E-Commerce Trends: What Can We Expect in 2022?
Estimated reading time: 8 min
Several e-commerce trends are taking shape worldwide: augmented reality, live streaming, voice search. Have you heard of them? Learn about these and other initiatives expected to gain even more traction in e-commerce during 2022.
The last two years brought major changes to online sales, giving rise to new trends and ways to adapt to the speed and demands of this market. Many sectors that lagged in e-commerce had to accelerate their digital transformation and innovate to meet increasingly digital users.
Without a doubt, 2022 will require online stores to keep evolving at this accelerated pace, adapting to buyer needs and driving growth in the e-commerce industry. Which e-commerce trends should you consider so you don't lose ground to the competition? We'll cover them below.
E-commerce trend No. 1: Augmented reality
One of the main goals of online sales is customer retention, where a good shopping experience plays a decisive role. From there, many acquisition and loyalty options are implemented in e-commerce to improve customer interaction with the brand. One of them is augmented reality, a trend that grows stronger every day.
Remember the famous Pokémon game (a huge download success), where through your phone you could see these unique "creatures" in your own space and capture them in a Poké Ball? That's a perfect example of augmented reality: a fusion of digital and physical to deliver totally different, realistic, dynamic user experiences.
Augmented reality isn't only in video games. Its impact has spread to different scenarios, including e-commerce, where it has become a trend that will have more and more impact on sales strategies by letting digital users discover and connect with products in a totally different way through more positive communication and connection.
The impact of augmented reality can be so beneficial for e-commerce that, according to projections by the Spanish company Artyco, its use could increase sales by up to 70% for e-commerce brands that adopt this technology. Still unsure about joining this trend?
See the following Amazon example, where through augmented reality customers can not only get closer to the product they're looking for for their home, but discover how it would actually look inside their house, considering space, measurements, color combinations, style, and more.
Never before had buying online been so fun! Can you imagine implementing this type of service so your customers can explore your e-commerce products? What if you let them virtually try on the glasses, accessories, or shirts you sell in your online store? All virtually! Would you like that? Your customers surely will too.
Read also: E-commerce: Trends, data and sales drivers
Some figures on this trend
* "An estimated 100 million people used augmented reality to shop online during 2020" (Gartner).
* "The augmented reality market is projected to reach $198 billion by 2025" (Wildbytes innovation agency).
* "35% of users would buy more online if they could find a virtual solution to try the product" (Gartner).
Users are now more open to buying a product when they've been able to experience it and learn more about its uses and features, something augmented reality enables, which also directly reduces exchanges and returns thanks to greater customer awareness at purchase time.
Remember it's not just about selling: it's about creating unique, satisfying experiences to increase the chances that customers buy, buy again, and refer you positively. Innovation, change, and staying ahead with new trends will always be good allies to achieve this and can make the difference against the competition.
E-commerce trend No. 2: Live streaming
Live sales, also known as live streaming, have been growing exponentially in e-commerce, especially in Asia, and are expanding to other parts of the world where they already have a presence.
In its first year after launching in China in 2019, live sales exceeded €54 billion in that country, equivalent to 9% of its total e-commerce sales. Without a doubt, this trend will keep consolidating in the coming years, not only in Asia but worldwide.
What makes this trend special?
Live streaming is a powerful sales tool where online stores demo products, explain features, answer questions, share customer testimonials, and enable purchase through a link—all live!
Beyond familiarizing users with brands, live streaming builds closeness and trust toward e-commerce, leveraging users' time online to create two-way interaction between the store and potential customers: a full experiential marketing strategy that connects online stores with their audiences through the value of this sales initiative.
Considering that, according to We Are Social and Hootsuite studies in 2021, "the average internet user spends 6 hours and 54 minutes daily connected," we can say live streaming is a winning trend and an excellent opportunity to reach potential customers through a different shopping experience. Have you considered it for your e-commerce?
E-commerce trend No. 3: Evolution in deliveries
As e-commerce has evolved, so have delivery services, responding to buyers who not only want to receive their product but want it in perfect condition and as fast as possible.
In this scenario, delivery providers are investing more effort and innovation every day to meet these needs. A clear example is fulfillment centers, which give e-commerce brands technology, storage, order preparation, customer service, and increasingly fast, efficient delivery times to guarantee an excellent end-customer shopping experience.
