Gone are the days when you have to drive down to a store to buy a product. Gone are the days when you have to pick up and read through a printed catalogue, call a business, wait on hold, all before being able to talk to a sales rep and order a product.
Today is the day of tablets and smartphones. Today is the day of ecommerce, shopping cart software and mcommerce.
Even this is changing at a rapid rate. Here are the online selling trends beyond 2015:
Saturated price race will begin
For products that can be easily compared with others, without the need for any physical inspection, and are easy to ship and distribute the the lowest prices will decide the winners.
If you’re not Alibaba or Amazon then you better start looking at other options to stay afloat and stay competitive.
Consumers will go global
Significantly larger numbers of consumers will start buying from foreign country websites, creating a problem for local businesses. On the other hand, these local businesses also have the opportunity to sell overseas too.
mcommerce and ecommerce sellers who can expand their reach beyond the local area can emerge as big winners.
Marketing will get more personalised
An increasing number of ecommerce and mcommerce businesses will start tapping into big data to deliver a highly personalised shopping experience to visitors.
Corporations will get personal too
In keeping with the trend above, bigger corporations will throw off their formality to mix and socialise with online visitors and customers. Time will tell how successful they will be at this usually small business territory but smaller ecommerce vendors should prepare for this invasion.
Mobile buying and marketing will continue to boom
With ever increasing numbers of consumers accessing the Internet via smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices for various reasons including shopping, ecommerce sites will need go mobile-friendly. End of story!
Online stores that are not capable of operating well on mobile devices will lose visitors, customers and revenue, while the ones that work well with mobiles will thrive and prosper. Mobile sales are set to grow by up to 25% – if you’re selling online but not mobile friendly, you will lose.
Video-based marketing and buying will boom too
As more and more online stores realise that video marketing – the nearest contender to the in-store experience for prospective buyers – leads to much higher conversions, more and more online stores will create and integrate videos on their sites.
Ecommerce coding/designing and copywriting will become best friends
More textual content, content that is original and persuades a visitor to become a buyer, on web sites tends to bring more organic traffic via the search engines, leading to more sales for ecommerce sites.
Increasing awareness of this marketing advantage will lead more e-stores incorporating more specialised copy on their site and product pages. Those who do will prosper and those who don’t will fall behind.
Multi-dimensional social networking services will grow more popular
Social networking services that allow users to communicate, engage and share information using more methods and channels of communication will gain more popularity.
Ecommerce sites having strong presence on social media networks will thrive while the other ones will fall behind in terms of business.
Online storytelling to boost sales
Storytelling has always been a great way of selling but as more ecommerce businesses discover this more of them will incorporate stories around their products, with written text or videos on their online stores.
Those ecommerce sites that recognise and seize this opportunity will realise higher sales than those who don’t embrace storytelling.
Niche based content targeting will gain momentum
As increasing numbers of ecommerce businesses realise that more sales can be achieved by placing content on their site and product pages that appeals to a specific niche the more popular it will become.
If you are an online consumer yourself you will easily identify with at least some of these trends. If you are an ecommerce business then you need to consider these trends as soon as possible. For more information about online selling beyond 2015 just contact the team at Website Design Centre today.
