8 Trends that Have Impacted E-Commerce Businesses

8 Trends that Have Impacted E-Commerce Businesses

Technological advancements continue to impact businesses every year. Therefore, it’s important for business owners to keep themselves up-to-date on advancements and changes to help them maximize their profits and continue to build their customer base. 

However, not every trend or advancement benefits a corporation, and some burn out too quickly to benefit from, resulting in wasted efforts and company time. Want to know what changes in e-commerce may impact your business and have positive return-on-investments? Read on to learn more. 

SEO and SEO for Voice Searches 

At this point, almost everyone is at least a little familiar with SEO. If you don’t know what search engine optimization (SEO) is, you may be well behind your competitors. SEO is a set of practices that are used to help improve your positioning on various search engines, like Google. Having a higher ranking on these search engines often leads to greater visibility of your business’s products and services, greater online traffic, and new acquisitions. 

Virtually everything on your website can help improve your SEO, including web pages, blogs, and location pages. A relatively new tech trend that’s making waves in the SEO community is SEO for voice searches. This tech trend is just what you think it is. It’s the ability for consumers to use voice searches to look up products and services

Businesses can take advantage of this growing technology by adding a chatbot on their website that customers can interact with to receive instant responses to questions and personalized product and service recommendations. Some of the most popular chatbots include:

  • Intercom
  • Tidio
  • Drift

Headless Commerce 

Have you heard of headless commerce? This relatively new development is used to separate the function of a business from its website content. Let’s break it down.

Basically, this process lets you separate all the back-end programming to improve customer experiences and your website’s accessibility, particularly on mobile devices. Additionally, your marketing team will be able to implement, track, and experiment with various marketing campaigns without assistance from IT. These changes can be made quickly, and without taking your company’s website offline. 

Personalized Customer Service 

Customer service is make-or-break when it comes to customer acquisition and retention. No consumer wants to deal with a poor customer experience, and these experiences can deter customers from engaging with a business in the future. That’s why it’s important for companies to utilize innovative structures and services that provide personalized customer experiences and fulfillment practices.

Data Protection 

How many data breaches have you seen on the news lately? Data protection has become a must-have in today’s technological age. Data breaches and hacks can hit anyone, from the smallest companies to the largest corporations, and you’ll need to be prepared to prevent a data breach of your own. 

Data breaches are detrimental to a business, not only because of the customer data that is lost, but because of the negative impact that these breaches have on a consumer’s trust. That’s why it’s important to invest in your customer base and protect their information by taking extra security measures and ensuring you have adequate protection. Additionally, these changes can be communicated with your customers, furthering trust and rapport. 

Changes to Google Algorithms

Google algorithms are always changing, and these changes can impact your website’s traffic and, ultimately, your bottom line. Google algorithms determine whether or not your web content is considered useful, informative, and relevant to a consumer. Recently, these algorithms have become more user-focused. 

For example, algorithms can determine your relevancy and authority in an industry based on the average amount of time customers remain on your website. Not only is it now more important for your content to be eye-catching and engaging, but you may want to consider adding in manuals or videos to help keep them engaged and on the site for longer. 

In recent years, Google also began rolling out a mobile-first index process as more and more Americans are relying on their smartphones for a majority of their Google searches. That’s why it’s so important for your business’s mobile website to match what Google looks at first to determine your ranking on their search engine. 

There are several ways you can enhance your mobile website, including ensuring that the website loads quickly, that your images, text, and design is optimized for a mobile screen, and that your website is responsive to mobile-users. 

Subscription Service Increases 

Subscription service costs have been on the rise for years, and there’s no indication that’s about to stop anytime soon. As such, businesses can capitalize on what works best and avoid common pitfalls that can lead to the loss of leads. 

One area that nearly every business can benefit from focusing on is shipping. Shipping products together, especially on larger valued orders, means that shipping costs are lower. This means you can pass those savings onto the customer. 

Additionally, businesses have the opportunity to provide customers with “extras” that they didn’t order to increase product exposure and improve customer relations. 

Social Media Sale Increases 

It’s no secret that social media marketing improves sales, customer acquisition, brand awareness, and more. However, there are still many companies that don’t seize the full potential of this marketing technique. These businesses use their social media accounts for customer support or to promote new services or products. 

However, one significant change to social media that every business can take advantage of is the ability to set up stores on their accounts that showcase the products and services offered. Not only does an online storefront keep your customers engaged, but it’s a great form of advertisement for new products, services, and subscriptions. 

Research Online, Purchase Offline (ROPO) 

Today, most customers educate themselves about products and services before making a purchase. The internet makes it incredibly easy to compare brands and products and look up reviews from former customers. 

These practices can be beneficial to companies, too, as businesses can track their conversion rates, customer base, and other metrics more effectively and use that data to further acquisition and sales. Furthermore, many of these same customers tend to shop locally after they’ve done their research online. Using the data gathered, businesses can put certain products on sale that will bring in more customers.

Related article: The Basics of Brand Building in 2019

By Admin