RTP Editors Identify Top E-Commerce Tech Trends To Watch In 2019
Earlier this month, Retail
TouchPoints unveiled its fifth
annual E-Commerce Technology Preview, which includes insights from
industry experts at 12 solution providers. The guide offers an exclusive look
at what retailers need to do in order to achieve e-Commerce success in 2019 and
beyond. Key themes include:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning;
- Voice Commerce;
- Personalization;
- Product Information Management (PIM);
- Experience Marketing; and
- Mobile-First Strategies.
In this Q&A, the RTP editors identify what caught their interest throughout the 2019 E-Commerce Technology Preview.
Debbie Hauss, Editor-in-Chief: I agree with Clicktale’s Liraz Margalit that retailers will be more successful if they effectively factor in human psychology and emotions to their marketing efforts. And although it’s important to tap into both positive and negative emotions to improve business outcomes, it’s possibly hardest to ignore the negatives. As Margalit noted, “Unsurprisingly, failing voucher codes (83%), apps freezing prior to purchase (77%), and slow loading pages (81%)” are among the biggest issues frustrating shoppers during checkout. On the positive side, though, “(31%) state that they’d be willing to pay more for a product or service if the mobile shopping experience is efficient, while 43% reveal that they would pay more for items from brands that provide a five-star shopping experience.” These insights are significant and should not be ignored.
Adam Blair, Executive Editor: I hate to sound like a stick-in-the-mud Luddite (actually, who am I kidding — it’s my brand), but I really wonder if voice shopping’s revenue will climb from $2 billion today to $40 billion by 2022. That would be a 20X increase in just four years. Akeneo’s Frédéric de Gombert quotes this statistic to support his thesis — that voice shopping will transform online commerce as we know it. I’m sure voice shopping will grow, but I doubt it will expand that quickly. But even if he is overly optimistic about the pace of growth, de Gombert’s advice to retailers is solid. He recommends “optimizing product attribute data for relevant contextual voice queries” as an important way for “brands to generate more customer interaction and purchases.” The key word here is relevant: making product offerings and recommendations relevant, “in a way that answers a broad range of customer questions,” will be critical to retailers’ success — whether the consumer’s query comes in via voice, a typed search term or as part of a targeted promotion.
Glenn Taylor, Senior Editor: It’s funny how one trend shifts into another —when discussing mobile sites a few years ago, experts always discussed responsive design as a must-have. That conversation has evolved in the past few years to the point where progressive web apps (PWA) are the hot new item — web apps that function like actual web pages but offer app-style benefits of working offline, including fast loading times and instant discoverability. Magento touched on the topic extensively at its Imagine 2018 conference when it launched a PWA Studio. The guide’s commentary from Jason Woosley of Adobe (Magento) reinforces the idea that this will be a technology that more companies will prioritize to build out their mobile experience. If I’ve learned anything from Woosley’s piece, it’s that even in this app-crazy world we live in, people do still want to just seek out the site they’re looking for and shop. As many as 60% of consumers who use a smartphone to shop online have less than two retailer-specific apps on their phone, and 21% don’t have any at all, according to RetailMeNot.
Bryan Wassel, Associate Editor: As Santi Pierini of CAKE highlights, the growing ocean of consumer data means retailers need to interpret all that raw information, not simply rest on it. Retailers have more data than they can use, and so they need to move “away from traditional, silo-based approaches to measurement” and take up more efficient data processing methods. One retailer measured the success of its campaigns across multiple channels, giving it better insight into how they were connected, which resulted in a 75.2% increase in average monthly conversion rates and boosting its average monthly revenue growth by 72%. As Pierini points out, “it’s no longer sufficient for marketers to start the ‘getting to know you’ process once a customer clicks ‘buy’ or signs up for a loyalty program or email updates” — they must be looking at decision-making habits across the entire journey.