Every brick and mortar stores are starting their e-commerce business as it has become one of the most successful forms of business. According to Forrester analyst reports, currently the e-commerce market occupies more than $1 trillion and by 2020 it is expected to grow towards $2 trillion.

With the rise in the e-commerce, the competition has also increased so it has become more important than before to your business updated with the current trends.

So as we enter 2018, here are some eCommerce Business Trends to keep in mind.

Omnichannel

You have to be present on every platform and device. When a customer makes a decision to buy a product there are various steps included in that. Customers first searches the best ones on their smartphones and do further research on the one he liked the most. In the next step, the customer might go and try out the product in-store.

And the last step is buying the product online or offline. It’s important to be present and be equally good and effective on every channel. That’s how you will make your customers stick to your company.

Artificial intelligence

The rise is Artificial intelligence chatbots interface is going to get higher as they are getting smarter and smarter day by day. Using AI you can bring new levels of personalizations. Also, various AI tools help businesses to learn and adapt from different trends and situations.

Like Blockchain technology is used with AI-powered chatbots. This helps to gather important information regarding potential customers and actual customers. AI-powered Chatbots provide personalized assistance, recommendations based on searches and choices made, promotions based on area and searches, many more customizations, reducing problems related to online shopping and automating most of the process. Because of the extra help being provided by AI more and more e-commerce owners are investing in it.

Review Marketing

In online shopping, customers find it very difficult to trust the website or the seller or the product. So to build and strengthen this trust reviews help a lot. Before buying anything from anywhere people search thoroughly online for the product and the seller. So if you have too many negative reviews online you are going to lose your future customers.

Encourage your customers to give you reviews by giving some discount points in exchange. Because reviews help not only helps buyers but also business owners to know their weak and strong points. Also, customers trust those websites more where there are both negative and positive feedbacks.

Automation of Operations

With the advent of technology many eCommerce businesses are adopting to latest order management systems to manage their orders and invoices. IMS solutions like EMERGE App, help ecommerce merchants improve order processing, track inventory, sell in online marketplaces, and much more.

Every online retail business — ecommerce or brick-and-click — will have some form of order management software, typically as part of an ecommerce platform. While these built-in order-process workflows can be effective, as online sales grow in volume and complexity, it may make sense to consider a dedicated order management solution that can integrate with an ecommerce platform and other systems.

The adoption of technology will spike up compared to previous years.

Influencer Marketing and Social Media Marketing

In the world of Instagram Facebook and Youtube, we know how famous bloggers are. As mentioned above, customers find it difficult to trust a product online so this is another way to gain trust. Send some of your products to famous bloggers and tell them to post their reviews regarding their shopping experience with your website. This will help you to reach out to the masses who do not follow you.

Maintaining a strong social media presence is important for developing authenticity of your brand. Image-based networking tools like Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat are very helpful for this purpose especially Instagram Marketing. According to Wordstream, more than 70% of businesses use Instagram as part of marketing initiatives. Make your social media marketing game stronger by working with the Influencers.

Mobile e-commerce

Most of our time today goes in scrolling on the mobile. Owning a mobile application is a must, it can create the need even when there is no need. Mobile increases the ease of convenience.

For example, you send a notification regarding a sale on the mobile. The visitor just opens your application to pass some free time on the bus. Now the visitor might turn out to be a potential customer if you successfully pitch your products.

Make shopping a seamless process on the mobile application, provide features like saving information of the customer, personalized experience, online chat support, quick and easy payment methods, etc.

Email marketing

Are you guilty of bothering your customers all the time with messages and emails? If yes then let me tell you your messages and emails are just getting ignored. If you keep on sending emails and messages to your customers all the time definitely they are going to get pissed and put them in the junk.

But that is not why you are sending the emails. You are sending the emails to grab their attention. So send emails and messages only when you are providing discounts on their wishlist products or heavy sale time, incomplete payments, abandoned carts. Provide extra discounts and offers to push them further.

There are many more new trends in 2018 ready to make the business world more challenging and interesting. Let us know which new trend you are going to follow in the comment section below.