Top Ecommerce Website Trends in 2019

Top Ecommerce Website Trends in 2019

businessman with graphs and a laptop

What’s new when it comes to ecommerce website trends in 2019? For starters, ecommerce is dominating retail growth. Statista expects ecommerce sales to represent 13.7 percent of all retail sales worldwide in 2019. Furthermore, they’re expecting ecommerce sales to climb another 4 points to 17.5 percent by 2021.

Beneath the surface, improved technology, simplified designs, and agile supply chains are revolutionizing the way we shop. We’ve compiled a list of the top ecommerce website trends of 2019 that should be on your radar.

Chatbots

Top ecommerce sites are harnessing the power of chat features. One digital program in particular is changing the industry — chatbots.

Chatbot technology is one of the ecommerce website trends that’s here to stay. According to Gartner, Chatbots will power 85% of all customer service interactions by the year 2020.

Think of chatbots like a virtual assistant for your website. Artificial intelligence chatbots are designed to have human-like conversations with customers on your ecommerce site and social media accounts.

They help automate your customer service, make product recommendations, share relevant coupons, and even provide shipping updates.

When used strategically, the sky’s the limit when it comes to how a chatbot could improve the overall ecommerce experience.

Gamification of Shopping

One of the best parts of shopping is the interactive social experience. With the rise of ecommerce, it sometimes feels like there’s a void due to a lack of interaction.

Including games on your ecommerce site is a fun way for shoppers to connect with your company’s shopping experience. The role of gamification is, quite literally, to let customers to play a game while shopping.

A favorite gamification example you may have seen recently is Spin a Sale. Apart from Spin a Sale, there are more and more apps popping up on the market that you can test out. Incorporating gaming into your website’s ecommerce experience can lead to benefits such as higher conversion rates, increased time spent on pages, repeat purchases, and a boost in email sign-ups.

Mobile First Experiences

When it comes to this year’s ecommerce website trends, mobile phones play a vital role across the board. In fact, mobile SEO, PPC, and design have become increasingly important year after year.

Mobile friendly sites are winning at ecommerce because they bring shopping into the palms of user’s hands 24/7.

a person holding a mobile phone

According to a study by Google, “the average time it takes to fully load a mobile landing page is 22 seconds, according to a new analysis. Yet 53% of mobile site visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load.”

Google currently uses a process known as “mobile first indexing”, which prioritizes the mobile version of your site above the desktop version.

Your mobile site highly influences your search engine rankings. Focus on improving your mobile ecommerce experience and fix slow page load speeds as soon as possible. Every second counts!

Subscription and Product Bundles

Attracting repeat customers and increasing transaction amounts are two common challenges for businesses.

Subscription offers continue to evolve as a popular ecommerce website trend. Subscriptions keep shoppers engaged and decrease the amount of one-time purchasers.

This model is especially important when selling items customers use often, such as cosmetics or nutritional products. As a product runs out, it’s great to be able to quickly get a refill or even test the newest product of the month. Subscriptions can be marketed as great gifts too.

Closely related to subscriptions are product bundles. For example, if you’re selling cosmetics, why not package your face lotion with other related products, such as a face wash and eye cream.

Product bundles are great because they increase your cross-sell potential. By cross-sell, we mean the act of encouraging customers to buy complementary items in one transaction.

Develop product bundles and subscription offerings that resonate with your customers and they’ll be more likely to splurge.

User Experience and Design

When it comes to increasing your website’s search engine visibility in 2019, usability will be an even more significant influencer than in the past.

As the leader in search, Google continues to focus on great user experiences. Google’s smart algorithms even take user behavior metrics into account when determining your website search engine rank.

While there are many factors to look at when determining good vs. bad user experience, the most critical question you should be asking yourself is, “How can I make the shopping experience even better for my website users?”

Thoughtfully designed ecommerce sites are customized to suit the needs of their audience and to incorporate features that make their lives easier.

For example, a smart search bar is a UX feature that can be really helpful. It’s a relatively simple feature that turns an ordinary search bar into something great. A smart search bar will recommend items based on the customer’s previous search history or their common searches. These search bars can save customers a lot of time and hassle throughout the shopping process!

Identifying areas for better user experiences will not only make your users happy, but will also make Google happy, and positively impact your ecommerce SEO for 2019 and beyond!

Social Media Gets More Transactional

One thing you’ve probably been expecting for a while now:

Social media channels are exploring more ways for customers to make purchases within the app. According to data from Yotpo, 72% of customers say seeing Instagram photos of a product increases their chances of buying. It’s only fitting that Instagram recently announced plans to test in-app purchases with select retailers. Expect to hear even more about Instagram shopping updates soon!

social media apps

For now, be sure to highlight that your feed is shoppable by creating shoppable posts for your products on Instagram.

Additionally, having photos from Instagram on your ecommerce site is predicted to increase orders by 24%. Instagram is a great channel for driving awareness surrounding your brand and increasing traffic to your site. Future ecommerce website trends will only become more closely tied to social media.

Takeaways

Much like our wardrobes, ecommerce trends will come and go. New trends will continue to disrupt retail with innovations that redefine how we shop online. Keep in mind these 6 trends as you move your business forward in 2019:

  1. Chatbots
  2. Interactive Games
  3. Mobile Friendly Sites
  4. Subscriptions and Product Bundles
  5. User Experience and Design
  6. Social Media Transactions

Because each business is unique, it’s necessary to figure out which of the ecommerce website trends of 2019 will have the most significant impact on your store.

As a leading ecommerce agency, we’d love to help you get inspired with new ideas to help you stay ahead of the curve! Connect with Coalition Technologies on social media or, better yet, schedule a time to chat with a Digital Strategist about your ecommerce goals.

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