If you are into e-commerce business then it is high time you get out of your couch and get on with some research and reviews of the changes coming up in this specific market space. This will keep you well abreast with these changes even before they hit the market and start to show its effect according to its potential.
- According to the experts, all e-commerce players should come out of their shell of traditional business practices and take up these new changes. This will ensure better results and business prospects.
- They say that it is far better than hoping their traditional methods will continue to pay off, which is bound to stop just a couple of years down the road.
Since its advent, the e-commerce sector has seen constant changes over the years and a lot of technology has been implemented to ensure the customers get the ultimate shopping experience. Developments are made on every single area of this business platform whether it is in product selection and recommendation or in making the payments through a reliable and safe payment gateway.
Remember, modern customers, young or old are increasingly tech-savvy and will not accept anything lying down. They will read the reviews and know the ratings before they choose a site and buy a product or a service, whether it is a mobile phone from Amazon.com or a debt relief program offered at Nationaldebtreliefprograms.com.
Therefore, knowing the latest changes and what to adopt will put you in a better position to deliver your customers with the exact things that they want in exactly the way they want it to be delivered to them.
The advent of voice search
Voice search will be everywhere in the e-commerce sector within a couple of years from now. Smart devices and other appliances will inundate the market and almost every home will have one of its own. If you want to see your sales figure graph steadily moving north then you will need to focus on such devices which these days have become an integral part when it comes to mobile services. There are a few specific reasons for this.
- It is literally becoming increasingly impossible to talk about mobile without voice search and its usefulness being mentioned.
- In 2019, voice search will become one of the most important and leading drivers in the e-commerce space and not simply on mobile.
- Consumers are now looking for more convenient shopping options. This is why you will see increasing adoption of smart home appliances by them.
Look at the AmazonEcho or GoogleHome units that are doing wonders particularly in the e-commerce space being one of the major drivers of voice search. According to the research data from Walker Sands Digital, it indicates that:
- Almost 24% or one-quarter of consumers own a voice-enabled and controlled smart appliance in their homes such as an Amazon Echo or Google Home
- A further 20% of people plan to purchase one such voice search smart devices in the following year.
- It also shows steady growth in the use of these smart devices to complete a purchase as more than 19% of all of the consumers using it
- A further 33% of consumers are planning to use these devices to buy a product from an e-commerce store in 2019.
Voice search, therefore is no more a novelty du jour or a neat trick in the smart speaker market in particular but it is typically the next best thing in customer loyalty which is a significant stage in e-commerce business.
Also Read: Everything You Need To Know About Google Business
Take another data from equities securities research firm Consumer Research Intelligence Partners that suggest:
- Consumers using a voice search device to make a purchase are among the most loyal customers of Amazon and
- They spend about $1,600 per year on an average as compared to their prime customers who spend near about $1,300 per year.
This is a figure that is 66% higher than the average amount an Amazon customer spends in a given year.
As from the point of view of the e-commerce retailers, sales made using an Amazon Echo unit provided them with a lot of upsell opportunities as well. It is found that the upsell rates in such purchases are more than 60% as it is perceived among some other product lines.
Rise of ROPO
ROPO is the abbreviation of Research Online, Purchase Offline which is another notable consumer shopping habit. For quite some time it is noticed that consumers have been largely thrifty shoppers behaving much like an eagle-eyed bargain hunter. They are always on the lookout for the best available deal. In 2019, expect to see a lot more of this specific ROPO approach in the consumers in the e-commerce sector.
However, ROPO is not just a natural evolution of the thrifty shopping habits of the consumers in today’s digital world.
- It is ideally the result of the culmination of the online shopping technology and its development over the last one and a half decade or so.
- It is also the result of the consumer approaches and shifts in it wherein they want to research more on a product more before buying it from any online store especially just as they do while making an offline purchase.
However, ROPO allows the customers to be knowledgeable about the product they are looking for and find the exact product they want to buy at the best possible price. On the other hand, for the retailersROPO signifies most effective offline conversion tracking.
According to the research report of Montreal-based e-commerce agency Absolunet, it is found that:
- 82% of consumers use their mobile phones to research products and local businesses
- 18% of all local searches result in an effective sale within just 24 hours.
In order to leverage this, you will need to use different techniques and metrics such as:
- CRM
- Mobile payment data
- Point-of-sale systems
- Geo-location tracking
- Social integration
- Consumer shopping history and
- Personalized ad experiences.
All e-commerce retailers therefore now need to build detailed profiles of shoppers for ROPO throughout all stages of the customer journey.
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