By the time 2050 comes around, people will have forgotten all about physical money or making person-to-person transactions. Being able to purchase goods and services from the screens of our smartphones anywhere on earth, is both convenient and easy.
It is the ubiquitous powers of e-commerce that make this a reality. 2016 was buzzing with new tools and technologies and it looks like the next year is going to be even bigger and better. Let us take a closer look at the amazing trends that 2017 is looking to bring for us.
- Chat bots
Chat bots are now being introduced by social media giants Twitter, Facebook, Whats App and Google Allo to assist customers with their booking, shopping and customer service. These bots are automated machines that will take any of your requests online.
Facebook already has about 11,000 chatbots available with them, but the data on their use is unknown at the moment. Clothing retailer Spring, which is one of the first new recipients, developed a live messaging and personal shopping service called Spring Bot.
- Customer Understanding Goes Hyper Time
Collecting information on customer behavior and user patterns will be even faster with the help of AI and heat map based data mining tools. It will help track and understand customers on a hyper time basis. As a result, customers will be able to spend more and show better brand loyalty.
- Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic ad buying is online advertising at its finest. It involves the use of software to buy digital advertising instead of traditional means such as human negotiations, RFPs, and manual insertion orders. To put it simply, it just means using machines to buy ads.
Programmatic ad buying is a better option because it is more reliable and affordable than through human ad buyers. On top of that, it is far more efficient because unlike people, machines don’t get sick or injured.
- Artificial Intelligence
With Amazon’s Alexa (on the Echo), Microsoft’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri, artificial intelligence is bringing the hopes and dreams of the future closer together. People can now conduct their businesses and transactions while talking to machines.
Chatting more and more with personal assistants is an important aspect of e-commerce as it will be used to conduct the beginning stage of the research process. Every digital assistant responds in a different manner.
For example, Echo will lead you to Amazon product pages and reviews, while the Google Home page will show you the best results of a search page.
- Mobile Payment And Loyalty Apps
As the days pass us by, mobile payments continue to climb. People have grown to use contactless payments, which in comparison to conventional methods, is far more convenient and quick. Starbucks was the first one to make use of this power, which has enabled them to become an unofficial success.
Starbucks has been able to streamline the payment process and have even added a loyalty program to it as well. About 22% of the customers pay using the app and because if this, it has led to a 12% rise in revenue. As a bonus for Starbucks, they can collect valuable customer behavior information that helps them improve the product based on feedbacks.
- Omni-Channel To Feature 360-Degree Views
If customer experience can go hand in hand with excellent purchases, then you can run a truly stunning store. Omni-channel stores are the kinds of stores that facilitate such services. With the use of multiple channels, businesses can get a 360-degree of customers and the response to numerous triggers like discounts, product offerings, in-store experience and more.
It will echo in great success for online as well as offline sales channels.
Author Bio: Joseph Carey works as a Sales Manager at Essay Star. He made her blogging debut this year and she loves writing on E commerce, Online Marketing, SEO, and Social Media Marketing. Find her on Facebook | Twitter | Google+.
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