Top 11 Latest eCommerce Trends That Startup Stores Must Try In 2022
Starting your own business is very hard these days. Competition is high as it can be, and only coming on the market with an actually unique and high-quality product does not guarantee your company’s success. Frankly, it does not guarantee anything in 2022.
Today, we are all competing not only offline but also in the online arena, and every eCommerce website is battling to the death for its own place under the sun. Of course, we have some “fashionable” things in this area that are very popular right now and expected to be on your website.
Using these “things” or trends will show the customers that your startup is as good as any great and old established company, and following the trends will give you a lot of perks, attractive for customers.
So, if you want to know what will give a positive customer experience to your lovely buyers this year, keep reading!
Increased Prevalence of Voice Search in Online Shopping
Can you imagine not using Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant to help you find anything on the internet? As for us, we have daily conversations with Siri, and it is obvious that getting voice assistance during your online shopping endeavors would be awesome.
So, it is quite obvious that adding voice search for any eCommerce business is a smart thing to do: people just find it very convenient! Nowadays, the voice-search market is valued at about $4 billion, and this number will only be increased in upcoming years.
But what exactly can this trend bring you as an online business owner? We reckon that if you are able to start participating in this run early, you can get more from it right now and become huge thanks to this feature. Not every online store has a voice search option right now, and it will help you stand out in the row of your competitors.
Also, you can already start voice search SEO optimization of your website right now and be in the front row of this part of the industry. In any case, voice search is a trend that will only become bigger in the future, so it is only logical for you to start implementing it early on.
Additional Payment Options
We had only one option to pay for the services or products not so long ago: giving actual physical money. Of course, we had paper checks, but not everyone used them.
Later we got credit cards, and now we have access to our funds from any place on Earth. Purchasing something from Guatemala when you are in China doesn’t seem like fantasy anymore. It seemed that here we peaked.
But evolution goes forward despite all the things happening in the world, and it also applies to payment options. Today many users prefer mobile wallets like Google Pay, PayPal, or Apple Pay for every purchase they have: from checking on the register to ordering a pizza. They prefer to have this type of payment option everywhere they can, and these customers make most of their purchases online through their smartphones.
The rise of contactless payments forces companies to give this option to their customers, and we assure you: the more options you will provide to a person, the more likely they will purchase something from you.
The moral of the story here is that you need to incorporate as many options of contactless payments as you can while leaving a couple of physical payment options for people who prefer this old method.
Augmented Reality to Visualize Purchases
Shopping in online stores is great: you can do it at your home, you only need to click a couple of buttons to purchase, you don’t have to carry very heavy shopping bags, and you can compare the same product in different stores. But it is still not the same as going to an actual store.
For many, offline shopping is an adventure, a type of therapy, and an easy way to cheer themselves up. Looking at beautiful things, trying them on, and even talking to salespeople is the reason these people go to an actual store in the first place.
But this unique experience can now be mimicked by using technologies of virtual and augmented reality. Giving a person an opportunity to “try on” an item of virtual clothing in a virtual room or just take a walk through a virtual store is an unbelievable thing. It gives an absolutely different experience to customers, and more than 70% of those who tried VR shopping don’t want to come back to a regular one.
Videos Have a Big Appeal for Shoppers
Video marketing is just a must-have right now. We can see video ads everywhere nowadays, and it’s only a question of time when they will be incorporated into our dreams like in Futurama.
People love video content from their favorite brands because when you are watching a tutorial, a how-to video, or just a simple product reveal clip, you feel like the brand is talking to you directly. This intimate conversation is a lot more effective for sales than just a written commercial because it feels close to a person watching.
This is the reason why influencer marketing is so incredibly popular, and it doesn’t seem to stop being so popular any time soon.
The trick here is to use videos not only on more obvious online platforms like TikTok or YouTube. Video commercials can and should be used in your marketing strategy for every platform you use for your business. From Instagram to Twitter: make it all go crazy with your video content.
Of course, the very important thing to note here is that you need to comply with the requirements of all websites and convert the videos into a format that they use on a particular platform. You can click here and use an online converter or download a desktop version to perform the conversion and get the exact format that fits every social media you use.
Smarter Mobile Shopping Tools
Many of us prefer shopping on our phones in 2022. That’s why it is pretty obvious that if you give a person more chances to make an online purchase, they will probably do that.
First of all, we offer you to have a separate, mobile-optimized version of your website to serve phone shoppers. Scrolling with your hand and your mouse are two absolutely different experiences, and many things absolutely acceptable on a desktop version of your website can annoy a client big time in a mobile version. Yes, we are talking about you, pop-up ads!
Please do thorough research on how your direct competitors handle mobile customers and start experimenting and implementing similar methods on our website. After all, if they could do it, you can do it too!
The next step on the way of optimizing the mobile shopping experience is creating your own app. With your own app, you will have your customer’s attention on only your products, and recommending side purchases will be much easier. In addition, your app can send messages to a client, reminding them about your existence and stimulating further purchases.
More Personalized Marketing and Products
If you wonder how you can further maximize the eCommerce success of your company, we can offer you to enter the world of personalized marketing and products.
Giving people more options than any other company can do, is a big deal for most of us. Up until the 1960s, people tried to look just like everybody else, and now we value individuality. That’s why mass products are not a good option for many of us: we want to stand out.
