Top Emerging Trends in eCommerce Technology

Many small businesses and large corporates have found significant success with eCommerce, which means selling products and services online. Now-a-days eCommerce is the need of an hour for most of the retailers including top brands like WalMart, Amazon, eBay, Macy’s, Nike, Adidas, Apple, Dell, Staples and more. Competition among online stores is increasing because everyone is trying to achieve maximum goals in order to sustain on web. Getting ahead of competitors is the primary objective for all great name brands which leads them to strive for emerging trends in eCommerce. New Innovations in technology are creating progression in business and in some cases distraction. Before investing in the market, most of the IT departments are continuously analyzing and trying to identify the next big technology in order to take right decisions at right time. We have identified some of the top emerging trends in eCommerce technology which you should keep an eye because they may have huge impact on online business in coming years. Here it goes: 1) Mobile Point of Sale (POS) and Showcase Using Android or iPad: Mobile POS is the non-wired point of purchase or checkout of a retail transaction that creates a transaction log and receipt. Apple started this trend and many other retailers see this as an emerging advancement in eCommerce technology. Here you can accesses everything about a particular product from description and range to user reviews & conversations. Check out our blog for Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to get more explored about contactless communication between devices like smartphones or tablets. The latest customer friendly features in iOS 6 and Android 4.2 Jellybean are endless starting from basic features like using camera for barcode scanning to get product information and user reviews, GPS-enabled advertising on digital screen in store and hundreds of many others. The goal of this trend will be to do transactions, checkouts and finally payments at much faster rate than before. 2. Advanced Web Browsing on Smartphones/iPads/Tablets – Smartphones/iPads has changed the whole scenario of retail eCommerce. It is expected that in next couple of years Smartphones/iPads will outshine desktop numbers. Customers usually love to access a site that will work like an app for them with less number of unnecessary information. Many businesses are now adopting new methods of technology & design like Responsive web design (RWD) to their eCommerce websites. It allows them to design a site that provides an optimal viewing experience I.e. easy readability and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices. 3. Facebook – Facebook has more than 850M+ subscribers today and in developing countries this number increases by 20% or more every year. It is expected that companies will take more and more benefits from various user activities like what they share, like or comment most. Many affiliate marketing websites can then offer promotions on same products on which users commented, recommended and liked most. Due its large user base, Facebook will continue to lead in the market leaving all others like Pinterest and MySpace behind. 4. Big Data – Big data will continue to get more explored in coming years. Big data or “Hadoop” is a new technology mainly used to manage huge amount of data (structured or unstructured) from various channels. The main challenges in Big data management includes capture, storage, sharing, transfer, analysis, and visualization. 5. Push Notifications – Push notifications are a way for eCommerce websites to reach out their customers more efficiently than before. They can send small messages to consumers even when they are not on site. Android and iOS devices already support their own push notification services which have enabled various eCommerce companies to adopt this technology. The new trend of “push browsing” is changing rapidly which pulls customers to buy things online. 6. Multi-channel – According to recent Seamless Retail Study by Exolevel, 89% of consumers said it was important for retailers to let them shop for products in the way that is convenient for them, integrating in-store, online and mobile shopping channels being best among them. With the ability to shop anywhere at any time with any device, consumers will expect a seamless shopping experience. This trend will drive huge investment by IT sectors in customer relationship management (CRM) system, eCommerce packages and more importantly integrating solutions like Point of Scale (POS) to eCommerce system. To Sum up, all the above mentioned trends are emerging and will determine the growth of business. One, who is familiar with the above trends or have an eye on it, will be more successful in the market.