E-commerce is one of the most crucial sectors of any nation’s economy. The e-commerce platforms drove the revenue growth. After the pandemic, many new players came into the market, challenging the established players. Internet experts claim that the new trends in e-commerce have changed the global economy. In this blog, we shall discuss insights from Albert Houllou, CEO of F&E Trading LLC and a passionate market researcher who likes to share insights about market analysis and the future scope for each internet trend.
Any business without the internet is like a human without oxygen. We must ensure we keep our businesses close to the customers and deliver services at user convenience. If we consider any successful e-commerce business in today’s world, one crucial conclusion the owners let us draw from them is “follow the trend, set a new one for the next.” Observing the statistics from the past few years and anticipating the trends of e-commerce, I recommend business owners follow the five top trends to implement for the year 2022 to make it successful.
Top five internet trends for e-commerce in 2022
- Voice Search.
- Omnichannel connected experience.
- Personalisation using Artificial Intelligence.
- Influencer marketing.
- Augmented Reality for product showcase.
We shall explore the above trends and how these trends help you in achieving your eCommerce goals for the year 2022 and further.
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Voice Search
Voice search is executing tasks on any application using voice commands. Top search engines in this digital world have already adopted this trend. Statistics reveal that people are showing interest in using applications with voice commands. Adopting the trend of e-commerce will ensure a pleasant shopping experience. Voice search uses speech recognition to fetch the user interest and show the results accordingly. Product search can be made accessible to the users on e-commerce applications; thereby, we can avoid the language barrier by applying the machine learning algorithms to understand the input.
Voice search is considered intelligent as it directly influences the user experience while interacting with the applications. We must ensure we show the relevant results to the user once the voice command is given. To do this, we need robust Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms along with the speech recognition system to process the voice commands and display the results to the users.
Benefits of adopting voice search for e-commerce applications:
- Faster results to the users – it is proven three to seven times quicker than a regular search.
- It makes it easy for the uneducated to use the applications.
- More mobile users prefer using voice search over text.
- Accurate results are assured when compared to textual search.
Search engines recommend that businesses adopt voice search and speech recognition to the applications for better conversations, more traffic, and sales.
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Omnichannel connected experience:
Omnichannel marketing enables users to stick to the business ecosystem as they are continuously assisted and targeted with the personalised products irrespective of the platform they use. Simply, it allows users to purchase your brand products online or offline.
Albert Houllou’s observations revealed that around 40% of US millennials prefer shopping only online. They prefer to search for the products that appear online. Omnichannel marketing helps businesses to build a strong sales funnel with users and welcome users to revisit the stores. This trend seamlessly integrates your branding activities, including marketing, messaging, and online/offline purchases.
Benefits of Omnichannel marketing in eCommerce
- It provides a comfortable shopping experience before, during and after the sales.
- Target users with personalised products.
- Interactions with the omnichannel help data analytics understand the users’ interests.
- It is estimated to result in 30 per cent more sales.
- Companies can focus on the customer rather than the platform can result in more revenue.
Ecommerce applications like Amazon that provide any product and specific category e-commerce stores like Nike, Puma, etc., have already started using omnichannel marketing to build and retarget the audience with the products they searched using devices.
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Personalisation using Artificial Intelligence:
Personalisation is one of the best marketing strategies any industry has to adopt for improved returns. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence, businesses have been using user interaction data to personalise their interests and target the audience accordingly.
Technology, when applied to the trends, results in multiplied returns. Using the personalisation, you help customers:
- to understand the type of products trending in the market,
- suggest products to buy along with their desired products,
- show them products that also match their search terms,
- identical/related category products
have shown that the users show interest in buying more than what they are looking to buy.
Benefits of personalisation in eCommerce:
The use of personalisation is enhanced when the applications make sure they allow users to pick up the search from where they left, retarget the audience, build loyal relationships with customers, and will drive the following benefits:
- It attracts more millennials to shop online. Millennials contribute most of the online eCommerce purchases, which can go even higher with personalised shopping experiences.
- Businesses can reduce marketing spending, as personalisation is budget-friendly.
- Detailed personalisation to promote the products with the products in the customer application cart will increase sales.
Digital platforms also share data to target the right audience to market-specific categories of the products. Personalisation also takes the help of the users’ demographics and their interactions to help businesses retarget them.
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Influencer Marketing
Social media plays a vital role in every business that aims to sell products and services to the world. Increasing the userbase is one of the primary reasons every business should go digital and use social media. Influencer marketing relies on social media and helps businesses market their products online through social channels reaching a wide range of audiences.
