Over the last decade or so, dropshipping has been gaining momentum in the retail sector. Even while 2018 has come to an end, the ecommerce trends are expected to continue to increase in popularity throughout 2019.
According to Statista, by 2021, ecommerce sales will hit an all-time high of $4.8 billion.
Many businesses have been embracing ecommerce as opposed to the conventional brick-and-mortar businesses, and this has occasioned a continual change in the ecommerce trends.
However, a lot of people have been confusing ecommerce fads for trends. The latter stay longer as opposed to the former that fade away within a short period of time.
Moreover, when it comes to ecommerce trends that boost dropshipping sales in 2018, there is quite a handful of them to talk about. Let’s take a look at 10 such trends from 2018.
Artificial Intelligence
Identification and segmentation of customers have been one of the ecommerce trends in 2018 going into 2019. However, many businesses have been finding it difficult to automate this process making it tedious to draw useful insights from such data.
Artificial intelligence is believed to be the ultimate solution to the automation of a business process such as customer segmentation. A publication by Business Insider revealed that personalization boosts sales by 6-10% for an average ecommerce company.
Seeing as the trend has not been around for that long, we can expect the figures to grow in the future.
Contextual and Programmatic Advertising
Businesses have been keen on aligning the contents of their web pages with the best advertisements. This means that various business datasets can be used to identify the target audience for advertising purposes. Programmatic advertising helps to lure the right audience to the right pages at the right moment.
If you’ve used social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, then you’ve probably come across programmatic ads. For example, Facebook is using its marketing tool called Pixel which helps run ads smoothly on the platform. This normally results in more accurate audience targeting.
Improved Shipping Options
A few years back, the shipping aspect of ecommerce had stagnated. Many businesses did not offer to ship their products to the customers, and this meant that incentives like free shipping were unheard of.
Also, up until 2013, most businesses could not offer same day delivery, sometimes even with deliveries within very close proximities.
However, things have changed over time. Amazon started its drone delivery services within the US that drastically improve delivery times. And from where we sit, we believe drone deliveries are the shipping option to beat in 2018 and in the years to come.
Automatic Marketing
Contrary to what you may think, marketing automation is nothing out of the ordinary. This is simply the act of automating social media posts, web blogs, or email marketing. Automatic marketing is not a very new trend, but it still works the magic for a number of businesses.
If done right, this could be one of the most successful strategies for boosting dropshipping sales. In fact, 99% of ecommerce businesses rely on automatic marketing to acquire more than 90% of their customers.
Automatic marketing is big, and you can expect it to grow even bigger in the days to come.
Shop by Snapping
Yes, you guessed that right!
Finally, tech is going to save us from the long description of products we wish to buy online. A new trend popularly known as snap and shop is slowly emerging among the ecommerce businesses. It allows users to simply take a photo of a product and voila, it gets included in their shopping carts.
The trend is also expected to drive ecommerce sales through affiliate photo shopping.
Chatbots
A number of businesses have not been using chatbots for a while now. Previously, businesses used them as personal assistants. However, 2018 has seen a resurgence of chatbots that are AI-powered.
Chatbots are a means of enhancing the interaction between businesses and their customers by granting them a menu of options when shopping online.
According to grandviewresearch.com, the chatbots industry will grow to a whopping $1.25 billion by 2025.
Voice Search
Voice search is a fast-growing content-optimizing strategy that is expected to help spur ecommerce sales.
Various large ecommerce brands such as Amazon and NorthFace are already making it big with voice search assistants helping customers place orders through smart speakers.
Product Visualization Using Augmented Reality (AR)
Both Google and Apple have introduced AR kits for their user base, and the trend is not expected to slow down any time soon. This also means that the overall uptake of the AR-enabled devices will sharply increase.
Consider Ikea’s app that allows users to visualize furniture in their spaces. It helps them to see how would specific pieces of furniture fit into their room. Pretty cool, right?
Subscription-Based Business Models
Subscription-based business models have been on the rise in the past few years. This trend is not only convenient for users but also a great way for businesses to stay in touch with their customers.
In this regard, subscription companies such as BirchBox and Loot Crate are expected to experience surges due to their subscription services. Many ecommerce businesses are now tapping into this business model as the trend continues to grow steadily.
Mobile Commerce
Thousands of researches have alluded to the fact that mobile transactions are fast gaining momentum in this day and age. Many shoppers are using mobile devices to shop online. This means that businesses need to optimize their websites and make them responsive and easy to use for such customers.
Conclusion
The world is changing, and this is especially true of the business world. Ecommerce trends that worked in 2015 or 2016 might not be admissible in 2019. Be sure to incorporate some, if not all of the listed trends to be able to boost your dropshipping sales.
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