The year 2020 has turned our lives upside down! It locked us helplessly! For some, it was an excruciating time, while for some, it allowed them to better their business, skills, and work towards better health.

Talking about e-commerce, 2020 has laid significant effects and it will continue to flourish. Every day, more and more retailers are moving to online selling, while entrepreneurs are getting their start through e-commerce ventures. Some people started a Print-on-demand venture during the lockdown. 
 

Surprisingly, by 2022, e-retail revenues are estimated to grow to $6.54 trillion from $3.53 trillion in 2019.

The estimation can be more or less as the e-commerce industry is ever-changing. Several new methods have risen that can help your business to grow. Here are some trends that will help your business outdo your competition. And the year 2021 is no different.

1. The Rise of Voice Commerce

Today, people rely highly on voice assistant devices such as Google Home with Google Assistant. Amazon Echo with Alexa is good example of doing everything from waking them to watch Netflix order products online. In the US household, it is expected that 75% of the households will have smart speakers by 2025. And by the year 2025, voice commerce sales are estimated to reach $40 billion by 2022.

Another reason why voice commerce is growing is because of the accuracy and convenience of the technology. Google and Amazon are now supporting regional languages in their virtual assistant devices to help consumers shop with ease. Therefore, it is essential to optimize your online store for voice search. Hence, if you wish your e-commerce business to be future-forward, you need to optimize your online store for voice search.

Voice commerce has now emerged as a vast sales impacting factor that is not easy to ignore. So, for the e-commerce business owners, be sure to exploit this new digital trend in the most advantageous way to get ahead of the curve.

If you feel intrigued, here are four ways to prepare your e-commerce site for voice queries:

• Work to optimize your content to increase your chances to appear on the top in the voice searches.
• On your Google Voice Assistant devices or Alexa, add a new skill.
• Provide the users an option for voice-based navigation on your website or mobile app.
• Make sure your products are purchased with simple voice commands.

Tip: If you wish to find ‘men’s printed clothing’ online, try using voice search this time.

2. Omnichannel Shopping—The New Normal

Omnichannel retailing means offering shoppers a consistent and flawless experience across channels and devices; with the mounting number of mobile devices and voice assistant’s adoption, the number of omnichannel customers will only increase in 2021. Use any tool to provide detailed e-commerce analytics to recognize customer behavior and track everything cash flow related. These tools can help you build reports that matters for business success.

Here are some ways that can offer you a seamless omnichannel experience:

• The best bet is to optimize your website. For the ones, who are on a budget constraint, they can create a mobile app or a PWA.
• At every step, personalize the customer experience.
• To make the task easier, use a personalized and comprehensive shopping e-commerce experience with end-to-end online retail processes.
• Put forward various purchase options like:
• Buy in-store; choose home delivery.
• Buy online; pick up in-store
• Buy online; get doorstep delivery.

3. AI and AR for Enhanced Ecommerce Experience

Most of the online sellers and retailers are anticipated to invest $7.3 billion in AI by 2022. Over 120,000 stores will be using AR technologies to offer online customers a great buying experience by 2022. Artificial Intelligence will guide your customers for an online personalized in-store associate for personalized guidance and suggestions to your customers.

Online shoppers don’t have the privilege to try on or inspect or touch the product physically that they intend to buy, unlike conventional physical stores. But to alleviate this issue, Augmented Reality (AR) helps comes into the picture. It will virtually let the customers try how a particular product would look on them before buying the product. By 2021, if you implement AI and AR in your e-commerce store, it is most likely to see conversions and a decrease in the return rate.

4. New and Better Payment Options to Look Out For!

Easy and multiple payment options are one of the reasons why customers choose a specific brand. If the seller cannot provide the preferred payment method, they won’t purchase from your e-commerce store. Presently, most e-commerce businesses accept digital wallets such as Samsung, Apple Pay, PayPal, Google Pay, etc. except for debit and credit cards. 

Not to mention, Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin offers many benefits from online shop owners like no reverse transactions and low transaction fees. For example—overstock partners with Coinbase, a BitCoin platform, so that Bitcoin can be used as a payment method.

These are some top trends that will help you upgrade your eCommerce business. One should include these trends to grow your business