eCommerce trends in 2021

eCommerce boomed in 2020 due to the Covid crisis, and it looks like Australians turned their mobile online shopping into a long-lasting habit. In its February eCommerce update, Australia Post stated that “online shopping is off to a strong start in 2021. National online purchases in January 2021 grew 44% year-on-year (YOY) but couldn’t compete with December’s record-breaking numbers.”

Here are 4 trends you should know about to stay ahead of the curve in 2021:

1/ Search with voice assistants

Voice assistants such as Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Samsung’s Bixby are HOT. Definitely consider how your clients would phrase their search if they were to use their voice.

For instance, if you own a party supplies eStore, maybe target sentences such as “What is the best party supplies store in Australia?” or “Party supplies near me.”

2/ Social shopping

How much time do you spend on your mobile phone each day? Social shopping implies allowing your customers to purchase your products directly from Facebook or Instagram, simply by clicking on your post. Easy!

It’s very clear that in today’s marketplace it’s important to have a multi-channel approach which includes social media. 

If you’re only using eBay or Amazon, the customers are not yours, so you cannot gather valuable data required to build a successful brand. Using a multi-channel approach gives you far more options where you can market to your own customer base regularly.  

When retailers implement multi-channel marketing plans, customer retention increases by 91%. While there are many reasons for this, the largest is the fact that 9 out of 10 customers want cross-channel ecommerce, and they’re willing to stick with the brands that offer it.

3/ Sustainable eCommerce practices

This is especially important with younger customers, who are more keen on changing their consumption habits to reduce environmental impact than baby boomers. Consider reducing packaging for instance.

Read our article Green Packaging for more ideas.

4/ Make the shipping part easy for your customer… and yourself!

Discover your new best friend 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗔𝗣𝗜, that enables your website to:

➡️ Provide ‘real-time’ shipping costs at checkout

➡️ Automate fulfillment of checkout orders

➡️ Display ‘real-time’ tracking to your customers

➡️ Generate PDF shipping labels for easy despatch of goods

➡️ Provide merchants with competitively priced shipping services

Things just got a whole lot easier…

Smart Send provides web store owners that are developing a site themselves free Shopify and WooCommerce plugins.