New Delhi: The Indian e-commerce industry has been growing by leaps and bounds. Till 2016, it made up 2% of the total retail market, but this number is set to rise to 12% by 2026.

By 2018 end, it is expected to cross $50bn from the current $38.5bn.

The growth will be boosted by exciting advancements analysts say we can expect to see in the sector.

Let’s look at some of the trends in the e-commerce field which we can expect in 2018.

1. Experience: Chatbots, voice-based assistants to simplify shopping.

Customers should look forward to an enhanced shopping experience with automated interactions assisted by AI.
Chatbots and voice assistants will make the process quicker and simpler.

According to Gartner, by 2020, 80% of customer interaction will be without human intervention. 40% millennials have already used voice assistant to make purchases.

Brands will exploit AR and VR to design the interactive sessions.

2. Customers: Personalized offerings on a wider range of products.

Customers will become smarter and more informed and will choose brands with more care, thus forcing the latter to focus on personalizing offers for users and shopper-friendly policies in general.

Many aggregators are already expanding categories of services: now you can book cabs, movie tickets or bus tickets on a single platform.

Moreover, with increased competition, customers can expect more lucrative deals.

3. Market Player: Players will turn their focus on profits.

Most e-commerce platforms have been suffering huge losses, and they are likely to turn their attention on profits this year on pressure from investors.

For this, they will have to choose from being the cheapest, best or fastest: analysts say only two can be fulfilled.

4. Reach: Paid media (AdWords and social)

Although social media falls under 'act' it is important to use social media, as with any paid media, to reach your audience where they are. In a recent ecommerce benchmarks report by MarketingSherpa, they found that under half (43%) of companies with online stores report seeing significant traffic from social media.

Having a defined paid social strategy to promote your products or services, is vital to raising brand awareness, but integrating this with shoppable ad features on social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat can convince your target audience to 'act' and click through to your product landing page - from there it's up to your web design, sales copy, and user experience to convince them to convert.

Social media engagement over time has increased to 2 hours and 15 minutes, with 28% of 16-64 yr olds saying they use social media to research / find products to buy.

The term 'pay-to-play' has been tossed about recently with the increase in paid media opportunities available for brands on social media. Once a great platform to organically reach audiences worldwide, you need to start paying for sponsored posts to achieve even the basic audience targeting and out-shine your competitors.

Although many SEO, email and strategy marketers rule out social media as a platform that converts customers, it's a great place to start. Not advertising on social media is lost opportunity when your potential audience is trying to find a product similar to yours. The rise in beauty social bloggers and vloggers, mean for the beauty industry, users will be watching reviews and searching for social influencer opinions. Having a strategically placed ad pre or in the middle of the video your audience is watching is a great way to 'plant the seed' of your product in their minds.

Advanced retargeting through tracking cookies and personalization will help achieve a fully integrated ecommerce strategy that gives the user what they want, where they are.

Adwords:
Within AdWords, over the past several years we have seen a mobile-first strategy in play where Google was seeking to protect its ad revenue as more users adopted smartphones. Initially enhanced campaigns were deployed and more recently, a range of ad extensions and bid adjustments have been released to give advertisers the flexibility to serve their ads, in the correct context depending on the device, user location and previous interactions via different online placements.

5. CONVERT: Micro-moment marketing.
In today’s fast-paced, technology-oriented world, consumers are overwhelmed with content. Be it through ads, offers, emails, texts, social media and everything else, the industry has reached a point of “content shock where consumers cannot consume much more content than they already are”.

Hence, the way brands devise their digital marketing strategy, to capture their audience’s attention, needs to change. Brands need to focus on the micro-moments of their customers’ behaviours.

6. ENGAGE: Customer Loyalty and retention
For Jet.com, sales soared over Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotional periods and mobile engagement is on the up, but they face a challenge of increasing customer retention. They may need to focus on loyalty programmes.

Customer retention is important. Encouraging customers to purchase again is far easier, quicker and cheaper than attracting new customers. A focus on quality service always helps, IKEA keep their customers up to date with their delivery, an experience customer will remember.

As trends go in marketing, retail generally is on the ball when it comes to customer acquisition and retention. They typically use Paid Search and Social Media to great effect and are continually optimising the online experience.

Looking to 2018 it is believed that Artificial Intelligence will come into play in a big way, especially focused on the personalisation of the customer experience. Brands are already invested heavily in customer experience, but a number of artificial intelligence platforms have launched and are launching will drive that forward exponentially. 

Machine learning is definitely the place I see brands investing to ensure that they know as much as possible about the consumer to aid the sale and improve customer service.

2018 will be an exciting time for eCommerce marketing. Customers have awesome devices (i.e. smartphones) in their hands, and marketers have a lot of wide set of marketing technology available. The key in 2018 will be bringing these two things together in order to both make shopping more efficient and your virtual cash register ring more often.

References:
https://www.smartinsights.com
https://www.newsbytesapp.com
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com
https://www.shopify.com