What does 2014 have in store for e-commerce? The rise of mobile is a key milestone in the development of online retailing this year, but in terms of pure-play e-commerce there are a number of key trends that we think will happen this year.
Payments and loyalty
There is going to be a revolution in how payments are made in stores, as the wireless NFC starts to gain some traction and mobile payments start to become a reality.
Read On:
Mobile trends 2014 – part I
Mobile trends 2014 – part II
Tips for quality content marketing in 2014
However, where the real play in payments lies is in how payments, loyalty and to some extent social media all start to work together to offer a seamless payments process.
Let’s face it, the way payments online and in store work at the moment ain’t broke, so why fix it? The answer is that we won’t: we will enhance it.
Loyalty cards, gift cards, vouchers and money will all be integrated into a simple payment package – a wallet if you will – that will be managed via a mobile phone, but which will work across all channels.
The integration of these with social media – particularly check in and location – is likely to further enhance how these things work and could see a revolution in how consumers interact with retailers.
But a word of warning: don’t confuse this idea with the pre-paid ‘mobile wallets’ that are being touted by operators and others. These are a half way house and not the real deal. They are too complex and not slick enough yet. Instead we are likely to see offerings from the likes of Znap and Zapp and Barclays PingIt really make in roads.
Social retailing
2014 is likely to be the year where all those lovely people who follow you on social media can be converted into something truly monetisable. Let’s face it, so far social media has been long on promise and very short of actual delivery of anything tangible. This is all set to change this year.
So far social media has been a great way to build a following, but a million likes isn’t necessarily going to sell anything, so you need to look at how you use social media to actually generate sales.
Simple things such as using your social media group to distribute special offers specific to them so that they feel special – and more importantly actually buy stuff. Or run a competition with a cool prize that they will share with their own social networks and so hopefully drive up your engagements.
And don’t forget to listen to what they are saying. Monitor what your fans are talking about – it may be that you can leap in a offer to sell them just what they are looking for at that moment.
Gamification
Turning everything into some form of online game has long been tipped as a winner for marketing and creating engagement, but 2014 is going to be the year where, like social media, gamification becomes something that will be used to generate actual sales.
To date the element of competition and game-ness around retail has really centred on people managing to bag something at auction just before it closed or occasionally getting a bargain. However, this is all about to change.
The PriceDropTV model is going to hit the web hard and is going to see consumers playing at shopping with a view to more sharing delivering bigger savings and competition actually becoming something that more than one person can win at.
Sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s one of the key ways that retail and social media are going to work together to change e-commerce in 2014.
Omni-Channel
Omni-channel was very much the flavour of 203, but where there were great strides made by some forward thinking companies, it will be this year where we see true omni-channel retail become mainstream.
Glued together by mobile, omni-channel is going to play to the over arching meta-trend of 2014, customer centricity. What is really driving a shift in retail is how the customer is now a multi-platform hopping beast and you have to be everywhere to catch their coins as they leap from plinth to plinth.
According to SAP, three quarters of consumers think that multi-platform shopping is an essential to a brand, not just a bonus.
You have to do it. Consumers these days take their time over shopping and want to do it when and where they chose across multiple devices (and they want to share and garner opinions while they do so: another of the areas where social is vital). Catering to this is going to be the biggest trend and challenge for retailers in 2014.
While there are challenges in implementing an omni-channel strategy from a technological point of view, the real issue is in changing your mindset to think multi-channel.
Also in working out how to pull together this and all the other strands of social, gamification, loyalty, payments and data to offer the right service, the right incentives and the right discounts across all channels and users.
This is the real trend for 2014: not just making these individual things work, but making it all work together both tactically and strategically.
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