2019 ecommerce trends to put on your radar

The New Year is just a few days away and for those of your planning an ecommerce web design or with an ecommerce site requiring a refresh, now is a great time to get a head start on a few emerging trends. Read on to find out what looks set to trend on the ecommerce front in 2019 so you can stay ahead of the game…

1: Multi-channel selling The sheer convenience and choice that accompanies online shopping means that consumers have a wealth of options when it comes to picking a place to purchase from. As such, online retailers are increasingly required to maintain a multi-channel presence. This means that in 2019, while you’ll undoubtedly want to drive traffic to your ecommerce website, you’ll also need to look at other places where your shoppers tend to spend their money and maintain a presence there too. That could mean setting up an Amazon merchant account, selling on Etsy, using social selling techniques or leveraging other online channels such as eBay and Google Shopping Ads. Trend 2: Personalisation Research suggests that around 80% of online shoppers are more likely to make a purchase when the content they see is personalised to them. Expect much more emphasis to be placed on this in the next 12 months as consumers increasingly expect you to tailor their shopping journey to their own tastes and preferences, regardless of which channel, or how many channels they use.Rolling our personalisation requires a little forethought and some investment in the right tools and techniques so the sooner you begin to explore this trend, the better. Trend 3: Easier payments and check outs The advance of the mobile web has already started to change the way that shoppers make payment and check out, due to the limitations of smaller screen sizes and the need to optimise the user experience for those devices. Expect to see this revisited in 2019 with even desktop sites seriously streamlining their payment processing options and the whole checkout process. Modern consumers don’t expect to have to register to buy something and they don’t want to spend precious minutes checking out so the slicker your cart interface, the better. Trend 4: Chatbots and AI A survey of more than 5000 consumers performed late in 2018 found that around half of consumers found Chatbots annoying – despite this they look set to be a key trend, along with AI, in the next 12 months. The key to making this trend work for you is to ensure that the bots you roll out offer more personal and useful experiences to shoppers.