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What’s Next in eCommerce?

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PANKAJ
New Update

eCommerce is evolving rapidly both in India & worldwide to embrace even more customer needs, merchant coverage, business models and ecosystem enablers. In India, eCommerce is growing at a rapid clip and now attracts 83 million unique visitors every month (Source: Comscore) to online shopping websites, a substantial portion of online Indians.

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Consumers often take a hard-to-predict, circuitous route to purchasing products of their liking. Today's empowered consumer can chose their own shopping terms, times, and locations when they want to engage with, and by what means. What was once a regular buying process has evolved to include more integrated and easy to shop options for the consumers such as the web, mobile, kiosks, traditional retail outlets and many more.

Retailers (online and offline) are constantly looking at more innovative options to engage with the consumers. From a buzzword to a current-day reality, eCommerce in India has been experiencing remarkable growth, successfully evolving the way people shop for products. So what kind of innovations are likely to take place in the eCommerce scenario in India?

With the evolution of online shopping, the transition to taking shopping completely portable through Mobile Commerce has already begun. Mobile Commerce allows shoppers the ability to carry out safe, easy, convenient transactions through their mobile devices (mobile phones, tablets and phablets), anywhere, anytime.

Mobile commerce is picking up rapidly

It is very likely that majority of the next 100 million Internet users in India will have their first and pre-dominant experience of Internet & commerce on their mobile devices, either smart phones or tablets. Even though Mobile Commerce is at a very nascent stage in India, it is picking up rapidly, aided by affordable cost of devices and better mobile internet rates. This coupled with high-speed internet and popularity of installing WiFi routers in non-metro households has added further impetus to shopping through mobile devices. The advent of 4G will see this trend growing significantly. Already 23% of eBay India traffic comes through mobile devices (tablet, phablet and mobile phones). 2014 will see a lot of eCommerce companies investing time and resources on building awareness and developing their mobile platform.

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Personalised customer experiences will matter in e-tailing

The last year saw many innovations and remodeling of business by eCommerce players to stabilize business and strengthen their play. In the coming year, personalised customer experiences will figure prominently into successful online retailing. As companies become more sophisticated in their ability to collect information about consumers, consumers are raising the bar and expecting eCommerce companies to deliver one-of-a-kind experiences every single time. From complementary product presentations to customised homepages, personalisation will empower consumers and drive eCommerce growth in 2014.

Online shopping sites will be more interactive

2013 saw a lot of eCommerce players making changes to their website to make it more simple and easy to use. The next stage of that one can see will be making the online shopping sites more interactive. For example, globally, several eCommerce sites have now replaced images with interactive products display such as product demo, personal shopping assistant and many more.

E-tailers will boost cross-channel integration strategy

With a strong focus on technology and innovation, 2014 will also see several brands and retailers focusing on building/enhancing their cross-channel integration strategy. With the increasing popularity of online shopping, brands will look at providing customers a seamless brand experience across all touch points - regardless of whether the customer is accessing the product on a smartphone app or on the web. This will embark the rise of Social Commerce. Single-channel shopping experiences will be replaced by rich, multichannel opportunities, enabling consumers to enjoy consistent brand experiences.

To conclude, eCommerce is at a very exciting phase in India. The trends pose a win-win situation for both, eCommerce companies and for the consumers. Players in the industry will have to build a distinctive strategy to suit their business motives and to satisfy the evolving needs of the consumers. Here is to a new wave in eCommerce.

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