Trends in E-commerce So Far
Is e-commerce dominating the market? |
The growth of e-commerce is huge. Large enough, that it is
killing brick and mortar stores faster than ever. Here is a summary of the key
takeaways in this industry in the last year. What is interesting is that the
industry continues to grow at a rate far exceeding all expectations that
investors have had.
1.
Retail mobile e-commerce is exploding,
increasing in the United Kingdom, for example, from around $14.2 billion In
2014 to an expected $18.6 billion in 2015.
2.
Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter,
Pinterest, and Instagram, together with online retailers, continue to try to
understand how best to facilitate social e-commerce, with the introduction of
Buy buttons on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
3.
Local e-commerce, headlined by new local
on-demand service companies such as Uber, skyrocketed to an estimated $25
billion in the United States.
4.
The number of online buyers continues to
increase to over 1.4 billion worldwide in 2015.
5.
Online retailers remain generally profitable by
focusing on revenue growth, increasing the size of average purchase amounts,
and improving efficiency of operations.
6.
Online retail remains the fastest growing retail
channel.
7.
Buying online has become a normal, mainstream,
everyday experience. Almost half of all Internet users worldwide are now online
buyers.
8.
The selection of goods for purchase online
continues to increase to include luxury goods, such as jewellery, gourmet
groceries, furniture, and wine, as customer trust and experience increase.
9.
Informational shopping for big-ticket items such
as cars and appliances continues to expand rapidly to include nearly all retail
goods (both durables and non-durables).
Largest growth has been seen in mobile ecommerce |
10.
Specialty retail sites show rapid growth in
online retail as they develop customized retail goods and customer online
configuration of goods.
11.
Online retailers place an increased emphasis on
providing an improved “shopping experience,” including ease of navigation and
use, online inventory updates, interactive tools, customer feedback and
ratings, and social shopping opportunities.
12.
Online retailers increase the use of interactive
marketing technologies and techniques such as blogs, user-generated content,
and video that exploit the dominance of broadband connections and offer features
such as zoom, colour switch, product configuration, and virtual simulations of
households and businesses.
13.
Retailers are increasingly becoming omni-channel
retailers, integrating the multiple retail channels provided by physical
stores, the Web, and the mobile platform. New virtual merchants such as
Birchbox, Naturebox, and others emerge that are using a new subscription-based
revenue model for retail.
14.
Big Data and powerful analytic programs begin to
be used for predictive marketing by both large and small retailers.