8 E-commerce Marketing Trends for 2019
Raising awareness about an e-commerce business and all that it offers is one major marketing strategy that both big and small e-commerce websites have to do in order to drive their desired marketing and sales goals. We saw quite a number of strategies that trended last year, some might make their way into this year and newer ones might emerge as the year goes by. With the help of a digital marketing agency, the following ecommerce marketing trends can be implemented in your strategy in 2019.
Integrating voice search for buying online
The growing statistics of voice search is too impressive to ignore. According to Google and Alphametic, 20% of queries entered with mobile devices are voice searched. This implies that about one-fifth of mobile phone users, between ages 18 to 29, carry out voice searches. And the percentage of those using voice search would definitely increase as more mobile phone manufacturers are integrating voice search features in their products. With this, e-commerce websites would have to get creative about how this developing trend would be of benefit to them. Amazon is currently dominating in this area with the creation of Alexa— a voice-based home assistant which has taken shopping on Amazon to a whole new level.
Using social media to sell online
The ultimate goal of any e-commerce website is to sell! And social media offers that same platform where e-commerce websites would have to shift focus from driving traffic from social media to their website (with the hope that they would get good leads and conversions) to taking their products to social media and getting more sales. The only downside of this shift would be traffic on the website decreasing. Starting with Instagram of course, which is one of the most popular social networking platforms with over 1 billion active monthly users, many more e-commerce websites would embrace social shopping to increase sales.
Use of chatbots would increase
E-commerce chatbots grew in popularity in 2017, and it has increased since then until date; it is likely that many more e-commerce websites will be embracing this trend this year too. E-commerce chatbots marketing on Facebook messenger has proven to increase sales, improve customer relationship and retention as well as broaden target audience. With over 1.3 billion using Facebook messenger app, e-commerce websites would definitely leverage on chatbots and possibly look out for more technologies that would help improve on what they currently do with the chatbots.
More brands would improve on delivery
Having an efficient delivery strategy is one good way to market an e-commerce brand to both new and existing customers. Many e-commerce websites would be experimenting and leveraging on new technologies for improving order delivery (shipments). Online shoppers this year would be looking forward to having better shopping experiences which are inclusive of having a faster and improved shipping process as well as reducing the cost of shipment. Amazon, one of the world’s leading innovative e-commerce websites. Amazon Prime Air has been carrying out several tests on drones that can carry up to five pounds items and deliver. If this is successful and approved by regulatory bodies, this would change the delivery strategy for most e-commerce websites. Asides drones, other new technologies being tested like self-driving vehicles, and Droid delivery might make its way into the e-commerce delivery strategy for this year.
Cryptocurrency used as an additional payment method
The stronger the cryptocurrency system gets this year, could determine if e-commerce websites would consider it as an additional payment option. There are still several issues surrounding the efficiency of this currency as opposed to other fiat currencies and other registered payment methods like PayPal and co.
Despite the fact that many individuals, usually peer-to-peer are accepting cryptocurrency, many e-commerce websites still shy away from it. However, there are major e-commerce websites that are already accepting cryptocurrency like Shopify stores, Gyft and so on.
In order to get the attention of those who are currently using such cryptocurrencies for their day-to-day transactions, some e-commerce websites might embrace cryptocurrency either as a payment option or gift redemption option. E-commerce websites looking to take a larger portion of the target audience in the target market they share with their competitors might consider using this as a bait.
More reliance on user-generated content and influencers
User-generated content is very important to the growth of any e-commerce website. People shopping online are generally influenced by what others are saying about a product that bought from a store. Online shoppers are smarter, and they have subconsciously developed ways to scroll past advertisements calling their attention to spend their hard-earned money. E-commerce websites would have to rely on user-generated content like people who upload pictures of their products on social media, ratings, comments or product review to get more sales. There is also going to be increasing use of user-generated contents to for advertising and promotion efforts.
Advanced mobile optimization
E-commerce websites are going to improve on optimizing their website and overall shopping experience for mobile phone users. Mobile optimization was a huge trend last year, and we are going to see more e-commerce websites looking for more advanced ways to fully optimize all kinds of mobile devices to improve the experience of their customers and visitors in order to increase sales or get good leads. They would also explore both new and existing mobile marketing trends that will help increase leads and conversions.
Better checkout procedure
One of the main issues e-commerce brands try to track and tackle is bounce rate in the checkout area. This is going to be an area most e-commerce websites would want to make extremely smooth for online shoppers. It is one of the ways to improve their shopping experience and doing this in return could boost the overall external perception of the brand. Eliminating the traditional registration requirements before orders can be processed might be a trend this year as many brands are finding ways to thin out bounce rate in checkouts.