What is the future of designing digital stores?

What is the future of designing digital stores?

By collecting past data and analyzing trends and patterns, we can make some predictions about the future of digital stores.

. Let’s start by taking a look at the shifts in consumer behavior that will lead us to predict the future of designing digital stores.

9 trends shaping the designing digital stores

The trends identified here refer to three main goals:

• Reduce friction in the buying (and selling) journey.
• Create rich brand experiences.
• Selling anywhere and everywhere.

In other words, the future of designing digital stores will be to increase convenience for both merchants and shoppers, provide rich and compelling shopping experiences, and enable past experiences in a consistent and customer-friendly way.

First: The number of global digital stores is increasing all over the world, as the share of e-commerce globally has been on the rise for at least the past five years and is expected to continue:

Despite the low consumer morale in many countries, as a result of COVID-19. However, the pandemic has also necessitated a greater reliance on digital stores, especially for basic needs.

This opens up a huge opportunity to expand cross-border sales to countries where the growth rate of digital stores was previously lagging.

Some things to consider when considering starting design digital stores:

Is there a demand for my product or category in this market?

Do we need to set up our own e-commerce site for an international audience?

What are the most popular payment options in the target country?

How will we handle cross-border shipping?

Second: Automation increases productivity and growth:

The goal of automation is to accomplish a task with as little human intervention as possible. This can mean anything from scheduling emails in a CRM or marketing tool or leveraging advanced technology to assist with recruitment.

However, in the context of future designing digital store trends, some of the most popular things being talked about today are robotics and machine learning.

Robotics:

Robotic devices, drones, and other autonomous vehicles are already being used to enhance the supply chain – for example, to find, select, and move items in warehouses.

Machine learning:

The combination of machine learning/artificial intelligence and big data does more than just automation, as it can automatically improve a number of processes that currently take enormous time and effort, or cannot be performed at all, resulting in the use of one of the areas mentioned increased personalization of the designing digital stores that It can help give customers a better store experience.

Third: Voice commerce will open the door to automated commerce:

A January 2019 survey found that about 45% of consumers have used voice technology such as Google Home or Amazon’s Alexa to conduct some type of shopping activity. As users become increasingly comfortable with using voice assistance technologies such as smart speakers, it is very likely that this will increase somewhat.

Voice search and SEO:

Think about the way people search. When writing a search phrase, it usually focuses on keywords – for example, “red shoes”. However, the voice search is more likely to occur in the form of a question: “Where can I find red shoes?”

SEOs should closely monitor this trend to assess how best practices are changing or affecting page rankings.

Fourth: Progressive Web Apps PWAs improve the experience of designing digital stores using mobile:

Progressive Web Applications (PWAs) use the latest web technology to deliver an online experience that is closer to a native app than a traditional web page – especially on a mobile device.

It has gained popularity because it facilitates a reliable user experience, blazing speeds, and interaction capabilities such as sending push notifications and appearing on the device’s home screen just like an app.

Mobile shopping isn’t just a modern thing anymore – it’s happening a lot. Smartphone sales are expected to rise exponentially, reaching over $432 billion in sales in 2022.

Add the prevalence of mobile first-come shoppers, and you get plenty of potential shoppers on their mobile phones.

Fifth: Customer experience becomes a driving force in development:

As COVID-19 pushes us further towards a digital-first world, brands will have to work even harder to provide rich and compelling shopping experiences that capture the attention of their customers in the crowded online marketplace.

Now that the technologies needed to create unique and distinctive experiences are more accessible, brands are looking to innovate. So how do you give your customers the best possible experience?

• Video: Video is a way to engage shoppers in designing digital stores experience in addition to creating a distinctive brand. An engaging video creates an opportunity to elicit feeling and engagement and gives shoppers something to interact with.
• Make the experience special: Don’t stop at the boundaries of your digital storefront. The brand experience should tell a consistent narrative across channels, devices, and contexts – including your designing digital stores.

Sixth: Payments or online payments become more personalized, opening the market to a new consumer sector:

Apple Pay, PayPal, STC Pay, Mada… Every time you turn around, there seems to be a new payment option. As younger generations become more tech-savvy, a variety of payment options are becoming popular.

To open up more available markets, particularly the under-40 population, brands will need to accept as many payment options as possible, including buy now and pay later.

This also means that merchants can provide a personalized experience. With so many new payment options, merchants can access new markets and offer more options to pay as they please.

Seventh: Data collection and analysis become more coherent and comprehensive:

One of the recent trends over the past couple of years has been for big brands to go online, adding to their revenue stream. But the biggest driver of this trend isn’t the extra revenue stream – it’s data.

Some of the traditional brands that sell through major retailers are starting to feel that they are too far away from the users of their products. DTC is one way they can get to know their customers, collect data to drive smarter decisions about targeting, retention, and more. Certainly, in the coming years, data will only become more important for companies hoping to increase their digital store sales.

Then, we can use the same data to discover other customers who are similar to our existing customers, and ideally predict with a greater degree of certainty what customers we will acquire in the future.

Eighth: B2B e-commerce becomes an expectation:

B2B businesses – even big industrial brands – are finally undergoing their own real-time digital transformation, driven by COVID-19. It is likely to yield long-term benefits.

Some of the B2B companies we see think they know what their users want, but when it comes to improving their digital journey, they really don’t. Buyers want their shopping experiences to be seamless.

Ninth: Social media is a social expansion of e-commerce beyond the storefront:

The designing digital stores quickly proved their worth despite concerns that a lack of social presence and interaction would discourage shoppers from choosing the Internet instead. But thanks in part to social media, we can actually have both (sort of).

The importance of being on social media platforms is already a well-established part of every brand’s marketing strategy; however, today’s developments have added a commercial element to making it easier to shop across the platform.

In-app purchases on Facebook and Instagram.

47% of consumers have some confidence in influencers on social media.

Facebook and Instagram have both made strides towards enabling the purchase process without leaving the platform. Checkout on Instagram was introduced last year in beta, and Facebook Stores recently launched to make it easier to sell on the platform.

More coming from Pinterest.

Pinterest, too, is jumping on the bandwagon. Last year we announced a visual search feature that recommends fashion and home décor products based on image context. Rich Pins make it easier for platform users to see things like pricing and availability. Purchasable Pins enable customers to purchase products without leaving Pinterest.

You don’t need to take advantage of every direction when thinking about designing digital stores. If you are a B2B business and sell heavy equipment, Checkout on Instagram will not increase your earnings. Likewise, if you sell personalized gifts for highly targeted occasions, then voice search will not be your top priority. Test, test, test.