For example, Yves Saint Laurent offers their customers engrave their names on some beauty products customers purchase directly from them. This way, you get not only excellent lipstick or mascara but your name engraved on it for free.
This little bit of personalized approach is very effective among the customers who purchase luxury items. They do this not only to get a good product to use but also because they want to feel special. They pay not only for a beauty product: they pay for a luxury experience and the feeling of exclusivity.
Another good example is Nike with their Lunarglide shoe line, where you can pick your own design and patterns to put on your shoes.
As for marketing, of course, it is impossible to create a commercial or ad campaign that everyone would love. However, here we have some options to personalize it too! First of all, you can create a couple of different ad campaigns to target a specific audience on social media.
Next, you can create personalized discounts for consumers. You can send emails with discounts on the products from their wishlist or allow them to choose a favorite product on your app and get extra bonuses or a discount on it.
To sum up: the more options for customization you give to your customers, the more likely they pick your product over any other.
Giving a Customer an Excellent Cross-Channel Experience
Talking to your audience through only one marketing channel is not enough in 2022. Today, even when you are only starting your business, we advise you to use an omnichannel commerce approach from day one.
An omnichannel commerce strategy is not the same as a simple multichannel approach: it is much cooler, thus a more effective marketing method. The difference between multichannel and omnichannel commerce lies in one thing: you have multiple ways to sell and advertise your products in both types, but in multichannel, you just have them.
In omnichannel commerce, you not only have multiple platforms for sales and ads, but they all also create one big system to give a customer an absolutely seamless experience on every single one of your platforms.
If you ask us in 2022, an omnichannel commerce strategy is an optimal option. This approach gives your customers a much better experience, takes a huge role in building customer loyalty, and helps increase sales drastically. Also, an omnichannel commerce strategy gives you a lot more information about every single shopper: what sales channel they prefer, when and how many products they purchase, what they may also like, etc.
This information helps create an online profile of every customer you have and help you learn what’s the best product to offer to this person. It both makes a person’s experience with your store much more pleasant and your sales better.
Highly Optimized Websites to Maximize Conversions
You just can’t have a successful eCommerce platform without good old SEO optimization in 2022. Even though SEO is a huge investment and rarely shows results right away, it is the fundamental and bulletproof thing that will help you grow your website, make it visible on the first page, and, most importantly, increase traffic and thus give you sales.
In the core, SEO is really easy, but it is a hard job, and even if you can do it by yourself at first, later, when your startup grows bigger, it is better to hire a specialist for SEO optimization.
Besides gathering proper keywords, creating meta tags, and content on your website (which should be done before moving forward), you need to focus on optimizing your website’s speed, fixing the issues, making sure that it works correctly on every gadget and browser, etc.
Also, we advise you to use link-building and guest posting to further increase your visibility online after you’ve done with the website itself. Adding your links on the trusted platforms in an interesting piece shows search engines that your company should be considered as a decent player on the market.
Communication Goes Full-On Digital
It’s 2022, but the 2019 pandemic doesn’t want to leave us in peace and still messes up with our lives. As an owner of a startup company, you should grow your business with an eye out for the processes that take place in today’s society.
And the first huge thing that the pandemic changed in our lives is that it eliminated most social contacts. Maybe you preferred offline shopping before, but when in quarantine, you just can’t get the same experience anymore.
That’s why now we have a lot of substitutes of social interactions integrated into our day-to-day lives, and businesses too. We’re talking about QR codes instead of bar and restaurant menus, contactless purchases, online shoppers, etc.
Even talking with an actual salesperson is too much for some of us, that’s why you often can meet an option “I’m completely sure that it is my order, there’s no need to call me back” on many websites.
And when you actually need to talk to someone, you rarely phone: usually, people opt for chatbots and messengers to talk to companies.
For your business, it means that using real-life communication is less important now than investing in digital type, so it is better to have fewer call center operators and more chatbot people.
Huge Investments in Digital Marketing
This part serves as some kind of a pre-conclusion to everything we’ve said before. No matter what business you have, a b2b eCommerce project, an offline store with a dead website, or you are a startup, you need to invest in digital services.
In the current social climate, in an oversaturated market, it is only logical to invest in technologies that will help you approach as many people as possible and give them an opportunity to purchase your product.
Especially if you use the omnichannel retail strategy, we have mentioned above. Social media are on the rise, people cannot imagine their lives without social media, and you should use them to connect with your audience.
It has gotten so big that some companies actually announced that they are stepping back from offline retail strategy and decided to go online fully. We already have it with the press and some clothing brands, and we can expect it to happen with many other industries.
So, we suggest you look at this climate market and invest most of your money in digital marketing because it is the thing that will determine our nearest future.
Conclusion
Now you know about the best practices and trends you need to implement in your company in 2022 to make it an eCommerce and become a giant in your industry.
We absolutely get that being a startup is hard, and not every trend we have mentioned in this article is possible for you to implement into your business practices. Nevertheless, everyone starts from the bottom, and you can achieve success in your niche thanks to hard work and persistence.
Only that allows many companies to survive even during a Covid crisis, and we sincerely hope that your company will be one of them. Good luck!
This article has been published in accordance with Socialnomics’ disclosure policy.
