The E-commerce trends of 2020 for you in a row
the 7 most important e-commerce trends of 2020 you should know
2020 already promises to be one of the most progressive and changeable years in e-commerce. Consumers are more critical than ever, borders are blurring, competition from major platforms is steadily growing and the playing field is becoming increasingly international. A recently released trend report from RIFF, a strategy and operations company, highlights the major e-commerce trends of 2020. To help you as an online retailer, we map out the seven most important developments in e-commerce country that will determine the coming year.
What does this mean for your webshop? Which techniques will be decisive and on which channels will your target group be found?
Marketplaces are becoming increasingly popular
The explosive growth of marketplaces such as Bol.com, eBay, Amazon en Wehkamp, are causing major changes in the e-commerce landscape. Consumers today no longer have to search the entire internet for that ideal product, but get through it one stop shops immediately put a wide range under their noses and they are also assured of good service.
Did you know that as many as 40% of online purchases go through marketplaces? When Dutch online shoppers search for a specific product, 61% currently prefer marketplaces to search engines such as Google (53%) (Emerce, 2020). In the Netherlands, Bol.com is currently the largest marketplace player with a turnover of 1,6 billion, but this may change in 2020 due to Amazon's arrival in the Netherlands. The main reasons for consumers to order in a marketplace are better prices (67%), a better product range (43%) and cheap or even free shipping (41%).
If you want to grow quickly as a company in a competitive market, you can hardly escape offering your products through marketplaces.
ORGANIC FINDABILITY IS GETTING DIFFICULT
Organically reaching your supporters is becoming increasingly difficult. Nearly 70% of all search engine queries result in a click on the first five results, with page two having to make do with just 6% of the clicks. Although e-commerce is a literal race to the top, a clear trend can be seen here: an increasing part of the search results is paid and no longer determined purely organically. Due to this shift, you as a webshop will have to use other means to stand out organically.
Enter the 'mobile first' era
If you want to be found organic at all in 2020, your webshop must definitely be part of the mobile-first era. Only websites that work perfectly on smartphones, thanks to Google's stricter conditions, achieve a coveted place among the first organic results.
Richer search results: long-tail-search
Consumers now expect that they will find what they are looking for quickly and that they will only find what is relevant. As a result, people are increasingly looking for specific questions consisting of 3 or more words, this is also known in online marketing long-tail-search called. By filling your pages with 'rich answers' on certain search terms, you increase the chance that Google recognizes your page, so that you stand out among all the ads.
the future of search engine optimization: Voice search
Voice Search: a trend to anticipate this year when you want to claim a high position in the search results. In the United States in particular, voice-activated search has become an indispensable part of the street scene, but the Netherlands is also booming and we are seeing explosive growth. But what exactly is it? With Voice Search, you give the search engine a search query with your voice instead of having to type it in, which then answers the search query. Thanks to technological developments such as Siri, Cortana and Alexa is Voice Search applicable to more and more devices. This development is expected to continue in an upward trend.
An investigation of Comscore predicts that by 2020, more than 50% of all searches will be conducted using Voice Search technology. Google wants to guarantee that users get optimal results based on Voice Search, which will radically change search engine optimization and website design. According to REM Rush (2019) the emergence of Voice Search makes it more important than ever to keep up with the new indexing. 80% of the responses to voice commands are from top three organic results. All the more reason to prepare well for this.
WORK ON YOUR BRAND
Growing gap between convenience and cheap
At the moment, there is a growing gap between two groups of consumers: the fans of cheap and those who love convenience. The 'fans' or 'bargain hunters' are always looking for the best deal and are happy to scour the entire internet for it. The 'enthusiasts', on the other hand, go for convenience and service and are not afraid to pay extra for, among other things, 'ordered today = delivered today' or receiving it at specific times.
View examples of previous awards here our wide range of carriers and give your customers the greatest freedom of choice.
determine your course
It is more important than ever for webshops to determine your target group and to make strategic choices. Which target group are you going to focus on? Do you compete for the cheapest online, or do you offer consumers a well-organized total package? If you choose the 'fans' who are always looking for the best deal, know that as a webshop you have to stunt with promotions and keep your shipping costs as low as possible. If you go for the 'enthusiast', appeal to your customer with a wide range of delivery and payment options, a flexible return policy and an overwhelming service.
