How Technology is Influencing Ecommerce Business

Ten years ago, would you have ever thought you would be buying products from a photo sharing app? And yet, today Instagram is a number one route by which ecommerce businesses promote their products to consumers worldwide.

Technology is shaping the course of ecommerce. Smart ecommerce owners realised this and keep up with the latest technological trends to stay ahead of the curve. Smartphones have made it even easier for the customer to be focused on brands they like, and make purchase decisions. To understand if you are using these technologies for your business, you need to understand what they are. Here’s a top list of technologies that have helped to boost ecommerce.

Mobile App

In the old days, brands would need to wait until customers saw their print ads, or walked into their brick and mortar stores to buy their products. Mobile apps have changed this. With mobile apps available for different types of mobile operating systems, consumers can easily have a variety of stores at their fingertips. For brands, it is easy to push out new deals through pop up notifications that remind customers to buy from them. As they develop, mobile apps can also use a customer’s location to promote the right promotions to these customers.

Personalization

Customers love it when their favourite brands pay attention to their likes and dislikes. That is the reason why Amazon is so popular – because it tends to show shoppers top offers on products they have viewed in the past. Artificial intelligence and big data is driving the way brands interpret their customers’ interest. These tools help brands understand how best to market their products to customers. Personalising the customer journey is the way forward for all e-commerce brands.

Seamless Payment

Increased payment options tend to favour the customer in today’s digital age. It is a vast shift from the past wherein payments could take up to 5 days and all transactions involved some physical banking procedure. With the advent of e-wallets, UPI payment options, netbanking and so on, customers now have more options to make their payment so much easier. They just need to tap in an OTP and they are done with the payment, making it quicker for them to buy more. For brands, this is a good thing because it means they can offer promotions on different payment types in an effort to woo more customers who favour one payment method over others. Blockchain technology is also one to look out for as a possible future payment option.

Conversational Marketing

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have given rise to chatbots that can actually talk back to customers. These chatbots can influence customer decisions by answering questions they have about the product, giving them personalised recommendations on what they should buy and so on. While chatbots are driven by AI, there is also the live chat option that several ecommerce providers offer to customers. This is where a real customer service agent can chat with a customer to provide them with live support. This has also found favour with customers. If you don’t have a live chat or chatbot option for your ecommerce page, perhaps it is time to rethink that!

Hassle-free Checkout

Abandoned carts are the number one menace to ecommerce providers. Shoppers come to your site, fill up their cart and then decide to buy from somewhere else. This can be corrected by focusing on technologies and tools that help to detect and bring back customers who have abandoned the checkout process halfway through. Emails or social media targeting of such users can remind them that they have items left in their cart, which they can return to with a limited time offer. Easier payment options might also help to attract customers back to complete their purchase. This can include allowing them to save their favourite payment options, remembering their details in a secure manner, all of which will really improve the customer experience.

Omni-channel Marketing

Marketing is no longer restricted to print or social media ads. Retailers are increasingly using a holistic set of platforms to target customers. This means therefore, being present on social media, via emails and various other media where your customers tend to ‘live’. Customers want to be able to contact brands at their convenience, and do not want to be limited to a single medium. Make sure that your ecommerce platform is similar enabled with omichannel support. Embrace other platforms if you have not done so already, to improve your visibility among customers.

Small e-tailers are catching up

Newer technologies are helping small retailers to come on par with retail giants. Sites like Shopnix allow smaller businesses to quick scale up their ecommerce businesses, allowing them to compete with the likes of Amazon and Flipkart. The features sites like Shopnix offer are even better than those available on larger retail sites. The best part is that they come at attractive packages that are customised to the brand’s budget and ecommerce goals.

In Conclusion

With strides in technology taking place every day, it would be a smart move for the wise retailer to keep an eye on the latest trends. These trends can help to make an ecommerce business robust and viable, so that customers choose them over their competitors. In fact, technology is making selling even easier than buying, thus saving retailers from having to employ a larger staff just to scale up their business online. Warehouse technologies are also improved these days, helping ecommerce providers to make the most of a limited set of resources. Find out more about how Shopnix can help your business achieve the maximum potential in the wide world of ecommerce!