Let’s take a look at how ecommerce fared in 2018. Back in January there was plenty of talk about the year’s biggest trends. Ecommerce is growing strongly with plenty of room to expand in EU regions.
The largest EU ecommerce market is the UK, with consumers spending €178 billion thanks to strong online penetration and infrastructure. Which trends took off and which ones failed to deliver? Where was the growth and why did it happen? How did your ecommerce experience in 2018 measure up?
Growth areas
2018 saw significant growth in fashion, homewares, sports, health and beauty and travel markets. This was fairly consistent across EU, US and Australian markets. It’s no surprise that fashion continues to grow as it harnesses the success of native social shopping. The in-app purchasing options were predicted to reduce barriers to sale and they certainly did. Shoppers are primed for purchases when they visit Instagram and the sales platform there is certainly paying dividends for savvy ecommerce traders.
Mobile ecommerce
Mobile shopping was another predicted growth area that exceeded expectations. Also known as ‘mcommerce’, 39.6% of all ecommerce was conducted on mobile devices in 2019. This is a growing area still. Black Friday sales made on mobile devices in the US increased from 29.1% last year to over 33% in 2018. Make sure your website is optimised for mobile so you don’t miss out.
Augmented and virtual reality failed to launch
2018 was predicted to be a big year for augmented and virtual reality in ecommerce but it failed to take off in a big way. Ecommerce traders are still learning how to implement AR and VR into the sales experience. This is hampered by a lack of infrastructure and cloud support, along with a failure to deliver user-friendly experiences. Headsets have not taken off in the market for gaming or any other purpose, and development leaders Apple and Google are focussing efforts on AR for maps rather than commerce.
Voice assisted sales are increasing
There are over 45 million in home voice assistants in circulation and the figures are expected to grow as consumers begin to trust the smart devices and market penetration increases. As Alexa, the Google Assistant and Siri all fight for space in homes, statistics are showing that voice-based searches are increasing. As business related searches increase, 20% of users have reported conducting online purchases entirely with voice commands. Watch this space as SEO begins to respond to natural voice keyword phrases.
