Continuing on our last week’s blog, we want to bring you up to date with the recent trends and technologies used in e-commerce. Take it one step further and start working with a professional website design & development agency in Dubai to build a stand-out online shopping experience for your customers.
A website with an appealing UI is the key before investing in your lead generation strategy with a digital marketing agency in Dubai so that you can reduce the bounce rate and increase your conversions.
Here are some tips to keep you in the loop!
1. Enhanced CRM
The idea behind an excellent online shopping platform is to build a community and engage with your clients through a variety of channels. These channels need to be managed carefully to ensure an excellent consumer experience. At the heart of this effort is having an integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, serving as the focal location containing all your client data. Remember what we told you last week about the importance of a personalized customer service experience? Your CRM database is a great way to make it happen.
Some of this data includes their order details, their average LifeTime Value (LTV), the last time you contacted them, what was discussed, when was their last purchase and so on. This information can be extracted from various sources such as order status, customer groups, loyalty programmes, web chat, social media, SMS, emails and more. Integrate with your CRM & CMS to get a full view of how your e-commerce business is progressing. This makes marketing more effective, helps you improve your inventory planning and forecasting. Having all the data in an automated, synchronized format increases your efficiency, improves timely communication and order fulfilment.
This will help you engage with your customers more satisfyingly, seamlessly iron any concerns they may have and lead them to make the purchase!
Talk to your agency that does website development in Dubai as they will be able to recommend third-party integrations that will connect your e-commerce platform to CRM and all the channels that gather customer data.
2. Marketing Automation
In broad terms, marketing automation means automating email marketing and scheduling posts on your social channels. But there’s more to it, and it’s a rising trend. Already 49% of all businesses are using marketing automation which covers customized landing pages and easily accessible shopping charts.
When applied properly, automated marketing will enable you to showcase new products and introduce promotions relevant to your visitors’ shopping history, send tailored emails to your customers and retarget them for product sales. It also allows you to customize store offerings and create automated recommendations depending on your customers’ onsite behaviour.
A professional agency doing website design in Dubai will be able to consult you on how to include marketing automation into your e-commerce platform.
3. Photo Apps – Snap & Shop
Even when browsing brick & mortar stores and engaging with the real world, shoppers’ habits have changed. The so-called “image shopping” trend is emerging, where users point their cameras towards a product they see and order from the online store.
With help of different photo apps that are popping up, images taken by the users can be recognized and interpreted, providing an accurate product description. E-commerce stores and search engines are partnering up with these apps and platforms to provide them with the relevant data, and greatly benefit from the new leads this will give them.
4. Omnipresence
Omnipresence is one of the most critical eCommerce trends this year. Businesses need to be present on many platforms and follow prospects as the potential buyers jump from one platform to the next, be it Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook… Your mission is to achieve maximum efficiency across multiple platforms.
Omnichannel selling is the new norm, which you can see with the rise of public cloud platforms. These capabilities are becoming cheaper and increasingly more accessible, with more and more companies jumping on board.
Customers want to view content in many different ways and shop for products not just on a range of devices but also on a range of channels, most importantly your social media.
It is time for businesses to optimize their digital marketing strategy to increase conversions. Your web development agency should optimize your product pages, but your focus needs to involve multiple-channels.
Google Ads and social media marketing will help get conversions on your website, but to achieve this you need to have excellent digital content. Facebook’s algorithm rewards video and motion-based creative content. Customers are more and more impatient and demanding.
You need to approach your digital marketing carefully and talk to a competent, experienced advertising agency in Dubai that will make sure your content stands out.
When your e-commerce platform is aligned with your social media marketing and PPT, you will be getting more visitors, a lesser bounce rate and more conversions.
This will also greatly benefit your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and make your website stronger.
Your website development company in Dubai can recommend products that will enable your brand to improve the customer experience and communicate with your clients across all of your channels, as well as gather the relevant data.
5. Headless & API-driven eCommerce
Adding on the previous point, to provide your clients with a seamless, cohesive buying experience on multiple platforms, you will need a headless commerce architecture that can deliver content to any screen or device through APIs.
