21/0/2019ecommerce

What’s on Our E-Commerce Radar in 2019?

trends2019mobile app developmentretail

A new year means new opportunities. We are fully focused on how we can roll with the big underlying e-commerce trends, as well as looking at emerging technologies which can enhance our business. Here is our take on what will shape e-commerce in 2019.

2018 is in the bag. What a year! Almost everything from May onwards was driven towards the big release of Saleor 2.0

Now that is done, and Saleor is the officially the fastest-growing open source e-commerce platform in the world over the last 6 months, you’d think we would take some down time. But a new year means new opportunities and we are are fully focused on how we can roll with the big underlying e-commerce trends, as well as looking at emerging technologies which can enhance our business. Here is our take on what will shape e-commerce in 2019.

Most important conclusions:

It’s the last chance to get the most benefit from mobile and PWA
Time to stop thinking of the high street and e-commerce as separate entities
Emerging technologies are set to further enhance customer experiences

Mobiles and PWA

Mobile shopping took another great leap in 2018. Black Friday broke records in the USA to become the first ever $7 B day for e-commerce, of which $2 B was through mobile. It is not just a US trend, 90% of people in China used mobile for payments on Singles’ Day last year, while emerging markets like Africa are investing heavily in mobile as the most affordable and convenient way of doing business.

Essentially, if you are in e-commerce, mobile has grown to the point where it is now the last opportunity to really get on board. We will be helping companies with that shift.

PWA storefronts will also boom in the coming year. Retailers can offer stores to clients as native-like applications which can be browsed at any time, on- or off-line, giving shoppers a whole new level of retail experience and convenience. This was a key feature of the release of our Saleor 2.0 open source e-commerce solution.

People no longer want to wait for services; they expect everything to be tailored to an on-demand experience. As a retailer, you should use PWA to move away from simply offering products to customers and move closer to offering them experiences.

Mobile-native payments like Payment Request, Apple Pay and Google Pay, which increase convenience with stored checkout details, are another element of the frictionless end-user experience. Every barrier that is broken down, every click saved, and every form that doesn’t need filling in is a bonus, which is why we have solid plans to support these technologies in Saleor in 2019.

E-Commerce Can Help the High Street Survive

Predictions suggest that over half of the 1,200 shopping malls in the US expect to close by 2023. The UK also had a rocky 2018 on the high street with household favourites like Toys R Us, HMV, House of Fraser and Maplins announcing big cuts or total closure.

The internet has democratized shopping. Consumers are no longer tied to big stores when smaller, independent outlets can offer the same products with more personalized service and online stores can offer cheaper prices. The opportunity for companies like Mirumee in the coming years is to help large retailers who are attempting to transform their business in response to this challenge.

E-commerce will not be a separate business arm of retailers in the future; the stores that thrive will be those with an omni-channel, fluid online and offline experience in which shopping trips may also be augmented by e-commerce technology.

Rather than e-commerce being a challenge to the high street, successful companies who exist in both spaces will see how each can complement and elevate the other.

We have to assess the online and offline activities of our clients; it’s no good just building software, we need to think about the whole brand experience and even offer advice on high street activities if our insight can add value. There really is no division between the high street and e-commerce of the future, it is all just good commerce.

Machine Learning and AI

Machine Learning and AI have been the big topics of 2018; skepticism has died down and people have come to accept the future of computing.

For Black Friday, we implemented our own ML engine for an online retail client who uses our Saleor e-commerce platform. The machine was an enhancement of an existing popularity-based recommendations engine; we added machine learning which analyzed each individual user’s purchase history against items which were frequently bought together, in order to make more targeted recommendations.

This more personalized shopping experience achieved an $80,000 revenue increase over the course of 15 days (a spike of nearly 7%) and lifted the conversion rate by more than 1%. The fully automated process allowed the company to increase sales and profits — as well as moving near-obsolete stock — without any additional time spent by staff.

e-commerce Trends: Machine Learning and AI

The key to good implementations of AI and ML still lies in human awareness and action. Make sure you know what to do 2 months, 2 weeks and 2 days before an event like Black Friday. 2019 is going to see a lot of businesses trying and failing with AI, because they failed to understand the real power of the technology and use it to its full potential.

Our own ML and AI activity in 2019 will be focused around helping businesses do it right. AI will soon be the norm, so now is the time to get ahead of the market with good implementations.

Social media has been a game-changer for brands and retailers over recent years. Small businesses can reach potential customers without investing heavily in marketing and larger brands can take more ownership of their voice in the public realm. The main challenges are how to maintain a consistent, controlled brand voice and how to generate revenue from customer engagement on social channels.

E-commerce solutions are now starting to merge with major social media platforms, allowing customers to buy directly from their Facebook wall or an Instagram post, removing the additional clicks between interest and conversion. Perhaps surprisingly, Pinterest is the fastest growing social media platform and the one most suited to social commerce. In fact, 88% of people who save pins are doing so in search of a purchase.

Social commerce has existed for some time now, but it is beginning to truly move over to converting leads in real time, and is offering measurable analytics.

Voice Commerce

Smart speakers are set to seriously disrupt e-commerce. We love the Google Home device in our office which we use to facilitate our scrum meetings, but we are certainly among the early adopters of an emerging technology that has far more capability than we can currently utilize. We can’t yet use our device to order in lunch in Poland, as they do in America, but change is coming.

36% of US owners of smart speakers have already used them more than once to make a purchase and the figure is almost at 20% in the UK. While the technology is still not catching on as fast in other markets, it still represents a huge market opportunity: spending through voice commerce in the US in 2017 was $2 B, by 2022 it is predicted to be a staggering $40 B. 90% of those purchases are through Amazon but other channels are going to take advantage of the technology soon.

Interestingly, purchases made via voice commerce are usually of products that the customer already knows; it is currently not a browsing platform, only a way to quickly purchase specific, familiar products.

Similar to social commerce and mobile purchases, voice commerce shows that 2019 is not just about the products people buy; we are on the cusp of a revolution in the way that people make purchases. Everything is moving towards multi-channel, multi-device experiences with less clicks, or no clicks at all, removing the obstacles between a lead and a sale.

Both social commerce and voice commerce are areas we want to explore with Saleor. We’re not just playing with our smart speaker because it is a cool toy; we want to understand the technology as an end user, and then think about how we can integrate that into our platforms in the future.

Omnichannel

The biggest trend of 2019 is, of course, the same trend that has been ongoing for a number of years; namely, offering omni-channel experiences with a consistent brand identity and value across a number of platforms. The best e-commerce today offers the same great experience and service on any site and on any device, and gives users the chance to purchase products and interact with retailers.

The final thing companies need to bear in mind is that there are so many incredible customer experiences already in the e-commerce space. If your store is not offering great customer service, easy contact with sales and support staff, rapid delivery, and no-questions-asked returns, you are probably already falling behind your competitors.

Elevate Your 2019 Business Success with Saleor

Whatever you have in mind for 2019, we wish you success. If you happen to be thinking about building an e-commerce solution that will elevate your business and send sales through the roof, speak to us about Saleor, our free-to-use open source solution that is a favorite of businesses the world over, or speak to us about bespoke solutions and services.

Mirumee guides clients through their digital transformation by providing a wide range of services from design and architecture, through business process automation to machine learning. We tailor services to the needs of organizations as diverse as governments and disruptive innovators on the ‘Forbes 30 Under 30’ list. Find out more by visiting our services page.