Is Your Business Ready for the Future?

If you’re never implementing new online trends, you’ll soon see your competitors well ahead of you. Find out what you need to know to get your business ready for the future.

The future of eCommerce – in the imagination of eCommerce owners – sounds like a utopian place where people buy their goods online, their sales and revenue keep increasing, and in turn their small businesses grow consistently. Whilst people will probably always buy some of their products in brick-and-mortar stores, a part of this dream might actually become true for some.

Online shopping is still on the rise and is expected to reach 15 percent of all retail sales by 2020. But to be one of the businesses that get a fair share of the growing cake, you’ll have to start working on the future now. New online shops are popping up around the world – and you need to catch up with them.

Know Your Future Customer

First of all, do some research about your customer’s future shopping behavior as this is essential to know before updating your online store accordingly. Also, keep in mind that you will have to sell your products to a new generation: Generation Z, who is about to become the biggest group of customers, and they care more about sustainability and conscious consuming than previous generations. Furthermore, mobile internet usage is on the rise and more people will use their smartphone to order goods online in the future. Therefore, your website must be optimized for mobile usage and easy to navigate.

The Future of Delivering

Have you ever heard of omnichannel marketing? In case you haven’t, we’ll break it down for you: simply put, it means connecting and integrating all the channels that your clients can use to reach you with each other. A good example of that is when customers order goods online but instead of shipping them to their home, they can pick them up in a physical store. Not only does this save you shipping costs, but it also drives sales, as people like to make their final shopping decisions offline. As the shopping process becomes more complex, it’s important to have smart software in place that can help you keep track of orders, finished goods or raw materials inventory, so you’ll never run out of stock in your warehouse. Especially small makers and manufacturers who use Excel spreadsheets for their business will experience a big change after automating their operations with smart manufacturing software.

The Future of Customer Communication

Customer communication should already play a big role in your business and it will become even bigger in the future. As customers expect an immediate answer to their inquiries nowadays, you should think about the option of adding a chatbot to your website. Not only are they available all-day round, but they can also help to personalize the customer’s shopping experience. Since they collect a lot of data from your visitors, they can use it to refer more products to them or offer them a personalized discount code. It has also shown that chatbots can reduce shopping cart abandonment as they can help the customer through the check-out-process.

It’s your choice whether you start preparing for a bright future for your business – or ignore all trends and let your competitors get ahead of you!