In January of 2021, eCommerce profits hit a whopping $4.891 billion. While this number may seem like a lot, experts predict that by 2024, that number will have jumped up to $6.3888 – annually. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind about the exponential growth of the global eCommerce market. There is now an online store for just about every product or service you can imagine, and yet the industry’s consumers never seem to stop craving more.
Part of what makes the eCommerce industry such an exciting one is the constant new developments and discoveries that get made. Whether it’s an original new product or service that’s been released, or a cutting-edge piece of technology that sells it, the world of eCommerce is stopping for no one in 2022.
Conversational Commerce
Conversational commerce is a fairly new development in the commerce industry. It is the selling of services and goods via a messaging platform, often designed to help customers communicate with merchants in a convenient and helpful way. There are several key factors to consider when it comes to merchant service options: payment processes, scalability, customer support, and easy integration. All of these affect the buying experience.
Conversational commerce aims to bridge the gap between where consumers feel lost or unheard, and in need of assistance they can’t receive elsewhere. Most consumers today invest in eCommerce via their mobile phones, which indicates a potential uptick in high-quality conversational commerce in 2022.
Augmented Reality (AR) Commerce
Approximately one third of consumers claim that they would try AR to experience fully 360 degree visualization in a product, and another third claimed that they would use the immersive technology to try on various products. This flexible and highly unique form of immersion and visualization technology allows people to fuse the real world with a digitally created world in which products (such as makeup, clothes, or cars) can be “tried on” through the lens of a camera screen. Since first hitting the public consumer market in the early 2010s, there has only been an increase in demand for novel technological experiences like AR and VR for consumers to experience products in a more realistically tangible way.
Social Commerce
Thanks to the rapid maturing of the influencer industry, social commerce is starting to make up a significant percentage of the broader ecommerce industry. As influencers increasingly attract consumers and followers who want to buy similar products, it is only natural that social media-based commerce is likely to grow over 2022 and into the future.
Social commerce encapsulates any commerce occurring within the bounds of social media, such as product tags on Instagram, and advanced company-to-consumer links on Facebook and Twitter. 73% of online businesses are already using social media to market and sell products to their wider audience, and that number is only expected to grow in the coming years. Whether you’re an everyday consumer or the CEO of a mega eCommerce company, staying on top of current patterns and trends will keep you prepared for whatever the world throws your way next.
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