Headless commerce is a solution that allows an online eCommerce platform to be decoupled front he frontend presentation layer. More and more businesses are adopting it because of the immense backend flexibility and adaptability, plus the added benefits to search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing and digital marketing capabilities.
With headless, the business gets more control over their content and the customer journey through checkout. This solution enables you to combine all your stores into a single domain, and your web design company can then develop additional features for it.
6. Shoppable Video
Video production and animation in Dubai and globally has been skyrocketing for the last few years when it proved to be a fantastic way to keep the clients engaged, and it is still on the rise. Website videos grab attention and reduce bounce rates while informing your customers about your products and service.
Videos are a great way for buyers to learn about your brand’s products and services, how they resolve their challenges and benefit their lives. Educational videos can explain the use further and position your brand as an expert. They increase confidence in the product and encourage shoppers to make a purchase.
Videos are also sharable trough social media, adding even more value to your digital marketing, especially on channels like Tik Tok and Instagram, the former being extremely important in reaching younger targets.
As many as 94% of video marketers agree that video helps buyers get a clearer idea of their brand’s offer, and 78% go as far as to say that video directly increases sales!
The importance of videos can’t be emphasized enough. It is important to have your original video content instead of just using stock though! Connect with videographers and agencies focused on content creation in Dubai to stand out among the rest.
7. Influencer Marketing
Every social media marketing agency in Dubai can tell you that influencers have a real audience and a palpable influence. As much as 70% of millennial customers do shop based on their recommendations, and 30% of customers buy products recommended by non-celebrity influencers.
Influencers are a good way to leverage your audiences is becoming more and more popular with eCommerce brands. It solves the problem of creating enough content to support their marketing efforts, and by adding to paid media spend, brands control their reach and audience.
It is important to know who is who and who is relevant to your business, including the local/micro-influencers. Follow blogs and related industry news to stay on top of what is happening. Your digital agency can advise you. Invest responsibly and watch your sales go up!
8. Blockchain
Blockchain is still growing with the market slowly increasing, however, blockchain-based applications are looking more and more appealing. E-commerce platforms made on blockchain networks such as OpenBazaar can allow transactions through cryptocurrencies, are free for sellers and very easy to set up.
The model it’s based on is “proof of work” – every transaction generates tokens that allow for more e-commerce transparency and remove the need for 3-rd party mediation. Once an order had been made, blockchain creates a block of payment and displays it on the network, which repeats when the seller ships the product to the buyer. The transparency, authentication and freedom linked to this process are what makes it so attractive.
We predict we will see more blockchain-based eCommerce platforms and marketplaces, especially inventory management and cryptocurrency payment systems.
9. Green Consumerism
Sustainability is a global issue, and in the last few years, there have been tremendous economic, cultural and social changes worldwide that shifted customers’ demand towards environmentally-friendly products.
E-commerce companies have made big steps to adapt, such as Amazon taking the pledge towards sustainability. Green consumers are on the rise with a huge purchasing power – up to 65% of buyers want to only purchase from brands that aim for sustainability, and 75% want to see less packaging.
It is time to analyze your products and determine if you are using sustainable processes and materials to make them. Try to go paperless when possible, use biodegradable packaging and recyclable supplies. It is worth investing in making changes that will align you with the efforts and charitable organizations that give back to the environment.
Make sure your branding agency in Dubai incorporates this aspect of your business in all your brand strategy and communications.
10. Gamification
Some shoppers feel that online shopping lacks the interactive experience that brick-and-mortar locations provide. Gamification makes online shopping fun and influences customer behaviour in exchange for additional benefits.
Gamification methods can include promotional contests, spin-to-win or tiered loyalty programmes.
Conclusion
As you can see, eCommerce is evolving fast and you can’t afford not to catch up.
Contact an experienced website design and development company in Dubai to help you build and improve your eCommerce platform.
Meanwhile, stay tuned for Part 3 of our eCommerce trends blog coming next week!
