15 E-commerce trends reshaping the future of online Shopping in 2023
This represents a huge opportunity for sellers and entrepreneurs – those who have been and will continue to be successful are those who are creative and persistent in identifying, and taking advantage of, new opportunities to grow sales.
Experts predict worldwide retail e-commerce sales will rise from about 5 trillion US dollars to just over 8 trillion dollars by 2026
To maximize Growth, online retailers will need to double down on many of the trends that took off during the pandemic while keeping an eye on changing consumer expectations and preferences.
If you are in the loop with the latest industry trends and new perspectives, it can get easier to identify new opportunities and stay competitive. Especially for online businesses, staying on top of e-commerce trends is no longer an option but a necessity.
Exploring these trends will help you do just that.
So, what are the best upcoming e-commerce trends in 2023 ?
1. As shopping returns to IRL, 2023 is the time when brands must optimize omnichannel
After the steady growth in online shopping during the coronavirus pandemic and the desire for in-person interactions, consumers are ready for in-store experiences. Now, with loosened COVID policies, brick-and-mortar retailers are on the rebound.
Ecommerce experts predict omnichannel and unified shopping experiences will be one of 2023’s hottest consumer trends. Shopping journeys don’t end – or often start – on a company or brand website. Loyal customers will follow your social media pages, engage with your brand, act as brand advocates (or detractors), and they’ll also compare prices across different brands and platforms. Companies that offer robust omnichannel experiences can see a 20% boost in total revenue. Brands using at least three channels in their retail strategies see a 287% higher purchase rate than single-channel brands.
In fact, nearly 75% of buyers use multiple channels before purchasing, and 73% of e-commerce consumers report using various channels during their customer journey.
Here are a few trends consumers and retailers can expect to see in the coming year when it comes to omnichannel include:
- Providing flexible fulfillment and return options (more on those later)
- Enable in-store associates to access customer account details to provide better service
- Ensure in-store inventory is reflected in real-time online
- Invest in AR and other immersive technologies to create a more natural shopping experience online
- An uptick in BOPIS shopping 2023 will see a continuation of the “buy online, pick up in store” (BOPIS) trend that started with the pandemic. 65% of U.S. consumers choose BOPIS to avoid shipping and return costs.
2. Mobile will be a massive driver of sales for e-commerce in 2023
One of the biggest e-commerce trends is mobile purchasing (also known as m-commerce). As people become overwhelmingly reliant on their phones, they pick m-commerce again and again as their preferred channel for shopping.
As per Statista, Mobile devices account for 71% of retail traffic, and generate 61% of online shopping orders.
By 2024, global retail m-commerce sales are expected to reach nearly $4.5 trillion, and make up 69.9% of total retail e-commerce sales.
Brands that want to stay in the game need to embrace this mobile mentality. That means designing mobile-first experiences to enable customers to shop via their mobile devices. It also means offering phone-friendly payment options (like Apple Pay and Google Pay), and making mobile checkout a breeze.
3. Sustainable packaging
One emerging e-commerce trend that isn’t always touched upon is the growing awareness over packaging materials and the waste it creates.The rise of online shopping has also given rise to enormous piles of discarded shipping boxes and packaging materials that sit at the curbside as monuments of waste. For instance, 40 percent of plastics are used just once, and what’s the largest market for plastics? Packaging.
At the same time, the e-commerce trend also provides brands with new opportunities to adopt circular strategies that attract a new generation of environmentally conscious consumers. E-commerce will only continue to grow, so we should seek eco-friendly and sustainable options and opportunities that provide long-term benefits in multiple ways.
As the number of ways to interact with customers continues to grow in scope and complexity, forward-looking leaders realize the opportunity is not just about selling online. It’s about proactively engaging customers and end-consumers — creating seamless, personalized experiences that are unique, yet consistent across all these channels.
4. Social commerce is transforming online shopping
Browsing and shopping directly on social media platforms is the next wave of the e-commerce revolution. Now, this dynamic new way of buying is more than just a new shopping experience. It creates a more engaging journey for the consumer, and presents new opportunities for a much more interactive, entertaining, and experiential journey, where consumers explore products and complete transactions through social media and content creation platforms, all in an app.
More and more brands are using social commerce to forge new relationships with consumers, shifting from traditional advertising strategies to fun, engaging content that is less overtly promotional.
The social-commerce market is forecasted to reach $30.73 billion in sales in 2023, accounting for 20% of global retail e-commerce sales.
By 2025, that figure is expected to grow to more than $2 trillion.
This Next-generation e-commerce is critical for brands to reach their target audiences. For example, augmented-reality (AR) lenses let Snapchat users “try on” makeup and send the images to friends.
