The Future of E-Commerce
Technological advancement and the expansion of marketplaces has made the process of trade & commerce more convenient than before. There are varieties of options available to the customer to go online. E-commerce has transformed the way exchange used to taken place. Let’s look into the insights depicting what the future of e-commerce upholds.
E-commerce: A viable option
Businesses are more dependent on e-commerce for their brands reach and establishment of a digital identity of their business. E-commerce provides a platform to the businesses to enhance their D to C {direct to consumer} model and gains revenue from a strong customer base. From consumer prospects, e-commerce is safe, convenient and has the facility to find out the products in real time. Exchange of goods and services have never been as easy before as just a tap away from your mobile phones. E-commerce is regarded as the future of business. The presence on e-commerce platforms mean you are visible & accessible to the millions of customers, engaged in finding a perfect source to satisfy their material needs and unlimited desires. The process of e-commerce is hassle free and that’s what make it more attractive to the users.
E-commerce: Not a Clean Road to walk
Availability of bunch of e-commerce sites leads to increase in competition between the businesses.
Businesses today, are spending more than gaining. The veteran and the new comers both are facing the challenge of expensive advertising because of increasing competition and various complex privacy laws. For instance, in Facebook, the advertising cost is 47% than the year before. The cost per click for paid search ads increased by 15%. Thus, to earn a gentle return on advertising spend is becoming harder.
Another challenge which emerges rapidly is the consumer acquisition cost. Rise in acquisition cost leads the businesses to find an alternative route of diversifying their advertising and sales channels to lower the cost of acquisition. There are many ways to do it- 1. Explore new channels to reach new audiences 2. Invest in niche channels with high engagement and many more. These two are the dominating challenges face by the business owners today and they are using best of their capabilities to overcome it because the E-commerce is the vibrant path to follow.
Facts & figures: A Silver line
The E-commerce industry is expected to grow by almost $11 trillion between 2021 and 2025. Also, the global sales are expected to rise $5 trillion and $6 trillion by 2024. After the global pandemic covid-19, businesses whether small or big move towards ecommerce, every day millions of online stores are being registered into ecommerce platforms. As per the estimation, around 12-24 million commerce sites exist worldwide. Statistics shows that by the year 2040, almost 95% purchases would be done via e-commerce.
Future Unfolding in E-commerce sector
Automation to enhance growth and productivity is one of the futuristic tools the world is working upon. Automation leads to minimal human intervention. Robotics and machine learning technologies is yet to be used everywhere and also in e-Commerce. Robotics and drones can enhance the supply chain and make the product deliveries less time consuming. Machine learning/ AI/ Big Data has an ability to perform tremendous tasks under a short time period.
“Retailers rely on machine learning to capture data, analyse it, and use it to personalize a shopping experience, implement a marketing campaign, price optimization, merchandise supply planning, and for customer insights.” Apart from it, Voice based technology for your searching experiences are yet to spread. Just like Alexa and Siri, it is surveyed that people getting more comfortable in using voice technology with each passing day. Introduction of new payment options making the customer e-Commerce experience smoother and friction less. For example- digital wallet, cryptocurrency.
In future, there are predictions and aspirations to introduce more payment options so that it can reduce cart abandonment and drive revenue. Visual commerce is also a futuristic option, business work upon. Grabbing customers attention is not an easy task when there are numbers of platforms available to them. Therefore, reaching out to the customers is the primary goal, for it businesses use visual commerce tactics like- high-quality photography, AR and videos. Visual search helps customer to find products by just uploading a picture of an item they want instead of typing a keyword.
There are numbers of innovative ideas are waiting to turn into inventions so as the challenges but the scale of opportunities are much higher. E-Commerce is one of the rapidly emerging platforms engaging users and producers, sellers and buyers. A highly transforming option making the process of trade& commerce smoother and hassle free. It is the future of business and promoting the ultimate objective of ‘Ease of Living’.
Must Read :