For example, a service in which the recipient no longer has to call the carrier or your shop in case of a delayed or even lost shipment, but this is resolved immediately.
Personalization is becoming more important than ever
We see an enormous rise in personalization in e-commerce. Consumers today expect not only a perfect digital experience, but also a personal approach. The key to success lies in data. Only by collecting the right data in combination with the use of customer data can you personalize the experience of your customers. When you successfully bring this together, one holistic view of your customers is created, measured across all channels, so you get much more out of your customer data. Technology and marketing must therefore work hand in hand and reinforce each other in order to offer the consumer an optimal experience. This appears to be the biggest challenge for 2020 for many online retailers.
In order to improve the digital customer experience, e-commerce must therefore become more personal and especially offer products that closely match the search query and the interests of the buyer. Although machine learning and personalization have been around for a while, they certainly belong in the list of e-commerce trends of 2020.
Online visits will be even more personalized in the new year thanks to 'machine learning', a tool that detects patterns based on data. You can think of personal product offers, where other products are recommended based on previously ordered or viewed products. But that is not all! Thanks to smart data analyzes regarding purchasing behavior, it is possible to send personalized e-mails with offers that match the wishes of the consumer. Convert these kinds of personalized emails up to five times better than the one-size-fits-all messages.
A Netflix study shows that subscribers lose interest in less than 60 seconds if they don't get relevant and interesting recommendations. To cute, Netflix would miss out on about $ 1 billion a year if they didn't have their sophisticated personalized recommendation algorithm (Digimedia, 2019).
The evolution of social media
Say goodbye to fun shopping in the shopping street. Selling your products via social media will also remain current in 2020. More and more social media channels are becoming 'shoppable' and transforming into the new digital shop window. This offers great opportunities for e-commerce land, because the electronic distance selling is not only perfect for the targeted shopper, but also for the fun shopper.
76% of consumers have recently bought a product that they came across by chance on social media.
New social media hit:
But what really should not be missing from the list of e-commerce trends of 2020 is TikTok. So prepare well for this new social media channel, as this could boost your shop's turnover and reputation. With its 1,5 billion users worldwide, this fast-growing video network has been an incredible success. In the Netherlands alone, the number of users is 3,5 million, making it absolutely no longer a small player. At the moment, the organic reach on TikTok is still very good, which may be reason enough for your brand to be active on this channel. To date, advertising has been done through purchasing from TikTok and through Facebook's Audience Network.
It is expected that by 2020 TikTok will give advertisers the opportunity to set advertisements themselves in the Netherlands via a business manager (Emerce, 2020). All the more reason to keep a close eye on TikTok.
the emergence of product Videos
The flip side of the e-commerce coin is often that you cannot touch or try on the product. The emergence and deployment of product videos provides the perfect outcome and are often ideal for helping customers make an informed choice. It turns out to be a successful formula: viewers of a product video are 65% to even 85% more likely to make a purchase (Neil Patel, 2017).
Especially for clothing and cosmetics, or products with many functionalities, video is the perfect channel to inform visitors. Research from SmartInsights (2019) it appears that 72% of consumers would much rather get to know a product in this way than by reading a text. To really score high, it is smart to give your product videos an informative character, where you as a webshop present as the expert.
growing need for Sustainability
Sustainability: the concept flies around your head. The need for sustainability is also growing enormously in the e-commerce sector. More and more consumers prefer a sustainable web shop over a non-sustainable web shop and the willingness to pay for sustainable products is also increasing. (Retail Trends, 2020). Making your webshop sustainable can already be done with minor adjustments, such as by choosing sustainable packaging, reusing packaging, expanding your range of sustainable products, making them easier to find in your shop or by dedicating yourself to the number of keep returns to a minimum. This allows you to achieve maximum results with minimal effort and increases the chance of higher turnover figures.
Boost your sales
E-commere has clearly entered the next phase, in which one-size-fits-all is a thing of the past. It must be more personal, more relevant and more local. In order to get more turnover from your webshop, the strength lies in reverting to the 'classic' retail: personal contact.
Of course we have different solutions for personalizing your webshop. We can help you create that 'wow moment' with your customers in various areas. We also have various marketplace integrations so that you can grow internationally as a webshop in no time. Please feel free to contact us and ask for the possibilities.
