While most industries have been struggling during the pandemic, ecommerce has flourished and enjoyed even greater growth. People are now buying more online than ever before and businesses that can provide an online shopping experience have the potential to find high levels of success in 2022. So, what will the main ecommerce trends be over the next 12 months?
Supporting Social Media
Social media has played a major role in ecommerce for many years now, but this has been taken to new levels with the emergence of TikTok. Stars from the social media platform now even have their own online stores and it is rumoured that there will be a TikTok food chain opening in the near future. Ecommerce stores should have a presence on this platform and others to engage their target market and promote their products.
Personalization
These days, online shoppers expect personalization for an improved shopping experience. 80% of customers are more likely to shop when content is personalized to their demographic sub-sector as it shows that you know your audience. You can improve the customer experience with personalized product suggestions, chatbots and a loyalty program that will reward repeat customers for their business.
Supporting Small Businesses
Small businesses are on the rise and people are keen to share their shopping experiences from small, independent ecommerce stores both as a way to show their support for small businesses and show that they know where to buy the best products that others might not have heard of. Ecommerce stores can capitalise by asking their customers to tag them on social media and to recommend their products.
Worldwide
Have you ever found a product online or seen one recommended by an influencer that you instantly fall in love with only to find that it does not ship to your country? This can be a massive downer, which is why ecommerce stores will be stepping up their efforts to ship globally in 2022. It is worthwhile looking at analytics to see where the top 5% audience are from and ensure that you ship to customers in these destinations.
Payment Methods
It is also a good idea to offer a range of payment options as this is becoming expected by today’s consumer. This can include buy now, pay later or pay in instalments with plugins like ClearPay, Klarna and Afterpay. Additionally, 2022 will be a year where many online stores start to accept cryptocurrency payments and now could be a good time to embrace this. If you have a loyalty program, you can also enable customers to pay for their order with any loyalty points that they have accrued through previous purchases.
These will be a few of the main ecommerce trends in 2022 that could help online retailers to achieve high levels of success.