Shopping experience trends have always been changing throughout the decades and it is a social experience that is the most concerned issue of merchants. With the rise of eCommerce, improving your selling methods becomes the top priority.
In 2019, the market was led by digital channels. When surfing social networks, people kept live streaming, and directly introduced and sold their products through live videos.
In 2020, merchants obviously need a new marketing strategy and emerge technology into their selling method. That will change how the customer approaches their favorite products.
In this article, we will introduce the four latest trends that can help business owners improve customers’ shopping experience on their eCommerce website.
#1 Augmented Reality (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR)
The important benefit that merchants can gain from AR and VR is the convenience for both their customers and themselves. Saving time and decreasing costs are two of the most remarkable advantages these technologies can bring to businesses.
Merchants can set up their virtual showrooms that enable customers to reach their favorite products at home rather than go to physical stores. With this practice, companies can preserve their precious financial resources.
Many experts claim that AR and VR technologies are expected to create breakthroughs in eCommerce. Instead of googling for product images and information, customers now can be delivered a more realistic product experience.
However, there are not many companies that apply AR and VR technologies for their products, so this trend is still new to some people and it will easily become your unique selling point to attract clients.
What’s more, some consumers still prefer going shopping at brick-and-mortar stores rather than shopping online. Hence, a vital challenge is how to integrate the traditional business with the new one.
#2 Subscription models
A notable eCommerce trend in recent years is the subscription model. Many start-ups implement it in order to build a new selling strategy.
“15% of online shoppers have signed up for one or more subscriptions to receive products on a recurring basis, frequently through monthly boxes. Subscription eCommerce services offer these consumers – often younger, affluent urbanites – a convenient, personalized and often a lower-cost way to buy what they want and need”, according to McKinsey.
In 2000, a new start-up wants to cooperate with the giant Blockbuster but he was laughed at by John Antioco – CEO of Blockbuster. It is sure that a giant doesn’t want to share his cake with anybody and after 10 years, they went bankrupt and that start-up is worth more than $100 billion now. It is Netflix and the key to their success is the subscription model.
This model is valuable for both customers and companies. Customers like it because of the convenience. Subscription has a flat rate which helps people to not worry about their budget. From the company’s perspective, subscription helps them to predict profit by recurring sales and improve the relationship between firms and customers.
It means services will be designed and catered for customers according to their needs by companies. It will build brand awareness and loyalty. Thanks to the value that subscription brings, service providers can personalize customers’ shopping experience and design optimized options for their business.
#3 Social commerce
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Many brands use social media as a selling channel. According to Forbes, 25% of merchants are selling through Facebook, 30% of customers purchase through social channels and consumers’ behaviors tend to be impacted by people around them.
Moreover, brand trust is an essential criterion (besides pricing) that impact the purchase decision. Then creating a social account for your business is quite important. For instance, many people usually shop on Instagram, creating and optimizing your pictures on the wall is an essential task. You can design a strategy manually or use some extensions such as Instagram Shop which integrates your Instagram gallery into your eCommerce website.
Here are some tips that you can use on social media to improve the shopping experience:
- Using the chatbot to improve customer service.
- Utilizing big data to make recommendations for customers when they come back to your site
- Opening selling channels on multi-platforms
- Storytelling through social media
Gift registry
It will be a big advantage for your company to gain customer satisfaction by improving their shopping experience. So store managers need to find methods to personalize customer journey and Gift Registry from Magento 2 is a perfect choice for your store.
It offers a wishlist that allows customers to save their favorite products which they have not considered to buy yet. Gift Registry reduces abandoned shopping cart rates and fulfills sales from potential customers. People often use it on special occasions such as the wedding or Christmas, this extension will bring to many wonderful shopping experiences for your customers.
It will keep back potential customers. Clients may want to own your products but they don’t decide to buy it now. So Gift Registry will save all the product’s information for future reference.
Besides, Gift Registry can be a tool to communicate with customers. For example, a hot product runs out of stock, there are many unlucky customers who haven’t bought it yet, so Gift Registry will announce them when that product is restocked.
In addition to keeping back potential customers, Gift Registry helps you manage tasks and improve CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Take it into consideration if you need a tool that can personalize customers’ shopping experience.
#4 Shopping experience on mobile
Nowadays, customers’ demand is growing so that merchants need to provide a better shopping experience.
Personalizing customer journey with mobile technology will bring convenience and quicks to both consumers and companies. Instead of logging into their account on a computer to shopping online, consumers now can push a few steps in their phone easily.
Most people have their own phones and tend to interact with it twice as much as using other devices (including computers, TV, etc.). Obviously, if people have a bad image of a brand on mobile, they are less likely to purchase from that brand in the future.
In contrast with that, if clients have a good shopping experience through mobile on your site, they are more likely to buy or refer to their friends. Furthermore, mobile apps decrease the abandoned cart rate and people intend to spend more money on it than other devices.
Site speed is also a factor contributing to the UX of a website. Optimizing speed for mobile devices is a must when you want to improve the whole site performance. Non-professional developers can try to experiment with new codes and debug faster with the help of plug-ins such as WP Reset for WordPress websites.
It’s time to take your customers’ shopping experience to the next level
Ensuring customers have a positive mind about your brand will strengthen their loyalty and help your company keep scaling up. Hopefully, through our sharing in this article, you can design the most suitable strategy for your business to enhance customers’ shopping experience and skyrocket your revenue significantly.