Every day we'll find more and better solutions in logistics, an area of great importance for e-commerce growth worldwide. One projected as a logistics trend for the coming years is drone delivery. Have you imagined shipping your products using these devices?
These devices started appearing on the logistics scene thanks to e-commerce companies like FedEx, Alibaba, and Amazon—the latter transformed its service by offering drone deliveries in 30 minutes.
Use of these elements is starting in countries like Spain and the United States, where several companies use these new technologies to improve logistics performance and save time and money. Still, it's not simple, especially in Latin America, where factors like insecurity and the regulatory framework become barriers to these developments.
We'll have to wait and see how this trend develops, which promises to be much more profitable, economical, agile, and practical than motor vehicles.
Logistics is a field with many innovation options. Experiences developed elsewhere show that what we considered impossible a few years ago, like same-day delivery, is now a reality in Latin America and worldwide.
Read also: What is 3PL? Discover why it's the best ally for your e-commerce. 5 key points
E-commerce trend No. 4: Voice search
Google is the world's most important search engine. 7 out of 10 people use it to find information, with typing words or terms related to what we want to look up being the most common search method.
However, for some time we've been hearing about voice search, a trend Google and other platforms are adopting, projecting greater positioning in the coming years thanks to its agility, speed, and lower effort than typing.
According to Google, 27% of internet users currently use voice search, many related to online shopping. With this mechanism, the user only needs to speak a request or question to receive a suggestion for the most popular product. How easy is it to join this trend from e-commerce?
To appear in these searches, online stores must take care of SEO, enriching content with product information presented in an organized, Google-friendly way.
On this, Google offers the following tips to optimize content
- "Answer the user's basic questions: what, who, where, and why."
- "Use natural language. Informal conversation is more valued in voice search than literary style. Complete sentences without missing prepositions are also valuable."
- "Create texts under 30 words; this applies to content aimed at answering specific questions."
Voice-assisted shopping is a growing trend that e-commerce brands wanting to keep ranking on Google should consider. It should be part of customer acquisition strategies for the coming year.
E-commerce trend No. 5: Low-code platforms
Have you ever wondered what percentage of the world's population can code? Only 0.5% know how, while the remaining 99.5% lack the knowledge to create code-based websites and apps (according to IDC, a global market intelligence firm).
Building on that and seeking to open innovation and digital transformation to millions of users, low-code and no-code platforms that allow building applications and online stores quickly and easily without programming knowledge have become an e-commerce trend.
These platforms offer graphical interfaces users can modify intuitively, implementing features quickly, making it possible to launch fully functional applications and online stores in little time and with fewer resources.
Many e-commerce brands, especially entrepreneurs and small businesses, don't have an internal developer team to execute digital projects. That's where these platforms become an ally to carry out developments with quality code and guaranteed security standards.
The low-code trend will keep gaining ground. It's projected to grow 75% by 2025 (according to Marketing4Ecommerce), where e-commerce will undoubtedly be one of its main users.
Why low code – no code is a trend in e-commerce
In summary:
* Makes building online stores possible without technical knowledge or programming teams.
* It's an economical, easy-to-adopt alternative.
* Enables integrations with other applications, easily adding features and making e-commerce more efficient.
* Reduces store development and launch times.
* Provides high security and quality standards.
Read also: Shopify: Why choose it as your e-commerce platform?
We hope this tour of e-commerce trends was useful for projecting your sales and growth strategies for the coming year.
Staying ahead and evolving as the sector does should be a goal for your e-commerce, where one key point is optimizing your delivery service. If you're looking for a partner to help manage inventory, improve shipping, boost fulfillment, and increase customer satisfaction, contact us—we're the best fulfillment center for e-commerce in Mexico and Colombia. Just click here.
Information sources
ContentBlack / Pymesworld / Bigeyeagency / Marketing4Ecommerce / Blogreversso / Marketing4Ecommerce / Answerstoall / Blogduda / Artyco / Ionos / Blogsaleslayer / Forbes / Iproup / Marketing4Ecommerce / Forbes / Rockcontent / Sellemprendepyme / Sellemprendepyme / Marketing4ecommerce / Neetwork / Megaricos
