Effective planning is one of the most impactful aspects of successful software development for e-commerce businesses. You can only plan effectively if you know what to expect from the market. It’s important to be aware of customer behavior trends so you can make well-informed predictions. This was the main reason behind the massive research Solvd’s team has recently carried out together with Censuswide, a global research company. The research is based on in-depth interviews with customers and experts, surveys, extensive analytics, and customer observations. The main goal of this research is to identify e-commerce industry trends, use them in our work, and share our findings and insights with our customers and partners.
The Setup: The State of E-Commerce Today
First, let's talk about the current e-commerce landscape. E-commerce is one of the most fast-paced growing industries today. According to Statista, its total revenue reached $5.8 trillion in 2023 and it is expected to grow almost 40% by 2027, which will exceed $8 trillion. Today it is a vast, highly populated and highly competitive market where changes are swift and often drastic. The demand for the ability to quickly adjust and accommodate these changes is clearly demonstrated by e-commerce sites and it affects the trends in the e-commerce industry significantly. Our survey respondents named several factors that they view as having the most impact on e-commerce businesses and helped define e-commerce trends in 2024.
- The rise of Gen AI and Machine learning
- Focus on personalized customer experience
- Increasing pressure in the sphere of data security and privacy
- Rising importance of finding a reliable technical partner
- Need to innovate in the sphere of brand-customer communication
These factors are named as key players that will shape the e-commerce market in 2024-2025 and help us identify the most important trends for the e-commerce industry.
The Major E-commerce Trends We Identified
Using our research findings, we defined the key e-commerce trends that our customers, partners, and other market participants believe will shape the industry in the next few years.
1. Wide Adaptation of AI and VR to Deliver Personalized Shopping Experiences
Personalization and tailored user experiences are something customers expect from an interaction with an e-commerce application. This is what they get from brick-and-mortar stores and what they want from online shopping too. However, until recently, scaling wasn’t something e-commerce businesses could do when it came to personalized UX. This has changed drastically with the development of AI technologies. Today, e-commerce companies see AI adoption as one of the main e-commerce trends. The use of AI in predictive analytics for marketing, inventory management, decision-making, analysis, and operational cost reduction was also named by our respondents as some of the AI trends to look out for.
The graph below illustrates the AI implementation scenarios our research participants view as the most viable for the foreseeable future.
“AI transformation poses a specific type of challenge e-commerce businesses have to deal with. For instance, change management. The introduction of AI can lead to significant changes in business processes and employee roles.”
2. Aligned Web and Mobile Development for Enhanced Accessibility
According to Airship and Sapio Research, nearly 80% of consumers globally visit a retailer’s website from their smartphone while shopping in-store, while 74% use their e-commerce app. This makes the alignment of web and mobile development one of the most important e-commerce industry trends today. It also creates a need for cross-platform solutions that provide users with various entry points. These cross-platform solutions help ensure their user experience is consistently high-quality- regardless of how they access e-commerce services.
3. Enhanced Data Security and Compliance
The vast majority of our respondents said that focusing on enhancing their security, privacy, compliance policies, and workflows as e-commerce trends for the foreseeable future. E-commerce applications work with and store vast arrays of sensitive customer data. Cybersecurity is at the forefront because these applications also need to maintain and support high-load billing systems with multiple payment options.
According to our research, a staggering 100% of our respondents name security, privacy, and compliance issues as one of the main challenges for e-commerce businesses in the coming years.
4. Implementation of Fast-Format Apps, Omnichannel Communication and Delivery Models
One of the most important trends in the e-commerce industry that our research defined is the shift in brand-customer communication. Most experts agree that the rise of new communication models, such as omnichannel communication and new delivery channels will continue in the foreseeable future. The consensus is that e-commerce businesses will focus on omnichannel marketing and delivery across multiple touchpoints.
5. Strategic Partnerships with Third-Party Vendors, Experts and Teams
It is becoming increasingly difficult for e-commerce projects to maintain their own software development teams and processes. This is mostly happening because e-commerce companies feel the growing need to focus their efforts on improving the customer journey, loyalty, personalization, and creating unique value propositions in their customer’s interactions. Our survey shows that the majority of e-commerce projects work with technical service providers and partners in some capacity and that it will continue to stay an e-commerce industry trend. The in-house development of state-of-the-art e-commerce apps that can support this level of customer service is a task in and of itself, so companies often prefer to delegate those tasks to focus more on their customer-related work instead.
What is the Future of E-Commerce in 2024?
