Emerging Trends in 2021

2021 is fast approaching and most of us are hoping for a slightly better year. Make sure to keep your store up to date and flying ahead with the new trends that are emerging in 2021.

1. Voice commerce and smart speakers.
Back in 2018 only 3% of smart speak owners used their speaker to search or shop for items, this is due to increase to 18% in 2021. So having that option to use voice search on your store is an opportunity to boost sales in ecommerce. There are 2 ways to incorporate voice search into your site. The first being to offer voice-based navigation on the website, you’ll normally see this in the form of a small microphone in the search function on a site. Another way is to ensure a simple flow for buying products via voice search if someone is using voice commands from a smart speaker or phone to follow through to a purchase.

2. Mobile Commerce will dominate over Ecommerce
Shopping on mobile is becoming increasingly more popular due to customers feeling safer to shop on a mobile. If 2020 has proved anything it’s that confidence in online shopping has increased. People haven’t had a choice in some cases and they’ve had to become comfortable with shopping and paying online. By the end of 2021, mobile devices are expected to make almost 73% of total ecommerce sale. Get your site mobile ready:

• Ask us to test your site in mobile and work on improvements to ensure it’s running smoothly. Use an online test such as Google Mobile-Friendly Test. Enter your URL  and it will show if your online store is responsive. It also shows if there are any loading issues on your website.
• Create a progressive web app (PWA) for your online store. Check out No.4 on this blog to find out how to create this and why having a progressive web app is going to be important in 2021.
• Ensure a smooth checkout process on mobile devices and find ways to simplify it further making sure that your payment provider is mobile friendly.
• Test your mobile site manually. Check if it is easy to navigate. Examine if it is easy to search and view products on your mobile and if there is an option to zoom.

3. Sustainable (green) practices will increase sales.
People care, and the planet’s welfare is on everyone’s radar now that we are constantly being reminded about the rising global temperatures and the amount of plastic in our oceans. In the Lyst 2020 conscious fashion report since the start of 2020 there has been a 37% increase in the search for ‘sustainable’ or words link to sustainable . Consumers are starting to think about their actions and how ethical the product is that they’re buying. 

Many large ecommerce brands have already started putting processes in place or working with environmental charities to work towards a greener future. 

Example: Brewdog beer company have become a carbon neutral company stating that they now remove twice as much carbon for the atmosphere than they emit each year. Transparency is key when claiming to be a ‘greener’ company, Brewdog have published their sustainability report online and have been working with a professor in carbon footprinting to ensure their practises are sustainable.

4. Headless commerce and PWA.

What is a PWA, What does it stand for?

PWA stands for progressive web application, this essentially is a different way of serving up the same content. Headless refers to the backend and the frontend being separated.

There is a technical crossover from both PWA and Headless, both can do different things but it’s a similar approach for both. Essentially you create a frontend and a backend completely separate from each other but in communication with each other. This means you can create a frontend in any technology you want. Python, Node, Angular etc.

This allows you to create completely bespoke frontend wherever and however you want, this allows for lots of PWA possibilities like offline caching, push notifications and local storage.

Are there any disadvantages?

Kind of? – The biggest one is realistically the amount of time needed to build it as it would need to be specifically created for your needs, then there would be maintenance, as you’re not using any calls from the existing ecommerce platform your pwa / headless architecture would need to be constantly maintained, but if you’re going into this expecting to look after it for years you can get an amazing product out of it.

Our take away:

PWA is and has been the future for a while now, It has incredible advantages to a custom journey and a lightning fast speed, being able to be hosted anywhere and built in anything makes it incredible versatile. However the cost could be eye watering for startups or smaller businesses that would be much better suited using the standard system and making necessary tweaks for speed and performance.

5. Social Commerce, not leaving FB or Instagram to shop.
Everyone is on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter… the list goes on. Moving in to 2021 the idea of ‘click through to purchase’ will be a thing of the past and consumers will be looking to reduce the amount of clicks to checkout. 

Instagram launched their shopping feature back in 2016 however every product needed to be linked to a website to complete the purchase.

In July this year they launched their new feature in line with Facebook Pay. It allows consumers to browse products, collections and continue to purchase them whilst staying within the app. The payment is via Facebook Pay, which was introduced last year as a way to transact securely across Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. There is of course a selling fee involved but this new platform for selling this could produce a new stream of revenue for a company.

Image: The Verge (https://www.theverge.com)