Trends in Online Sales: Temporary, or Here to Stay?
Ecommerce represents almost $2 trillion in worldwide sales each year (accounting for about a sixth of total sales in the U.S. alone). It’s come a long way since its origins just 25 years ago, and today represents a competitive terrain where only the most agile companies stand out.
The ground is constantly moving, though, meaning there’s still opportunity for brands to break in. Any company looking to sell online therefore has to ask: are the newest trends in online sales temporary or here to stay?
There’s no talking about ecommerce in 2021 without talking about the Covid-19 pandemic. If anyone at the start of 2020 could have predicted how the year would unfold, they would have been brushed aside. No one could have seen what we were up against.
The pandemic managed to interrupt every aspect of our lives and impact the world in terrible and extraordinary ways. Ecommerce was a boon for those in lockdowns, however, since it gave them continued access to the products they needed. Subsequently, it grew more than ever.
Now, with vaccines rolling out, the world is more optimistic than ever that the virus will soon be under control.
What, then, will be the lasting effects of these new trends in online sales? Will brands go back to the “old normal,” or is the “new normal” here to stay?
Ecommerce Isn’t Going Anywhere
Whether specific trends in ecommerce are here to stay is a discussion we’ll break down in a moment. First, let’s make one thing clear: ecommerce isn’t going anywhere.
Ecommerce has long been on a path of revolutionizing retail along with how consumers connect with brands. For instance, selling models like direct-to-consumer (D2C) have now become the preference for more than half of consumers. Direct contact with the brands they love is easy online, and by cutting out the middleman (the retailer), prices come down. Consumers are thrilled, and they even get a better buyer journey out of it.
Ecommerce has also evolved to meet consumers’ changing needs. As competition in the space has heated, ecommerce brands pushed new technologies to the forefront of a user experience that consumers now expect. Shopping online is easier and more convenient with the interconnected channels consumers reach brands through. Improved integrations, seamless remarketing, product content and augmented reality (AR)-powered shopping have now taken ecommerce by storm. These technologies continue to evolve at an accelerated rate after 2020.
Most of the trends within ecommerce have been long-standing, confidently ticking upward as adoption and technology climb. These same trends were accelerated as a result of Covid-19, and now brands need to know which are here to stay.
Better Product Data = Better User Experience (UX)
One trend in ecommerce has been that product data is now used to enhance user experience (UX). This is one of many efforts to provide the frictionless experience consumers are looking for when they shop. Consumers expect immediate answers on things like sizing, product specifications, and the look and feel of whatever it is they want to buy. The physical experience of in-store shopping has been hard to translate to the web, but with enriched product media (photos, videos and AR), ecommerce has come to offer a superior shopping experience in almost every way.
Of course, the nitty-gritty behind that superior experience requires carefully-organized product data. A brand’s Amazon listing will require different optimizations to product data (like the description, title, bullet-points, etc.) than the same brand’s product on their Shopify storefront, for instance.
Product data is also the sole source of strong SEO, which is what makes products findable when consumers want them (which is the entry point to an eventual sale).
As with most trends, the absence of a strategy doesn’t just leave a hole, it leaves a deficit. A brand who doesn’t leverage product data for an optimized UX will be left with a UX that hurts their buyer journey. Poor UX will stop the majority of buyers in their tracks because if they can’t find the information (specs or otherwise) that they want, they’ll just navigate away.
Final verdict:
Product data will continue to be the single factor in brands’ control to allow them to optimize UX across all channels. It’s also the stomping ground for brands ready to become more competitive because superior product data will lead to the UX that elevates one brand above the rest.
Go Mobile…or Go Nowhere
The use of mobile devices over laptops and desktops is growing faster than ever in ecommerce. By the end of 2021, 73% of ecommerce sales are projected to take place on mobile devices.
That’s huge.
Improving the ecommerce experience on mobile can’t be ignored by any brand.
Ecommerce growth itself has largely been the product of mobile device usage, too. With an average of almost three touchpoints before a client buys a product, consumers are using their mobile devices to do more research before finally deciding to hit that “buy” button. Optimizing your buyer journey for mobile, therefore, goes hand-in-hand with providing a more multichannel experience.
