Are you keen to find out which eCommerce trends you should follow to keep up with your competitors? These four technical innovations will help you to update your website to become state-of-the-art again!
In 2019, online selling trends are all about making things as easy and as accessible as possible for your customers. Besides these trends, you should also make sure that your website is optimized for mobile devices, as more people use their phones or tablets to access the internet every year. But now, let’s have a look at four trends of 2019:
Voice Assistants
Voice assistants can help improve the usability of your website and are gaining more popularity each year. Nowadays, voice assistants can be used to buy goods from Amazon or place an order for food delivery. You can implement a voice assistant in your online store to help people find the goods they are looking for faster.
Smart Software
When running an online business as a manufacturer or crafter, it can be hard to keep up with all the orders, inventory and finances. It might have happened to you before that some of your products weren’t available in your online store due to a shortage of inventory or raw material. The good news is that there is software that helps you to handle all of the above. Furthermore, by implementing a master production schedule, small manufacturers can make sure that your business works with maximum efficiency.
Chatbots
How can you offer your customers the same kind of personal support as in a physical store? Well, to be honest, you can’t completely replace a face-to-face conversation between a customer and a real employee in a store. But there is not so much difference between a real store and an online shop: communication is key! Therefore, you should always focus on answering questions from your clients as soon and as accurate as possible. But as a small employee, you might often find it exhausting to be available 24/7.
The solution: A chatbot. If you’ve had trouble handling all of your customers’ inquiries before, you should definitely consider implementing a bot to your store. And even if you could answer all of them until now, a bot can save you time and expenses by automating customer support. Furthermore, bots collect data from your visitors that you can use to make their experience even better and they can recommend special offers and discounts during the checkout-process.
Cryptocurrencies
During the upcoming years, payment as we know it now might be gone for good. Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, are becoming more popular each year and some people predict them to become the major currency for global trades. eCommerce has jumped on that train already and many retailers already offer cryptocurrency-payment.
Still, many people see cryptocurrencies as an investment and wait for a good return instead of using them online. If you decide to allow cryptocurrency-payments in your eCommerce, you might have to wait until people really use that option. Anyhow, cryptocurrencies might open your business to a new target group in another part of the world that would usually have to pay bank fees to purchase your products.