TikTok and Gen Z will shape social commerce. The app is used by young people for search and product recommendations – more than Google. A two-hour live shopping event on TikTok brings in more than a week’s worth of sales at a flagship store. According to one report, 48% of consumers are now likely to purchase directly from TikTok.
This emerging form of shopping plays a massive role in 2023 e-commerce trends. Whether or not you decide to sell directly through social, don’t skip these channels in your e-commerce strategy.
5. Personalization becomes a determining factor for brand loyalty
The latest research proves that personalization drives significantly higher loyalty, which in turn results in greater profitability.
Most consumers crave a brand that knows them well enough to offer up personalized shopping experiences. Sales funnels help guide a potential customer from a landing page to a sale. So you don’t just drive traffic to an e-commerce website and hope they buy one of your products. You take them to a specific page that only discusses a product that interests them. A majority of people will pay more to businesses that offer personal touches that appeal to them.
60% of consumers say they’ll become repeat customers after a personalized shopping experience.
If you don’t personalize content to your customers across all channels, you’re going to lose them to the brands that invest in getting to know their customers. What the special offer does here is that when you direct them to your page, you make an irresistible benefit, like giving a free eBook to get their email address (for re-marketing). After that, you ask them to buy a small product, then up-sell them to buy a more extensive product. This means engaging them on the channels they prefer, and supporting them throughout their entire customer journey with personalized offers.
6. Subscription selling is all about nurturing long-term relationships
Subscriptions will continue to be an important business strategy in the future. If your business is interested in offering a subscription program. Let me provide you with the exclusive updated insights and help you set a successful subscription to reach your success with the least amount of time and effort possible. Get my free report.
Subscription sales have many advantages. First of all, you can gain customers for the long-term and build a strong relationship with them, and it is a fantastic way to create a steady stream of predictable, recurring revenue in any online store
When you understand what drives customers to seek out, sign up, and stick with your product, it makes selling subscriptions much easier. After someone purchases your product, the focus needs to shift to retaining them long term as well as upselling and cross-selling them.
7. AI-Empowered Voice Shopping
Voice search is all the rage right now, with various experts making their predictions. To keep up with the trends, companies need to optimize for rich snippets for text search, which also bodes well in showing the first results for voice search. According to a recent survey, 57% of consumers use personal voice assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa daily. Smart speakers are also becoming more popular, with 35% of the U.S. population owning one in 2022.
Ecommerce will continue to leverage this trend by creating intuitive and hands-free voice-enabled shopping experiences. With voice assistance, shoppers can easily find and purchase or order delivery with a simple buy now vocal command. Game changer for e-commerce.”Ease of use and convenience make voice-enabled shopping one of 2023’s most reliable retail trends.
8. Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Metaverse
One of the biggest trends for retailers is the growing role of AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) in online shopping. This technology can drive innovation, new customer experiences, and new ways of interacting. It may be a piece of jewelry, and you would like to see it on your finger. The use of augmented reality technology is adopted more by big brand websites as of now. You won’t see smaller businesses practicing it for years to come due to the expense.
Demo videos allow potential customers to better understand your products, while AR gives consumers the ability to visualize the products in 3D. Then… There’s the Metaverse, which is the new frontier for ecommerce and retail and is blurring the line between online and offline shopping. That means having access to a higher level of immersive and entertaining experiences. E-marketer identified fashion, beauty, and home goods as the top three retail categories with high potential in the metaverse.
A recent Study showed that shoppers engage with 3D images of products nearly 50% more than static ones.
9. An Uptick In BOPIS Shopping
Buy Online, Pick Up in Store (BOPIS), also known as click and collect, is a hybrid eCommerce model that allows retailers to drive in–store foot traffic and connect their offline and online experiences. It merges the convenience of online shopping and efficiency of bringing the product home the same day.
2023 will see a continuation of the “buy online, pick up in store” (BOPIS) trend that started with the pandemic. While BOPIS had been offered even before the onset of COVID-19, it is the pandemic that boosted it by a remarkable 106.9% during 2020. Almost 67% of US shoppers used BOPIS shopping methods in 2022, a sharp increase from 50% in 2021.
An omnichannel strategy that gives customers more options based on their preferences or needs. It is especially appealing to shoppers on a budget because it eliminates costly shipping rates. In fact, 65% of U.S. consumers choose BOPIS to avoid shipping and return costs.
10.The Need for Faster, More Efficient Delivery
If a product arrives late or broken, the consumer blames your brand. Order fulfillment strategies help keep ALL of your brand promises – including delivery.
On-time delivery is now an absolute priority for e-commerce business owners. Customers want to know if their order has been processed, where it’s at each step of the way, and when it’ll arrive – that’s why speed, communication, and personalization are all key factors in meeting delivery expectations of modern consumers.