To ride this trend, ensure your website is mobile-optimized—especially your product listings. Also ask yourself what optimizations could enhance your multichannel buyer journey for consumers using mobile devices.
Final verdict:
To know whether this trend is going anywhere, just ask yourself: are you putting your phone down anytime soon? We’re guessing no. With that same certainty, we can say that this online sales trend isn’t going anywhere. Today, brands must take mobile into account on every level of their sales strategy.
Social Media is at the Heart of Ecommerce
The number of social shoppers has rapidly increased over the last two years with accelerated rates after the start of lockdowns due to Covid-19. Simple changes to already-popular platforms like the introduction of the “Buy” button on Facebook have rendered social media an even bigger player in online sales.
Social media has impacted the way consumers live their daily lives, too. The humongous consumption of content on social networks has provided brands with a place to get discovered and to position their brand’s personality in a highly engaging way.
The audience insights available to brands on social media has furthered trends in content personalization as well. The biggest social networks have an immeasurable amount of data on how heir users think, interact with content, and what they like. This data is made available to brands and unlocked personalization that consumers have responded positively to. Now, it seems the trend of personalization is here to stay in a big way.
The way consumers shop has changed in other ways as a product of social media, namely: the concept of “inspiration browsing.” When someone goes to Amazon and types in a product type, it’s usually with the intention to buy it. When someone types “birthday gifts” into Pinterest, however, two times out of three that user is only looking for inspiration with zero intent to buy.
Final verdict:
The trend of social media’s multifaceted role in ecommerce is another one for the long-haul. The different ways you can leverage social channels are exciting for any brand looking to grow. For example, have you considered testing new products on social? Learn how and see where it takes your brand next!
Visual Commerce Is Fundamental
One of the biggest challenges of ecommerce is trying to sell products to customers with no chance of interacting with your product physically.
This ecommerce trend aims to remedy that.
Visual commerce is defined as how brands use photos, videos, virtual and augmented reality to give consumers a real “experience” with a product. Photos in virtual commerce include those taken from every angle of a product as well as the enriched photos highlighting aspects of the product’s composition, or even photos of the product in its intended environment. Product videos have climbed fast in popularity, too, sometimes with as much a feel of entertainment as they are promotional.
Visual commerce takes ecommerce product marketing to a whole new level.
Today, with more consumers than ever buying products they were accustomed to buying in stores, visual commerce has quickly accelerated to the forefront of ecommerce trends. About three quarters of internet users in the U.S. require some kind of visual content before making a purchase online now—even of products they’ve bought previously.
Final verdict:
This trend is sticking around, and it will also continue to get more competitive. One brand’s product media will pale next to another brand who provides a memorable buyer experience, starting with brand and product content and ending, in every case, with superior product listings.
Back in 1995, the first ever item was ordered online. It was a book sold on Amazon.
Today, the trends we’ve seen in ecommerce are of the stuff we only could have imaged in science fiction when that sale took place. Consumers are preferring D2C shopping experiences powered by memorable branding and robust product content. Mobile devices have become the primary frontier for all of ecommerce. Social media has reshaped how we shop, and visual commerce has inspired new buyer experiences that surpass even the brick-and-mortar norms of the past.
To get started with these trends in your own ecommerce strategy, your product media and UX-optimized product data will be easy to organize in a product information management software (PIM). Elevate your brand with the strategy and organization that these trends require, and you’ll ride the current of real market movements that are definitely here to stay.
Alex Borzo
Writer at Amber Engine
A brand can only communicate with messaging behind it, and that's where Alex Borzo comes in. A digital content marketer with a decade of experience, Alex's expertise shines in the research and writing she does for dozens of clients. When she connected with Amber Engine, it was a natural fit—AE had ambitious plans to provide their audience with even more valuable content to win in ecommerce, and Alex's background working with SaaS innovators positioned her to jump right in. The result? Brands and distributors are now discovering AE and all the best tactics to get to Amazon and other online marketplaces in weeks instead of months.