As 2020-2021 was hit by COVID-19, shopping behaviors weren’t left unchanged. All markets and sectors that were behind in the development of online shopping platforms were forced to accelerate their digital transformation. Consumers of 2021 are demanding that retail companies bring new customer experiences to maintain an accelerated pace of digital evolution.

Having an eCommerce business is no longer a luxury, it is an essential requirement that a retailer must have to bring in sales in the post-pandemic years. In this pandemic year alone, global eCommerce retail sales grew by more than 25%, emphasizing the importance of having a retail eCommerce business. In this blog, we are going to analyze some of the top eCommerce trends that will define the retail industry in 2022.

Consumer behaviors have changed drastically. Lower in-store traffic coupled with an increasing preference for powerful digital experience, customers are pivoting their demands of brands.

According to a study carried out by Statista on eCommerce platforms, this is the future of retail:

Due to the notorious changes in the consumer shopping behaviors, top ecommerce trends have emerged and will be the ones to set the new digital standards in the upcoming year.

1. Retail Is Now Omnichannel.

We all know that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated what would have been several years of e-commerce growth into a few months, and now the line between offline and online shopping has been blurred. A consumer may start choosing their products in digital commerce and checkout in the physical store. A Harvard Business Review report disclosed that 73% of shoppers used multiple channels and eCommerce sites for research, allowing customers to discover and buy new products.

Experts assure that in the coming years the physical retail store will continue to have its importance in the purchasing process for many consumers, but it must be complemented with many technological advances like augmented and virtual reality, drone delivery, new payment methods, among others that complete and improve the customer experience. A consumer survey showed that 61% of consumers rely on physical stores being open for them to purchase the goods they and their families need.

Omnichannel customers spent an average of 4% more in the physical store and 10% more online than single-channel customers. This suggests that deliberate searching beforehand led customers to greater in-store purchases. For example, customers who used 4+ channels spent 9% more in the store, compared to those who used just one channel.

Omnichannel is a plus for customer loyalty as well. Online shoppers attend 23% more to physical stores and are also more likely to recommend the brand to family and friends.

2. Augmented reality to improve the shopping experience.

Using augmented reality in your eCommerce store can give your business the edge over your competition. Gartner points out that in 2020, 100 million consumers used AR technology to buy online and suggests that 35% of buyers would buy more online if eCommerce had that virtual solution to test a product. Also, 71% of consumers would buy more in that store if they were allowed to experience the products through this technology.

With this technology, shoppers can better visualize the product they want to buy, providing them with more of an in-store experience. The retail industry is an example of the sectors that benefit from this technology. Zara has started to implement it through reality mannequins and a new eCommerce platform that shows life-size models wearing the brand’s latest clothes. This enables retailers to generate online sales since it is possible to buy the clothes through the app.

3. User experience will be extended to voice assistants.

Voice assistants in smart devices continue to improve their technology and are becoming more and more accessible to consumers. In the US, adult ownership of smart speakers has reached 55.6% in 2020 target=”_blank”.

The main focus of a smart speaker is for customers to search for stores and products, as well as writing notes, getting news, and more. According to Google, 42% of Europeans use voice search on a daily basis and voice shopping will reach $40 billion in the US by 2022. And there is a reason for that, a person can only type 40 per minute, while they can speak an average of 150 words in that same amount of time.

Devices specialized in voice assistance, such as Alexa, the Amazon Dot, or Google Home, are all gaining ground. And while Amazon continues to control the market with Alexa, with 75% of the market share, personal voice assistants will be a fundamental pillar in the future of digital trends.

Let’s not forget that having a voice assistant requires online store retailers to pay more attention to three fields: Content, SEO strategy, and UX, since voice assistants still crawl Google to make customer suggestions.

4. From eCommerce business to marketplace.

Ecommerce companies who are looking to take the next step in the game should look in the direction of a marketplace. A marketplace is a website or app where you can find different brands and people working as sellers, sharing the same online commerce platform. The best way to understand it is with well-known examples: Amazon, Mercadolibre, Linio, among others. These types of platforms help diversify the offer of your retail eCommerce business and improve profitability: today 41% of online sales happen in a marketplace.

The marketplace revolutionizing the internet is Amazon. Amazon has not only changed the way we shop but also the way we live. What began as a home delivery book distributor in 1994 called cadabra.com, has now become the second company in history to exceed a stock market value of more than a billion dollars.

