If you want to stand out from the crowd in 2019, you’ll need to be on top of the latest e-commerce trends. With the number of stores online increasing every year, growing your market share depends on meeting the up-to-the minute needs of your customer.

Beware of blindly following trends though. Some of those below are already considered mainstream in South Africa. Others, the local market might not quite be ready for. Keep an eye on what’s out there – and make sure anything you implement genuinely enhances both your business and your customer experience.

E-commerce shifts that are no longer just trends

These trends have been around so long, they’ve become mainstream. Your business can’t afford to do without them.

1. Buying takes place across devices → Automate responsiveness

The number of customers who regularly buy using smart phones is rising exponentially. If they can’t easily interact with your site using their device of choice, they’ll simply go elsewhere.

2. Immediacy is everything → Up your site speed

A couple of seconds is all users are prepared to wait for a site to load these days. Longer than that, and they’ll click away. That’s lost revenue for you right there, both directly from customers and from the penalties you’ll get from Google for being too slow to load. Read more about how poor page speed can influence your e-commerce sales here.

3. Social media builds relationships → Engage one on one

Ongoing engagement with customers is key. Whether you use social media to share helpful information, get feedback or answer questions, it builds connection and real relationships. This keeps your business top of mind and translates into higher conversion rates. Read more about how social media can help you grow.

4. Being an authority in your niche builds trust → Help to buy, don’t sell

Showing potential customers you know what you’re talking about helps to build confidence in your brand and in your product, effectively boosting your engagement and conversion rates. One of the best ways to do this is to create high quality content that aligns with your marketing strategy, and educates and engages your customers. Written or video blogs also improve your organic search rankings, especially if they’re mobile friendly.

5. Buyers want to hear from their peers → Encourage social proof

Happy previous customers are your best brand ambassadors. Encourage them to share their stories via reviews and to rate the products they’ve bought. This helps potential new customers to feel safer purchasing from you. Plus, as a form of unique content, reviews also boost your search engine rankings.

6. Better customer experience → Implement live chat

When we first started shopping online, virtual assistance was almost unheard of. Nowadays when customers need help, they expect to be instantly supported on-site. Offering live chat with an agent helps customers to make better decisions, which keeps them coming back and also creates good ambassadors for your brand.

7. Buyers move across channels → Implement omni-channel solutions

Omni-channel shopping is already massive and will only grow going forward. Make sure the process is seamless. That includes branding, design and navigation, as well as customer, product and order data. The same should apply to your communication channels, regardless of how the customer prefers to stay in touch with you.

8. The B2C experience is heavily influencing B2B → Implement B2C features in B2B

With so many B2B buyers shopping online at B2C stores in their personal lives, they now expect the same kinds of features from B2B e-commerce sites. That includes great visuals, enhanced searches and all the information they could wish for at their fingertips.

9. Video is king in e-commerce → Load up video content

Video works best to present a product from multiple angles, including visual, features and benefits, voice-overs and general tips and tricks. Placing a video in your hero carousel is especially effective at engaging visitors to your site and turning them into potential customers.

See an example on our homepage!

Cresting the wave of e-commerce trends in 2019

These are the trends to watch. Many are designed to deliver a better customer experience, often through personalisation. Implement your choice of these strategies as and when you feel your audience and your business are ready for them.

1. Personalisation

Personalisation really is the theme of many of the new technologies for eCommerce. It includes ideas such as:

• Analysing past behaviour and making purchasing recommendations
• Providing differentiated pricing per customer based on price sensitivity (this has been available in B2B for some time, but is now also starting to become a need for B2C)
• Marketing to customers based on their interests and past purchases
• Giving personal attention and assistance while customers are shopping
• Giving a shopper the ability to ‘try’ a product on their own virtual face or body or in their living room

As time becomes a scarce commodity, buyers will value a brand that appeals directly to their needs and helps them quickly find what they want.