In 2024, e-commerce development will focus on omnichannel delivery and marketing. This allows e-commerce sites to communicate with customers across multiple platforms. The future of E-commerce will also be largely driven by the demand to craft seamless user experiences where recommendations and services are tailored to individual preferences. Many e-commerce projects will use AI to achieve this. As user workflows expected from e-commerce apps become increasingly complex and their functionality is expected to expand, e-commerce projects will continue to partner with third-party solution providers and vendors.
Strategic Recommendations
1. Get Started with AI Transformation
AI transformation touches upon multiple aspects of an e-commerce company's work, so this change is very global. The transformation process is going to be long, probably expensive, and painful. Fortunately, the benefits will exceed the costs and you’ll be able to stay ahead of your competitors by starting this process as early as possible.
2. Prioritize having a Seamless User Journey
According to Smile statistics, after a customer buys from an online store the first time, they have a 27% chance of buying again. After a second online purchase, there’s a 49% chance they’ll buy again. And after a third purchase, the likelihood increases to 62%. This means strong customer retention will bring you more ROI than investing in customer acquisition. Look into tech that will allow you to deliver an immersive shopping experience, such as AR and VR or voice search. Create loyalty programs and varying subscription models for customers, and also engage them on social media platforms. Improve your logistics, supply chains, and real-time support. It’s also important to foster immediacy in customer service.
3. Improve your Mobile Functionality
Delivering a well-executed mobile experience is a must because a majority of your customers will likely be using a smartphone to access your services. Develop responsive websites and user-friendly mobile apps that provide a seamless shopping experience across a wide range of devices. Optimize your website and applications for speediness and the ability to handle high loads. Also, make sure that they are easy to navigate and have a simple, intuitive interface that looks great across all platforms.
4. Enhance Data Security and Compliance
Work with your technical partners and in-house security teams to introduce and implement comprehensive Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC) policies. Having a robust GRC is key to ensuring that your e-commerce operations adhere to all of the various regulations while promoting safety and security.
“Modern enterprises are embracing a revolutionary approach: the integrated GRC ecosystem. This interconnected environment fosters seamless data flow, centralized oversight, and it provides insights in real-time.”
5. Innovate in Brand-Customer Communication
If you want to stay on par with today’s e-commerce industry trends, your e-commerce site, mobile app, and physical stores need to provide a consistent and integrated customer experience. Collect data from various touchpoints, implement omnichannel delivery and marketing solutions to engage your customers more effectively and to raise your brand’s awareness and customer loyalty.
6. Form Strategic Partnerships
If you are an e-commerce project, you probably have already realized that keeping the focus on your customers takes up most of your time and effort. You probably already felt the need to find solution providers who can do the non-primary business focus tasks such as the development of mobile applications, migration to Amazon Web Services, and implementing AI solutions into your workflows, etc. Consider forming strategic partnerships with third-party vendors, technical service providers, and industry experts to help solve this challenge. Collaboration in this sphere will allow you to focus more on the most important matters such as keeping your users happy.
Key Takeaways
Being in the know and on top of the e-commerce industry trends allows you to capitalize on them and plan your business development more effectively. Making educated decisions about customer relations in 2024 is vital because your commercial success hangs on the quality of the customer experience you deliver. Knowing the e-commerce trends we have listed above and following the tips from this article will help you to make better decisions while delivering better products and services to your customers.
Want to get more insights and useful details that we have uncovered from our research? Download and read our Research White Paper. It features the full scope of our research findings as well as various analytics and prognoses that we were able to make based on the data we gathered.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Do You Identify E-commerce Trends?
To identify global and local e-commerce trends, you can use the following steps:
Conduct Qualitative and Quantitative Market Research. Use surveys, in-depth interviews, customer observations and analytics to gather various important data about consumer behavior patterns and customer engagement.
Analyze Competitors. Analyze what other market players are doing in terms of marketing, technology adoption and customer interaction. Pinpoint their successful moves and failures.
Engage Experts, Opinion Makers, and Regular Users. Be on the lookout for emerging e-commerce trends by collecting feedback, personal experiences, impressions, and insights.
Is E-Commerce Booming?
As of 2024, it definitely is. The global e-commerce market continues to grow with increased speed. This particular e-commerce trend started during the pandemic, and it’s still growing. The drivers for today’s development include increased access to the internet at a lower cost, a major infrastructure shift to online during the pandemic, the convenience of shopping online, and mobile devices that keep getting better.
