With eCommerce industry evolving rapidly, keeping up with customers’ behaviour, demands and preferences have become more than important. eCommerce businesses top priority is none other than providing best customer experience. Fulfilling the changing needs along with providing a seamless and satisfying customer experience can be achieved as long as you know which marketing trends you need to implement. Following the trends that are useful will help you to explore and find new ways of getting connected with your customers.
Let’s check some of the important marketing trends that you shouldn’t avoid this year:
• Voice search
According to statistics, around 50% of the searches made are done through voice search. From regular shopping to speciality products to making simple queries, consumers are using voice search to find product information and place their orders. As the need of the shoppers is expanding and getting complex, better voice search features and optimisation has become the need of the hour. Optimising for voice search and considering a workable voice strategy can help in your brand expansion.
• More visual user-generated content
You already know or have used user-generated content such as product reviews on your product pages to drive more conversions. But you can put your step further by including user-generated visuals to your marketing strategy. In eCommerce marketing, visual user-generated content is trending these days as it can attract the customers more and drive better results in comparison to written content.
• Growth in AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine-learning usage
In an eCommerce business, you can feel the presence of AI in almost everywhere, from voice search to recommendation engine to hyper-personalisation. Delivering personalised shopping experience to enhanced productivity, AI and machine learning have made everything possible. AI and machine learning can be used to make more accurate, smarter predictions as well as product recommendations. You can use these technologies to woo your customers by providing them with a personalised shopping guide.
• Text marketing on the rise
Text messaging is again gaining its importance. All thanks to artificial intelligence for opening ways for text message marketing to become a viable method. The detailed algorithms of artificial intelligence make predicting the formats and type of message that will appeal to potential audience. AI can even monitor the messages that get the better engagement.
• Hyper-personalisation
In this competitive eCommerce world, being just slightly personal is not sufficient to drive more traffic. Marketing through whatever channel, it should be extremely personal. You should move beyond basic automation and provide your customers with extremely personalised content that entices them to visit your website and buy from you.
• Live video
The use of video as a great engagement tool is what you must have done and is useful, as well. But now what is catching the eyeballs of the shoppers are live streaming of videos on different platforms, be it on your website or on social media channels. People these days prefer watching a live video rather than reading written content such as social media posts or blog posts. Live video content is having a great influence on the customers’ behaviour and creates a sense of urgency as well as intimacy. Better one-to-one video and interactive 360 videos can be great additions.
• Enhanced mobile experience
Another important marketing trend that your eCommerce business should adopt is offering better mobile experiences to your online customers. People these days use mobile devices more to search for products online and to place orders, as well. You need to make your website optimised for mobile so that you can generate more traffic and drive better conversions. Developing a responsive website is what you need to shift your focus to make better mobile experience to your customers.
• More use of ‘Buy’ button option on social media
Social media is still ruling in the everyday lives of people. Parting ways with social media has become unimaginable for us. Likewise, it has also provided a remarkable impact on eCommerce marketing by generating traffic to websites. Making use of the ‘Buy’ button on social media platforms wherever possible can generate better sales. Doing so will make things simpler and provide a seamless experience to the customers.
• Increased use of chat support
Offering exceptional buying experience and customer support are keys to successful eCommerce marketing. You should ensure that your customer shouldn’t find any trouble while shopping in your online store. And if they have any queries regarding your products or your brand or facing trouble while placing an order, you should be quick enough to solve their queries or problems. Providing solutions in real-time through live chat support, chatbots and social media messaging app is a great way to make better customer experience as customers prefer communicating with messages rather than calls.
