The 5 e-commerce trends that will make or break your store in 2021

The e-commerce space is changing rapidly – blink and you might miss the next big thing that customers are looking for. Trust us – we build e-commerce solutions on a daily basis and even we are sometimes taken by surprise by just how fast this space is evolving.

Things that seemed unimportant, unimaginable, or just plain unnecessary just a few years ago are now the things that your customers expect and what drives revenue. So, what are the 5 big things that you should keep in mind when speaking of the near- to long-term future of e-commerce?

Personalisation

People like to feel important, there’s no question about that. This means that marketers have realised that a personalised approach to e-commerce is something that can really boost a business. There are a million different ways to personalise a shopping experience, so it’s important to figure out what works with your customers.

Personalisation can be quite simple: marketing automation is the first step in that direction. Sending your customers offers that are tailor-made with their needs in mind is a lot more effective than just sending the same offer to your entire mailing list. However, to truly create well-functioning marketing automation solutions you need data and systems to make sense of that data, so do keep that in mind.

But personalisation is not just about sending newsletters that are addressed to the customer, it is so much more. Many large brands have taken the approach of offering tailor-made websites based on their customers’ attributes: if you are a 30-year-old male visiting a clothing retailer’s online store, you’ll see products modelled by other 30-year-old males. If you are a 23-year-old female, you’ll see products and models that best resemble you.

And then there’s also the middle ground: the online store the customer is visiting tries to understand who they are and show them the products they are most interested in. However, keep in mind that it’s not as simple as showing the person who has previously bought a frying pan more frying pans – they already bought one, so they’d probably now like to buy a spatula or some olive oil.

Payments

Some years ago, it was totally fine to offer your customers the option to pay either via credit card or via bank link. Today, however, the customer expects a lot more. With Apple, Google, and several other technology companies actively developing payment solutions, more and more people expect to be able to use them.

As such, it’s worth keeping in mind that the easier you make the payment process for your customers, the higher the chance that they will complete the purchase and not abandon their cart. Today, you should consider adding options for both Apple Pay and Android Pay, but in a year or two, you should also consider accepting payments in cryptocurrencies. The crypto space is still evolving, but at this moment it seems that it’s not disappearing.

Headless

Headless CMS and headless e-commerce are some of the biggest buzzwords of the 2020s. In essence, it means that the frontend and backend are decoupled from one another, and information is relayed between the two via APIs.

The headless approach enables some unique options that standard e-commerce solutions just cannot offer. For example, it makes selling across multiple channels a lot easier, it allows more freedom in frontend development, and it opens new avenues for marketing and personalisation.

But to be honest, headless e-commerce is a whole separate can of worms that would take a few too many words to accurately describe within this blog post. So, stay tuned!

VR and AR

VR and AR were the big buzzwords of 2015–2018 but have died down a little for now. However, the biggest players on the market haven’t given up on the concept, so it’s highly likely that we will see a resurgence, and for good reason. VR and AR give e-commerce businesses a unique way to offer their customers the same experience they’d get by visiting an actual brick-and-mortar location.

Do you like these glasses? Try them on with AR! Want those shoes? See how they’d look on you. That’s a nice couch – let’s see with AR how it’d look in my living room.

So, for now, we’d recommend keeping your eyes open. Poorly executed VR and AR solutions are dreadful and scare the customer away, but once it really hits the mainstream, it’s worth hopping on the hype train.

Influencers

You heard that right, influencers are still around, and they aren’t going anywhere, so it’s about time to include them in your marketing plans and create the technical solutions needed to maximise your gains from affiliate and influencer marketing.

The bare minimum you should have is a system for tracking inbound traffic from influencers (e.g., with specialized links) and a system to attribute sales to them (e.g., discount codes), but it can be so much more than that.

Nothing’s stopping you from creating nearly fully automated analytics tools to analyse the profitability of your campaigns, systems to administer the payments to your influencers automatically, and basically whatever else you can imagine to make your life easier.

Bonus: foldable phones

Foldable phones are coming, so it’s now time to start thinking about how to use this trend with your store – what information to show, how to display various elements, and what kind of custom experiences you could create with this additional screen real estate.

Need some help? We’d love to work with you. Opus creates engaging online stores that enable you to sell your products and services online. Intuitive design and easy-to-navigate functionality not only increase customer purchases in your online store but also expand your revenue and customer base. Contact us, we’re waiting to hear from you.