A constantly changing industry is what eCommerce is. eCommerce has come with the rapidly evolving technologies. There are also the trends present along with a competitive environment. For this niche, no wonder, the pandemic was a pretty serious game-changer. The recent pandemic brought both positive and negative effects for all.
The effects were prevalent for all the businesses in this sector. The consumers completely changed the way of purchasing the goods. During the lockdown, the companies were naturally forced to invest in eCommerce shopping channels and digital marketing.
More than a hundred and fifty million people made their first purchases online in 2020 according to a survey conducted by Shopify. The countries which experienced a massive boom of online shoppers were France, Canada, Australia, the UK, and a number of other countries. It was noticed that six percent of consumers from these countries also shopped on the internet for the very first time.
There was an extreme surge in the new consumer levels. This led to income opportunities for the newer brands. There was the great development of technologies. Also, there was an increase in the compound annual growth rate or CAGR of the companies.
The compound annual growth rate or the CAGR is the rate of return that will be required for an investment to grow from the very beginning. The businesses can definitely grow from the beginning balances to the ending balances. It was assumed that the profits were reinvested at the very end of each period of the life span of the investment.
The United States eCommerce industry revenue went up from three hundred and sixty million in 2019 to four hundred and sixty-nine million in the year 2021. This has been happening since the very beginning of the pandemic. Also, by the very end of the year, 2025, it is expected to reach five hundred and sixty-three million. Actually, this is quite a great rise for a pretty short span of time.
The hard times however, also had quite a negative impact on the industry. The coronavirus, for example, completely disrupted the supply chain industry. Also, almost thirty five percent of the business owners stated their delivery delays outright. This led to lots of refunds and also significant losses as a result.
We shall discuss the results for the eCommerce industry in 2021. The challenges should be highlighted and the major eCommerce trends can be determined for the year 2022. When developing eCommerce business strategies, an eye should be kept out for them. You can also be well prepared for whatever is waiting ahead.
Reviewing eCommerce Challenges in 2021
There has naturally been an overall rise of the entire eCommerce industry. Additionally, there has been an increase in the CAGR. Other positive changes were also present. Everybody knows that the year 2021 has been far from ideal.
There was a major issue in 2021 which has remained the same. The great shipping crisis. The worldwide supply chain remains highly affected and their situation is not getting better according to CNN. Nowadays, the organizations are required to spend much more on the deliveries. This might affect the cost of the goods. Even the global sales volume is tremendously affected.
A global indicator of the container freight rates is the World Container Index. The World Container Index shows that the price for a forty feet container is currently around $9,900. This is actually two hundred and eighty three percent higher when compared to the previous year. Get great services from an eCommerce development company – CMARIX.
There is another global pattern. Here the suppliers drastically jack up pricings for stuff. The United States consumers might get a four percent inflation rate over the next three years as stated by Bloomberg. Since 2013, by the way, this is definitely the highest rate. Suppliers have raised their prices by fifteen percent in the very recent months.
You also cannot forget to count the highly increased shipping rates. The end consumers will automatically pay much more for the goods of the same quality as a result. This may lead to a decreased demand for the products.
The founder of eCommerce fuel is Andrew Youderian. eCommerce fuel is a community group actually. It consists of large holders of around six and seven figure online stores. The group thinks that 2021 might actually be the worst year for the eCommerce industry. In recent tweets, Andrew Youderian has highlighted a decrease in Facebook and Instagram’s performance of advertisements. The performance of the advertisements has hugely dropped by over forty one percent, sadly. This has led to the overall reduction of the global sales volume.
There have been lots of emergency manoeuvring, involving cutting spend and also fleeing to Google/TikTok/other options. There have been newer attribution tools in order to try to get a better sense of what is working. Andrew has commented that some things are trying to control the bleeding quite a lot but it’s bad.
Andrew exclaims that it has become very hard to recruit talent for the eCommerce projects and the other niches.
The eCommerce growth for the United States has slowed down in Q2 of 2021 when compared to Q1 of 2021 and the entirety of 2020. All of this is by the Digital Commerce 360 degrees.
This year has been entirely full of challenges as well as obstacles for the eCommerce industry. You can see this. This niche is still growing.
There Are Several Promising eCommerce Trends That Should Sollow On 2022:
Social Commerce Accelerates with Modern Players Coming into the Niche
Social media platforms are a part and parcel of our everyday lives. eCommerce businesses as well as the social platforms both know that and also collaborate towards the creation of mutually beneficial conditions. The mutually beneficial conditions are for delivering the products to the consumers as of date. Social media platforms today are present such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok have become discovery engines for the brands.