Influencers are the people on social channels that have got a good number of followers on their social channels. People tend to showcase their skills and talent to gain followers. Once they get enough followers to sponsor some products and services, businesses start collaborating with them and promoting to those followers. It is similar to the celebrities endorsing products through advertisements, but with a lowkey budget.
All levels of businesses, from micro-businesses to multi-national businesses, everyone started approaching influences over several social platforms related to their services and target audience and started promotions. There are a lot of reasons why businesses are more inclined towards influencer marketing instead of marketing with celebrities.
Benefits of using influencer marketing in eCommerce:
- Every business aims to increase brand awareness, and influencers help you achieve it with less spending.
- The right audience is more important than more audiences; hence, choosing the right influencer can drive more sales.
- Credibility and trust are crucial connectors for any business to its customers, and influencer partnerships will help you build them more robust.
- Influencers help you build new content strategies with their marketing insights, helping businesses focus on the right kind of promotion content like audion, video, or images.
- Influencers can help boost customer engagement with your brand, which will result in more conversions and sales.
Apart from these benefits, the marketing campaign expenditure can go less when businesses opt for influencers over celebrities. It is because influencers have a smaller group of the audience whom we can specifically analyse what kind of products to promote for them. In contrast, as the number is high for celebrities, we may be showing irrelevant products to a significant audience, wasting capital.
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Augmented Reality for product showcase
Augmented reality is the superimposing of a computer-generated digital image to the users to check how the product fits in real life. It is observed that the customer is following the Research Online, Buy Offline (ROBO) approach to buying products. Businesses can enhance this approach by adopting AR to ensure the user gets a composite view of owning and using a product.
Many integration-ready third-party AR applications help eCommerce websites market their products efficiently to users. AR is already booming in the gaming industry and is all set to begin a new trend in eCommerce. AR, when integrated with the apps, especially with the lifestyle, beauty, and furniture products.
Benefits of Augmented reality in eCommerce:
- Increases user engagement as it creates realistic images for users before selling the products.
- As users make tangible purchases online and get to know how it looks in real-time, the chances of returns are narrow.
- It excites users when interacting with the app and gets the desired results, pushing them to buy more products online.
Apart from the AR integration in eCommerce, technology can take the help of data science, machine learning and virtual reality to make the shopping experience even better for the customers to improve conversions, sales and traffic.
Conclusion:
There are a lot of other trends that we will witness in future. But the trends Albert Houllou mentioned in the article will be in the boom for decades. Make sure your eCommerce business follows the trends mentioned and keep track of the latest trends that may shake the internet overnight. As the number of active devices increases, we never know which trend will take over the internet like a storm. We shall come up with the latest trends that will have more potential to take eCommerce to the next level.
Author: Albert Houllou
As President and Chief Executive Officer of F&E Trading LLC, Albert Houllou is responsible for the extensive growth of the company since it was founded in 1999 in a small New York storefront. Albert Houllou strategic business acumen and dedicated focus has led F&E Trading into new areas of expansion, with a focus on the future.
Born and raised in Brooklyn NY, Albert has long shown an affinity for numbers and a drive for business that enabled F&E Trading LLC to become a leading force in the consumer electronics industry. Albert Houllou has a proven track record and over 22 years of experience driving sales growth in the retail and wholesale consumer electronics markets. F&E Trading LLC, under its parent company Valor Group LLC, has expanded from a basic mail order shop to a multi-million dollar distribution network with distribution capabilities throughout the globe.
Through his extensive travels and an expanding inventory that includes a range of products from manufacturers like Apple, Dell, LG, Microsoft, Panasonic, Sony, Beats and many more; Albert has led the company into relationships with emerging international markets. This global presence has enabled F&E Trading LLC to become the official distributor for most major consumer electronics brands with multiple locations throughout the USA and connections in numerous countries including Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Dubai, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Panama, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Colombia, Mexico and Canada.
Albert’s belief that a solid foundation enables future success and his constant attention to the bigger picture has led to a dedicated and productive workforce ranging from experienced salespeople providing service in half a dozen languages to large-scale automated shipping facilities designed by in-house programmers.
Albert’s dedication also extends to his large family of twelve, spending enjoyable time with his wife and children. He is involved in many charitable organizations and community events, joining local sports leagues, sponsoring education centers and has established a foundation that benefits orphaned children. As F&E Trading goes global, so does Albert’s charitable efforts, such as recent donations in Israel and Ukraine.