2. Machine learning and artificial intelligence

Technology is already capable of tracking user behaviour and preferences. As this develops further, it will be possible for e-commerce websites to adapt their design, the ads they present and the products they suggest based on this information. The enhanced customer experience should make visitors feel right at home, hopefully leading to trust and conversions.

3. Purchasing from mobile apps

We’ve already mentioned the need for a responsive site, and this takes it one step further. Many more people are already buying from mobile apps than from mobile websites, and this trend is set to rise along with e-commerce sales.

4. Even better (and unique) visuals in e-commerce

We already know that images, and now video, are crucial to make a product real for a customer shopping online. In future, customers will want to know instantly if a product is right for them personally. No-one wants a lengthy explanation of a company’s purpose or mission. Instead, to stand out from the crowd, your product information will need to show specific customers how the product is suited to them.

Consider how Bellroy has done it. The video on their homepage helps visitors to understand exactly what problems they are solving. Then , if you explore their products, notice that they make it clear in their product videos, images and descriptions, how each solution fits the customer’s need. No thinking required – you immediately know if it’s what you’re looking for.

5. Advanced product search

With the right add-ons, e-commerce site searches can already suggest products that match the keyword you type in and order them by popularity. The next step is to order the results based on your personal interests, deduced from previous searches you have done. This is intended to shorten the buying cycle for the visitor. So, for example, if you type in “fridges on sale”, and you’ve previously searched for Bosch products, you’ll see the Bosch fridges on special first.

6. Image search

Visual search technology is improving constantly, especially with companies like Pinterest leading the charge. Soon you’ll be able to upload a photo and find a matching one on an e-commerce site.

7. Voice search

With half of all searches predicted to be voice-based by 2020, this is a rapidly growing trend. As search engines update their algorithms to match this development, e-commerce companies will need to adjust their SEO to keep up with the changes. Companies like Walmart have already implemented voice search in their business.

8. Augmented and virtual reality

Augmented reality (AR) is designed to create as realistic an environment as possible while still being virtual. Allowing users to project or visualise images of themselves, and/or the products they are considering, helps along the buying decision.

Look at these example sites:

• Sephora’s virtual artist lets you try on make-up.
• Ikea’s Place app makes buying furniture extremely easy.
• Tap Painter is an app that helps you figure out which colours to paint your walls.
• Lenskart invites you to try glasses on an image of your own face.

9. Chatbots

Chatbots are the machine equivalent of live chat agents, providing the instant response many customers are looking for. Depending on your business and your needs, they can be programmed to cover many standard questions. Additionally, they are able to ‘learn’. Based on a customer’s behaviour, they can identify what customers need and adjust their responses.

10. Interest-based advertising

Using your browsing history and artificial intelligence, search engines are getting better and better at showing ads tailored to your interests. As this improves further, conversion rates are likely to improve too.

11. Improved payment methods

It’s taken a while for South Africans to get comfortable with paying online for products and services. Now that they are, they are moving increasingly from credit and debit cards, to e-wallets. And as that becomes more established and trusted, the next step in e-commerce will be cryptocurrency.

12. Faster shipping

Flexibility will be the name of the game in e-commerce shipping in 2019. Being able to choose when and how you want your product delivered, and even opting for same-day delivery, is not far off.

13. Research online and purchase offline

Many users search online for the closest store where they can buy the product they want. Then they go to that store and purchase it there. This trend will only strengthen in future. Keeping track of the effect of digital campaigns on this behaviour requires complex monitoring of devices, CRM systems and checkouts, whether online via a payment gateway or at a POS in a store.

14. Amazon SEO

Amazon is the largest product search engine overseas and has developed its own form of SEO. If you’re selling online internationally, you should already be optimising for this. If the company launches e-commerce in South Africa, this will be crucial for local online retailers.

The bottom line…

Your best bet for growing your business lies in making sure you’re on top of current trends, with a clear view of upcoming ones for 2019. Consider carefully what will work for your e-commerce site and for your customers. Each business is different, and making the right choices for yours will lay the groundwork for a successful future.