Today, e-commerce digital influences up to 56% of the in-store purchase, while e-commerce itself presents around 10% of the U.S. retail sales and that figure is increasing nearly by 15% annually. The digital commerce has gone beyond buying something on a website to the series of interaction which actually relies on the technology to move goods. As these figures suggest, the stores can no longer survive without being present on their customer's preferred channels. Retailers are required to fully integrate digital e-commerce in order to thrive in the market. According to Statista, global e-commerce sales are expected to grow 246.15% by the year 2021, from 1.3 trillion in 2014 to 4.5 trillion in 2021. Nowadays, the stores cannot excel without offering excellent e-commerce options as 56% of the in-store purchase is influenced by digital commerce.

[Also Read- 5 technologies reshaping Retail Industry]

With the rapid growth in e-commerce development come rapid changes. It is not enough to post product images to your site and hope your ideal customers will find them. In 2018, there is a whole lineup of new trends which could kickstart the major growth for your e-commerce portal, if you pay attention. Each year, the technology continues to evolve in leaps and bounds, by creating more experience for shoppers and more opportunity for retailers. As more brick and mortar shops close their doors and an increase in online shopping continues to change the way that customers and stores interact, there is no doubt that the global e-commerce industry is not going to be slowing down anytime soon. While in many markets they are already well developed, there is still a huge potential audience to be reached and some exciting upcoming trends will help in reaching them.

Below are given some of the major e-commerce future trends that will shape your e-commerce website development company to another level as:

• Shopping Natively

In an experiment in the year 2017, it was found that Facebook audience favored native video content 160x more than non-native content. That same preference for native content is true with e-commerce. There are great visual platforms which are being used by millions of people already like Instagram and Pinterest and lots of those users do not want to leave the platform to your site.

A great example of native shopping is Pinterest’s Shop the Look feature. When you look at the picture of an outfit that you like, you can click any part of the outfit you are interested in purchasing and can find the details about the item of the clothing within the Pinterest app. You only require exiting the app when you are ready to purchase.

• Omni-platform & device

By the end of 2017, around two billion people are using their mobile devices to shop online globally. And while not all the online shoppers make a purchase with their mobile phone, about 95% of mobile internet users look up local information on their mobile phones prior to calling or visiting a business or an organization.

Omni-platform & device

According to Google, some 85% of the online shoppers start purchasing on one device and finish on another. The trend provides a clear message from consumers that 2018 will be about integrating online platforms and devices. Businesses will require an omnichannel strategy to survive in the coming years and will connect customers with their brand, irrespective of which device they are using.

• Post-paid & pay later

The fact abundant is one of the common reasons for the loss of revenue for e-commerce firms. In the year 2015, the e-commerce firms lost revenue worth $4.4 billion due to cart abandonment. The postpaid programs or the pay-later mechanisms are one of the effective solutions to reduce these leads. Most of the time, the customers are interested in products but ends up due to low cart abundant problem.

A large number of e-commerce firms are trying hard on ‘purchase now, pay later’ option which enables the customers to make a payment only after they receive the products. Once implemented on a large scale, this methodology can help to reduce the friction in business to a larger extent and result in good yield.

• Emerging market potential

With the emerging e-commerce markets maturing around the world, the organizations are on the lookout for new potential markets. Now that around half of the US households hold prime membership cards and half of China’s population is actively making an online purchase, it is time to focus on some new geography.

Ecommerce emerging market potentials

Moreover, in some regions it is expected that online shopping is going to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 31%, 32%, and 16% respectively through 2021. The penetration rates in e-commerce in some areas are only around 2-6% making them a potential goldmine for growth. According to business insider, the ones to watch countries are India, Latin America, and South America.

• Big data analytics

Big data and analytics have transformed all industries, omnichannel platform for squeezing the best out of their endeavors. Accordingly, almost every action of the users can be turned into some kind of data and those will assist e-commerce sites to know more about their target base to improve the overall productivity of the business.

Their raging requirement for immediate gratification and always on-aces to the information with the help of smartphones, fuels this behavior. In order to fulfill the need of customers, e-commerce retailers reflexively take the relevant actions which are based on their micro-moments which help to accurately anticipate customers’ actions and tendencies.

• ROPO

ROPO stands for research online and purchases offline. It can be very tricky to track how your digital efforts translate into offline sales. Luckily, ROPO is the tool which will help in that and has become more advanced and reliable in the coming year, and also helps retailers accurately to measure how well their digital ads are contributing to in-store sales.

ROPO combines the information from social media, mobile tracking, mobile payments, in-store inventory, analytics tool, CRM software system and more to figure out which ads and site pages led consumers to in-store purchase, which will help to contribute efficiently to sales, as e-commerce businesses can create higher conversion rate.

[Also Read- Latest Software Development Trends]

Conclusion

The e-commerce industry is one of those industry or sector which is developing and adapting new technologies very soon. Over the next few months, we are going to see even more trends arise, all of which will likely be designed at delivering a better user experience to customers. Therefore, staying abreast of such trends is the most effective way of ensuring that you don’t leave behind.