Just as an example, Facebook has claimed that around sixty three percent of online shoppers who utilize Facebook, actually do so for the shopping activities. Don Brett is the global chief digital officer at NBG Home. he has shared a summary of the report on the state of the eCommerce industry.
Personalized Offerings Build Brand Loyalty
Cross-channel data needs to be gathered about the customers to offer completely personalized experiences. This is a great way in order to differentiate the particular eCommerce brand from the competitors in the year 2022. There has been research conducted by Accenture that states that over ninety one percent of the consumers are far more likely to interact with the brands. The brands are those which know the preferences of the customers and also provide far more unique and individualized offerings.
Simple Thank You Emails Have A Lot of Value
It is a great idea actually to add a personal touch to the communication with the clients. Also, sending a completely personalized thank you letter only shows respect and absolute appreciation. The thank you letters also provide the latest opportunities for the future sales. It has been found that the Thank you emails have over a sixty seven percent open rate and a whopping six-point three percent click-through ratings.
Additionally, this is a three hundred and fifty two percent higher open rate and three hundred and twenty nine percent higher CTR when compared to the regular email campaigns. Therefore, the related products can be offered. Additionally, the discounts can be provided. Also, you can simply thank the customers and rest assured they should see your texts.
Ways to Improve the CTR of the Pages
The CTR on the product pages can be improved to display the top related goods. The goods are related to the targeted categories of the consumers. There are the popular products that actually end up always attracting more attention than ever. This is hugely because the users want to know what exactly is in demand as of today. The consumers also want to know why exactly the certain product is on the rise.
For the above purpose, a really well-designed recommendation algorithm is totally required. The well-designed algorithm can understand the interests and the preferences of the consumers.
Read More: How Much Does It Cost To Build an Online Store With Magento?
Optimization of the eCommerce Platforms Influencing the Online Visibilities
An optimized website is highly important for the visibility of a company. Additionally, it is also important for the search engine rankings. This happens especially when it comes to the eCommerce platforms. Sometimes, the eCommerce platforms have millions of product listings, various images, as well as the other heavyweight elements. The requirement for website optimization is also absolutely proven and well-documented.
Magic with Mobile Page Loading Time
Swappie is an eCommerce platform which distributes refurbished mobile phones. Swappie increased its revenue by forty two percent by simply optimizing the mobile page loading times. Here is a useful template by the way that can be utilized to track as well as optimize mobile page load time.
There are loads of tools that should help you identify the weak points of a certain website. You can always keep an eye on the website performances with Google page speed insights.
Bigger is Not Better All the Time
Image size can definitely be another pointer to look out for. You should compress all of the images before uploading them. Compressing is very much required for the sake of absolute loading times and optimizations.
There are services such as tiny jpg and short pixels which can significantly reduce the sizes of the images for free. Yes, you heard that right. You can decrease the sizes by compressing the RAW image files. The sizes can be decreased by up to seventy percent without the noticeable quality degradations.
The loading techniques are present and they play a naturally vital role in the page speed optimizations. There is a technique called lazy loading for example. The website loads only images that are firstly shown to the users. There are also the off-screen images that shall be loaded later on if required. Thus, the page load timing is significantly decreased.
You need to take absolute care of the content. The technical SEO optimization also needs to be taken care of. This is also as essential as having the proper performances. There are guides that can explain how to rank the eCommerce sites higher.
Creative Advertisements Always Help to Capture the Attention of the Audiences
The attention of the prospects needs to be attracted. This ultimately becomes harder with plain advertisements, banners and creatives. We all need to stand out among the competitors and also generate more conversions. You have to also get more creative regarding the advertisements that are utilized. The advertisements reach out to the potential consumers.
The organic traffic from the search engines tend to rank higher on SERP. They definitely bring you more and more leads. There is a requirement to make the users click on the search engine positions. Next, the position is not all.
From CMARIX, you can hire a developers for reliable eCommerce web development. A very smart approach is required for the due headliners. Just as an example – there is a huge report by HubSpot on data-driven strategies. The data driven strategies are for the very creative headlines. The creative headlines have shown that the bracketed clarifications results in a thirty eight percent growth in the CTR.
Suppose, you might be running PPC campaigns, your creatives should be absolutely clear. The creatives also need to be concise and the provided values need to be accurately explained. People need to remember that they are paying for the clicks. Hence, no customers leave without paying for the purchase.
