are selling this as an incredibly bad thing. They argue that because people are consuming so much more information so much quicker and also discarding it so much quicker, the human brain isn’t as able to focus on a specific task. However, our attention spans getting shorter isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Humans are getting better and better at consuming more and more information in shorter time frames and figuring out what is actually relevant to them faster. If you can consume a book’s worth of knowledge in 30 minutes, then why wouldn’t you?
Though Data Policies of E-commerce
As e-commerce reaches global mass adoption, data policies become stricter and stricter. This is not news to anybody, it could significantly impact the way that businesses advertise in the coming years.
Now, e-commerce is a growing industry and as more and more people are able to shop online, the industry will continue to grow. Tracking issues such as limited attribution on the advertising platforms make it harder to advertise but don’t make it any less profitable to advertise instead it forces innovation and adoption.
Something that we’re monitoring quite closely is how all of these data policies are going to affect a platform like Tiktok? Tiktok has some wild data collection policies and there are a lot of theories circulating about the data that Tiktok collects.
We don’t entirely know what the companies are collecting and not collecting when we are on their platforms. While it’s unlikely that Tiktok is going anywhere as a social media platform, it’s good to spread your eggs across multiple baskets and not just depend on a platform like Tiktok.
If Tiktok were to be removed from the AppStore tomorrow, it would significantly affect a lot of businesses and content creators who are not diverse across their platforms. At the end of the day platforms come and go and what you should be focusing on is adapting to the platforms and the trends as they cycle.
You might be wondering how to flax preparing for this as a business? For starters, you can accumulate all of the data you have across the millions of customers that your e-commerce business clients have.
You want to heavily invest in data collection, data organization and data analysis. Instead of depending on the platforms like Tiktok ads for your data collection on your data analysis. You should pull all of the data that we can into your own databases where you can keep it forever and analyze it for as long as you want.
If you want to stay ahead of the curve the best thing you can do is being diverse with your platforms, learn the platform’s nuances and spend time actually consuming the content on each platform. If you want to go the extra mile, you can actually start creating your own personal brand or content yourself on Youtube.
E-commerce Trends 2023: What’s Working Now?
Mobile shopping is the new norm. We all have our phones at 24/7 and people are becoming more and more used to shopping from their phones. By 2025 Mobile retail sales should more than double and account for 44 of retail e-commerce sales in the US.
Here are a few ways that you can prepare and take advantage of this trend. Prepare for mobile commerce:
1. User experience (UX) & Web design
Make sure that any interaction with your brand is easy and delightful on mobile. This includes your website design and email design. Whatever you do, shopping on your website from a phone should be super easy.
2. Checkout process
Provide a quick checkout option for mobile shoppers. Make it simple to fill the card and pay with just one click.
3. Push Notifications
If you already have an app, don’t forget about push notifications. It’s a very easy way to keep your customers engaged and remind them about your brand. For example; send them a special offer or remind them about an abandoned card.
4. Social Commerce
People spend more and more time on their phones and on social media. Social commerce is when users can buy products they saw on your social media without leaving the app. For example; if they saw a product they liked on your recent Instagram post, they’re able to buy it and complete checkout right then and there on Instagram. Tiktok allows merchants to integrate inventory and overlay products on live streams. Facebook pushes retailers to use its built-in storefront and Pinterest uses bible pins to promote items for sale.
If you’re already growing your brand presence on social media channels that we just mentioned make sure that you invest in building your storefront on their platform. Modern shoppers love convenience and if they can buy something during their mid-afternoon scroll, they will!
5. Omnichannel Customer Experience
Omnichannel is another big e-Commerce trend. A single brand today has many potential touch points with consumers; in-store interactions, website visits, mobile shopping, social shopping and phone calls. That’s what omnichannel retail is about.
For example; you first encountered running shoes in a boutique store in Paris while traveling. They didn’t have your size, so you took a picture, you could look them up later online. When you got home, you visited their website from your laptop. You weren’t ready to buy just yet because their shoes kind of felt a little bit pricey and you weren’t familiar with their brand. So, you checked out their Instagram on your phone, subscribed to their email list and then eventually went back and ordered on their website from your laptop.
That’s a very typical customer experience today. Shoppers like this example expect to be able to easily transition between platforms and devices when making a purchase. It’s your job to make that possible. Make sure that you spend some time ensuring consistent user experience across all channels where your brand is present.
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