Amazon.com consumers are extremely loyal, which has allowed the platform to have a monthly traffic average of almost 3.68 billion visitors in 2020. Also, a 2020 survey reported that 89% of consumers were more likely to buy products from Amazon than another eCommerce company. According to Convey study, these are the three main benefits that consumers find in Amazon:

5. Social commerce — Shopping on social media

Purchases via social media are gaining popularity as well. Facebook and Instagram are the most common social media platforms consumers use for purchasing online. According to an eMarketer study, the number of social buyers in the US is expected to rise from 60.6 million in 2019 to 108 million in 2025— that’s more than a 75% increase in mobile shopping over just a few years.

Social commerce is mostly driven by influencer marketing. From micro to macro, brands hire influencers to create friendly content that does not look like an ad – this is called user-generated content (UGC). UGC has been proven to be more effective in brand advertising, as 71% of US consumers said that the product recommendations from friends on social media were influential in their online purchasing decisions.

Retailers can reach these online shoppers by setting up a Facebook Shop and using it to create a shoppable Instagram page. These platforms also provide many tools for listing products and creating ads to help drive more sales. According to the 2021 Shopper Experience Index from Bazaarvoice, almost 1/3 of consumers in the US rely on social media to learn about new products, and 39% of 18- to 34-year-olds have already purchased at least once through social media.

These digital trends will continue to evolve, and it is most likely that such evolution will continue in the direction that omnichannel is pointing.

The fashion industry and the textile sector have made great progress in recent years, betting on sustainable fashion and a more circular economy. Much is said about that, but do you actually know what ethical fashion is?

Sustainable fashion and ethical clothing consists of making clothes and accessories from materials that come from nature and even waste materials – as long as they can be recycled – such as plastic bottles or paper. These sustainable materials are used to manufacture new fabrics that allow making garments.

In addition, sustainable fashion is beneficial for our health. Ecological garments, or “eco-garments”, are made with natural materials such as organic cotton, bamboo, algae, tencel (cellulosic fiber), nettles, fish skin (used for shoes and bags) and natural dyes that give color to the sustainable fabrics. All these materials are free of toxic and dangerous chemicals, which prevents allergies and skin irritations, in addition to the low environmental impact.

The fashion industry has an important role to play in approaching global sustainability challenges, both because of its impact and its influence, but it is notoriously under-regulated on ethical practices and is the second most polluting industry.

Luckily that is starting to change. In Europe and the US, governments are considering new policies and regulations that could add sustainable practices, improve the wages and working conditions of garment workers and transform the fast fashion industry. Pressure to change is coming from investors, consumers and even brands themselves. Companies are responding with social and environmental commitments to do better.

But are they actually making a difference?

One way for fashion to reduce its environmental impact is by scaling circular business models, through which companies employ a range of strategies to reduce deadstock fabrics and recycled materials to make more efficient use of resources. Measures such as the EU’s carbon border tax will promote circular fashion by making the economics of onshore recycling and other sustainable practices more attractive.

How to Impulse the Future of Circularity?

A more circular fashion industry requires collective efforts in which fashion companies, customers and all participants in the value chain collaborate. The priority must be to set circular strategies, low environmental impacts and tackle scalability challenges.

One company that has embraced ethical fashion design is Dai Wear, a London-based company which employs recycled materials and sustainable fabrics to produce performance wear. The company uses biodegradable yarns for seams and air-dried fabrics to reduce washing needs.

Another American brand that is committed to sustainability is Christy Dawn, a fashion brand that creates vintage pieces with a big 70s influence. All clothes are manufactured in a very limited quantity, the brand uploads about 2-3 new pieces a week and are ethically made by artisans in Los Angeles. The creator Christy Dawn is highly committed to low environmental impact, so in addition to using deadstock fabrics, she makes sure to have fair trade conditions through long-term commitments with the manufacturers, suppliers and artisans who create the clothes.

How can you engage consumers to overcome stigmas and embrace sustainable practices?

As consumers become more engaged with sustainable fashion and ethical practices, circularity will be the key that unlocks the door to more sustainable fashion brands. While circularity is winning fans among some consumer groups, recycled materials still have some negative connotations. Nevertheless, consumers are willing to return recent purchases with the incentive of a refund.

Although social and environmental commitment of sustainable fashion is quite clear, by taking advantage of deadstock fabrics, plastic bottles,organic cottons and other natural resources, as well as fair trade conditions, these are the positive impacts of sustainable fashion brands:

Resources:

Ellen MacArthur Foundation

Clean Clothes Campaign

Ethical Time

Business Of Fashion