Who controls ecommerce trends and keeps ecommerce store owners on their toes? Of course! The customers. They hold all the power to shift trends in ecommerce. From what they buy, how they shop to their response towards your marketing strategies… eventually they are the ultimate trend setters. If ecommerce merchants keep them happy, their sales will be happy.

In 2014, ecommerce sales were as high as $1.3 trillion rupees with an increase of 6.4% in 2015. To keep this growing, ecommerce merchants need to keep catering to customer experience on the whole and minimize as much friction as possible to enhance sales.

Here are some trends that will be subject to further development in the coming year:

Mobile Shopping

Do you have a mobile responsive website? If no, do it now! Nobody moves without a mobile phone these days. The way everything has become so integrated in just one mobile phone, it’s an absolute necessity to people. With the increasing size of mobile phones they have gone from simply phones to being phablets. Very soon in 2016, m-commerce store will become a requisite rather than an additional feature.

One mention worthy statistics claim that 78% of the mobile search for local business information result in a purchase. Nobody needs to guess anymore what happens when you don’t provide mobile shopping support. You are bound to lose customers. People not only communicate on phone these days, they shop. It’s always a good idea to use services like google analytics which may help give you the stats regarding number of customers visiting your store using their phone.

Engage And Sell

More and more ecommerce merchants have charged up their sites with both content and commerce in order to not only spark off sales but engage the customers. Enriching your website with helpful videos, specifications, comprehensive product guidelines and attractive images will keep your shopper coming back to you. Content will also serve the purpose of branding as well as SEO along with forming connection between the retailer and the brand.

Does the customer just want to know about your products? Yes, but not just that. They also want to know about new promotions and new products. This is where the content pitches in and does it for you.

Want to prolong your customer’s visits and gain their loyalty and trust? Personalized content has an important place as you not only give knowledge to your customer but also offer them solutions to their problems which is a great plus in winning their loyalty and trust.

Better Shipping

Today who isn’t aware of same day delivery services which started off back in 2013! Then came the crowdsourced drivers and then a lot of hype regarding large retailers trying to experiment drone delivery services. With all these developments around the corner, specialized services is by far the fastest and most reliable method of delivery. A fast and reliable free delivery is what every customer wants. However, the idea of drone deliveries cannot be taken very lightly with technology changing at a drastic pace. Few months back, Amazon’s announcement regarding its intentions of hiring new agents for crowdsourced delivery shows the impact of this trend.

Automation In Marketing

Does the word automated marketing bring email marketing to mind? That’s true but not entirely true since there is a bit of expansion in the realm of automated marketing. It has opened up room for tailor made discounts and promotions, easily accessible shopping carts, automatic display of related recommended products and customized landing pages.

Don’t mislead yourself into believing that you can’t use emails anymore. You can but you have to expand your thoughts on it first. Email marketing is no more confined to just a simple mention in emails. If you want to utilize it to its optimum, then use automated marketing as a tool to let you send emails that are altered according to your customer’s shopping history letting them know about related new products or promotional offers.

Customer Data Analysis Through Algorithms

With respect to personalization and automation, customer segmentation and identifying patterns based on customer’s buying history has proved to be the primary challenges encountered by ecommerce merchants. This is where algorithm jumps in to extend a helping hand.

The accuracy of data returned by algorithms relies on size and quality of data being analyzed. This can be problematic for small business that doesn’t have huge amount of data for analysis. Collaboration of small businesses with third party providers who have access to large data sets can prove to be fruitful.

Some Takeaways!

Ours is a world no longer filled with people lacking information. They are standing in the eye of whirlwind of information. All that customers care about is their time and money that is spent while shopping online. Sooner the ecommerce merchants realize that it is the customers that hold the rein of their stores, the better the probability of their success in winning their trust and loyalty.

Let these five trends roll into your stores as they showcase the future of ecommerce. If you want to give tough competition to your competitors and get serious customers, then tag along with the change!