Top 10 eCommerce Trends to Boost Sales

eCommerce is growing at a rapid pace, changing the dynamics of the market in the process. Online spending in the U.S. totaled $860 billion in 2020, a 44% increase from the prior year. Today’s businesses must be agile if they want to keep up.

Magento’s flexibility and scalability make it the ideal eCommerce platform for managing changes in the eCommerce market. With Magento development, you can set your store apart by quickly adding the best features and designs. In this article, we’ll examine the Top 10 eCommerce Trends to Boost Sales.

1. Seamless Customer Experience

Customers have come to expect a world-class experience wherever they shop. Research from PWC shows that 73% of consumers view customer experience as a key brand differentiator. Those who want to stay competitive in today’s market must know how to optimize their user experience.

Magento Development services can help you implement all aspects of a seamless customer experience — intuitive navigation, rich product pages, blazing site speed, and a friction-free checkout process. 

2. Push Notifications

Push notifications are gaining in popularity as an effective way to bring visitors back to your website or brick-and-mortar store during special sale events. They function similarly to an email opt-in list. Upon invitation via your mobile app or website, customers opt-in to receive push notifications from your company on their mobile phones or web browser. Once they consent, you can send push notifications directly to their mobile phone or computer via a browser window.

For brick-and-mortar businesses, an interesting use-case of push notifications uses geofencing so that when a subscriber is within a specific range of your business, they will receive a push notification designed to attract them into your store. 

Magento development can help you configure cross-browser push notifications to engage with your customers like never before. You can use them for abandoned cart recovery, order updates, promotions, and a variety of other use cases. 

3. Delivery Transformation

The 2020 pandemic has brought to light many inefficiencies in the global supply chain. During the spring and throughout the holiday season, customers experienced a dramatic increase in lead times for their online orders - sometimes waiting weeks or even months for products to arrive.

This has accelerated the need for technology that can transform the logistics of eCommerce. Industry leaders have been steadily adding AI and autonomous delivery to their logistics network. Moving forward, these technologies will play a bigger role in last-mile delivery. This will help overcome the limitations of carriers like UPS and USPS.

4. PWAs

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) leverage APIs to provide an app-like experience while using a web browser. They continue to grow in importance as more consumers shop via mobile devices. eMarketer estimates that 70% of all eCommerce sales will occur through mobile devices by 2024. 

Native apps are popular, but most consumers still prefer to shop via a browser rather than downloading individual apps. PWAs can provide a more responsive user experience than a traditional browser-based website. The result is better engagement, ultimately leading to better conversions and sales.

Through the PWA Studio, experienced Magento developers can build PWAs on top of your Magento Commerce platform, thus allowing merchants to launch PWAs faster and provide a seamless customer experience on any device. Utilizing the advanced technologies of PWAs will also reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) of your eCommerce website.

5. Visual Search

Visual search in eCommerce allows visitors to search for products using images rather than keywords. It works by leveraging machine learning to analyze images for similarities in visual characteristics, tags, and visitor interactions. It uses this information to quickly surface highly relevant results to drive more conversions. One example of an innovative visual search tool for the Magento platform is Qanuk.ai - a machine learning product recommendation system developed by IronPlane’s development partner Snow.Dog.

Visual search is quickly growing in popularity, particularly among younger generations. The global visual search market is projected to exceed $14 billion in value by 2023. Visual search engines are becoming more efficient and companies are investing more heavily into visual search technology. 

Magento developers can help prepare your eCommerce products for visual searches across Amazon, Google, and Pinterest. It’s important to add the appropriate markup to images so search engines can easily understand them. They can then serve the images to the right searchers. Store owners with extensive online catalogs should consider adding visual search capabilities to their websites. 

6. Voice Search is Transforming eCommerce

The rise of voice assistants and IoT devices is increasing the use of voice searches for eCommerce products. As the technology continues to improve, search phrases and keywords will more easily be translated into actionable results and happier users. This building success will no doubt accelerate voice search adoption in the years to come.

The addition of Web Speech API to Chrome and Firefox opens the door for merchants who want to use voice search. With the help of Magento development services, you’ll be able to add voice search to your header’s search bar. 

7. Headless Commerce

Headless commerce is an emerging approach to eCommerce architecture. It works by separating the frontend presentation layer from the backend commerce functionality. All parts of the system are connected through APIs and can provide several advantages to businesses including: 

• Improved security and site speed
• Flexibility for developers
• Better omnichannel selling
• Limitless customization options
• Easier to make updates and changes

The most significant benefit of headless commerce is the ability to create quality customer experiences across any channel. Traditional eCommerce platforms are not designed for a world where people shop via cell phones, IoT devices, inside video games, and any future channels that will emerge. Headless commerce gives businesses the ability to create unique frontend experiences for any channel.

Magento’s robust open-source APIs offer cutting-edge headless solutions for businesses looking to implement this innovative architecture. 

8. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning In eCommerce

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (technically a subset of AI) are helping to make technology more efficient and more autonomous. From self-driving cars to interactive voice assistants, this sophisticated technology finds its way more and more into our daily lives. The eCommerce industry is no exception. Machine learning and AI advances are improving online business functions such as inventory management, customer support, audience targeting, product recommendations, and website usability.

Adobe Commerce powered by Magento provides AI-powered customer experiences through its Adobe Sensei solution including personalized recommendations and automated workflow designs for improved web management efficiency. With cutting-edge Magento development technology, you can unlock the benefits of the AI advances being made! 

9. eCommerce Marketplaces

eCommerce marketplaces are becoming more popular as brands and retailers embrace an omnichannel strategy. When you sell through online marketplaces, you can reach a much larger audience than selling through your website alone. Within these marketplaces, consumers can easily compare products from different brands. Statistics from Digital Commerce 360 show that 62% of all online retail sales occur on marketplaces.

With Magento development, you can create a seamless connection between your store and marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart. Merchants can push orders from Amazon Marketplace to Magento Commerce for centralized fulfillment. This ensures a smooth bi-directional data flow between your different sales channels. Thus, you can centralize your inventory management, allowing you to manage your sales channels with a single solution.

10. eCommerce Marketing

Building a user-friendly, designer-driven website is only the beginning. To boost eCommerce revenue and generate more qualified traffic, implementing strategic marketing initiatives can have a significant impact on sales for your eCommerce store. From social media to blog content to SEO, Magento development has a variety of integrations to enhance your eCommerce marketing programs and increase brand awareness. 

To boost social media shares from your Magento website, install social media extensions on product pages and blog posts, which allows customers to easily share content to their own social media audience. By amplifying social media shares, you will see an increase in product discovery, website traffic, and deliver social proof across platforms. Hiring an experienced eCommerce marketing agency that specializes in social media marketing can help streamline your marketing efforts and bring you a larger return on ad spend (ROAS) from your paid marketing campaigns.

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

New technologies and shifting consumer behavior continue to disrupt the world of eCommerce. IronPlane’s website development services provide you a trusted partner for optimizing your eCommerce store to increase conversions and boost sales. Whether you’re starting a new site, migrating, or improving your business, IronPlane helps you select the best development strategy to allow you more time to focus on business rather than the technology.

Learn more about IronPlane's Magento Development Services and eCommerce Digital Marketing Services, or click here to schedule a free consultation today.