In fact, nearly 93% of customers say order transparency is very important to their overall customer experience.
Innovation has already begun through increased delivery speed and virtual product interaction. Amazon set the gold standard for delivery when it began offering next-day and same-day deliveries. Most recently, Shopify announced announced that its fulfillment network will now offer two-day and next-day delivery options, under a service that the company is branding as Shop Promise. Last July , Shopify completed acquisition of Deliverr , a fulfillment startup that integrates with marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart and eBay for $2.1 billion, to expand fast and easy fulfillment for merchants across multiple channels.
One thing is for sure: things will only become more efficient, whether virtual or physical.
11. UGC can be gold for marketing
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any content which has been created by a brand’s fans and wider audience that will help you reach your audience and increase conversions. So user-generated content (UGC) like customer photos, videos, and reviews offer impressive social proof and build credibility for brands looking to sell online. It is a potent content marketing technique, particularly with the recent surge in virtual shopping.
On TikTok, UGC videos are 22% more effective than brand videos.
Trust matters. And when it comes to trust in e-commerce, consumers are more likely to engage with User Generated Content over any other type of content. UGC can assist brands in earning trust, while driving real engagement. Since those are two key elements of e-commerce today, it’s no wonder that UGC has made a debut on the 2023 ecommerce trends list.
12. Payment options are a game-changer or game-killer for e-commerce in 2023
Using the latest payment options is one essential component. 2023 ecommerce payment trends are all about offering a better, more secure shopping experience. So, brands that include these payments will be sure to attract a larger customer base – and keep them.
According to Statista, digital and mobile wallets accounted for about half of worldwide e-commerce payment transactions, making digital wallets the most popular online payment method – by far.
PayPal is the top online payment gateway, with a whopping 60% of the market share.
Top eCommerce payment Trends for 2023
- Mobile wallets are especially popular—and growing, leading to better sales and less abandoned carts. In 2020, over one billion shoppers made a digital or mobile wallet payment.
- As younger generations enter the marketplace, they want a good payment experience and ways of paying that reduce friction and deliver a modern and efficient experience, which is almost always digital. For example, retailers are using direct selling via social media to keep up with their preferences and bring them back for more.
- Flexible financing includes solutions like invoice or order finance options that allow consumers to purchase a product and pay for it over time and make it easier to purchase and afford the goods that consumers crave.
- BUY NOW, PAY LATER will continue to grow, is a payment method that e-commerce stores should consider. It is similar to credit cards, excluding interest or fees. Customers can buy and pay for the product over a certain number of installments.
- Paying after delivery allows you to try before you buy and is the easiest way to shop online. For example, your customer can complete the payment 30 days after purchase at no added cost.
13. Guided selling
Today, consumers are confronted with more options and more touch points than ever. It is all too easy for them to experience decision fatigue.
The main aim of online guided selling is to recreate the in-store consultative experience by quickly engaging the website visitors. Based on these, it allows retailers and brand manufacturers to make it easy for consumers to stay in control, manage their options, and arrive at more confident purchase decisions. It is constructive for expensive or complex products like smartphones or laptops.
The system recommends products that are in line with the shopper’s goal and further assist them in their decision-making process. It creates a more personalized experience, and first-time consumers feel more confident buying these products
14. The Psychology of Ecommerce FOMO
FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out, is one of the easiest and most commonplace tactics used by most retailers to create urgency and attract more shoppers to checkout and leverage the opportunity correctly.
By using a variety of FOMO messaging strategies, you can entice customers to act quickly on your sales by offering them for a minimal time (usually only 24 hours) and tapping into the customers’ FOMO, and that’s simply because urgency and social proof drive action. As it is widely known that you don’t know how much you want something until it’s gone or sold to the person who got there before you.
Here are some TOP FOMO MARKETING EXAMPLES :
- Stock Levels
- Product Views
- Shipping Options
- Discounts
- Countdown Timers
- Explore More
15. Customer-Centric Strategy
Competition is the biggest obstacle to achieving growth for ecommerce businesses in 2023. To be successful in a fierce industry, you need to stand out.
“The brands that speak to everyone speak to no one. Whether brand differentiation means what the brand stands for, the way the product is made, or the way they engage their audience, consumers are looking for differentiated experiences and brands they can connect to.” – Morgan Brown, VP Growth Marketing at Shopify
You need to have a customer-centric culture at your ecommerce company which is important for any business, but in ecommerce, it’s essential.
This strategy essentially implies that your consumers come first at all times. It actively focuses on customer concerns. Once you deeply understand your customers’ wants and needs, you can make your messaging relevant to direct your web store experience, product development, marketing efforts, and weave it into your store marketing in email campaigns, ads, and social media activity, to help boost sales and entice them back for more.
