In today’s competitive e-commerce market, using the latest e-commerce technology (think AI, automations, platform integrations, and customer personalization) is no longer a luxury. Staying in the know about not just what your competitors are doing now but also what’s ahead is essential to growing your online business.
But there’s a lot of information on e-commerce trends out there, and it can feel overwhelming to wade through. Use this guide to help you discover how the newest tech is reshaping the industry and driving innovation, plus the best digital commerce tools and technologies to improve your customer experience and obtain operational efficiency to grow your online retail business.
Top Trends in E-Commerce Platforms and Integrations
Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all e-commerce systems. With nearly 50% of internet users becoming online shoppers by 2029, today’s platforms need to offer you a solid foundation while remaining flexible and allowing you to scale.
Some of the biggest upgrades in platforms and integrations:
- Modular Commerce: Instead of using a monolithic system, like most e-commerce sites have done in the past, using modular architecture allows you to select the tools that actually serve your business (like CRMs or Product Information Management systems) to create a boutique structure for your site that works specifically for you and your needs. Plus, you can use these modules as interchangeable, independent pieces, so you can add or remove them as your business changes.
- APIs and Headless Commerce: With headless commerce, you use APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to allow your customers to interact with any of your storefronts (your app, website, or even social media), while keeping your backend logic (where your price, products, and inventory live) separate. This lets your customers shop where and how they want while seamlessly keeping your business connected.
- Social Shopping Integrations: Turning your social content into a shoppable experience through direct integrations with your social media platforms (Instagram and TikTok) captures your most “online” customers and helps your business get discovered by a larger audience.
Digital Commerce Tools for Your E-Toolbelt
Speaking of integration, there are plenty of tools that you can easily integrate into your existing platform to boost efficiency or improve customer communication.
The most popular e-commerce tools to implement:
- Email Marketing Automation: Tools like Mailchimp make it simple to send emails to your customers, and, best of all, all of the top e-commerce platforms already have a native integration. Using this integration, you can automatically use your email lists to keep your customers updated with your latest news and offers to make sure you stay top-of-mind.Bonus Tip: Over 70% of online shopping carts get abandoned. Using an automated email tool allows you to send an abandoned cart reminder (and bring your customer back to your site) without doing anything manually.
- CRMs: Many Customer Relationship Management systems (HubSpot and others) have automated features to make connecting your data and tools across your business easier.
- Help Desk: Tools like Freshdesk and Zendesk have automations and AI-enabled support that allow you to track, prioritize, and resolve customer service issues easily.
Personalization and AI in E-Commerce
Today, when you’re talking “e-commerce technology,” AI definitely enters the chat. These engines are what give a general shopping experience the extra juice to create a highly personalized shopping environment. In fact, it’s become so prevalent that 73% of customers already expect this level of personalization.
Here’s how AI helps your business through personalization:
- “Just for You” Product Recommendations: AI can sort through a lot of data, including purchase history, browsing data, and even real-time clicks, to give your customers super-personalized product suggestions in a variety of places (like home/product pages or even marketing emails) to really boost conversion rates and order values.
- Super-Powered Search Tools: Giving your search capabilities an AI supercharge leads to highly relevant results. AI-powered site search tools can understand user intent to deliver much more specific results that are dynamically ordered based on user preferences.
- Even Higher-Tech Search: For an even more e-commerce technology-heavy shopping experience, there are computer vision technologies that allow for visual search (uploading an image to find similar products) or, with voice commerce, the use of an AI assistant can enable purchases through voice commands.
Automating E-Commerce Technology With AI
Now that you know how AI can help improve your customer experience, let’s dig into how you can streamline your operations through automations. From an around-the-clock boost to your customer service to targeted marketing campaigns, you can use AI in a variety of ways to automate your business operations.
These e-commerce automations free up your time (and your team’s) for other big-picture things, like customer relationships, to help you grow your business.
How to automate your e-commerce business with AI:
- Automate Your Customer Service: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can resolve up to 80% of the most frequently asked inquiries (think checking order status or starting returns) and can be accessed 24/7 and on demand. This saves time for your customer service team (up to two hours and 20 minutes a day!), allowing them to focus on more complex demands, and ups your customer satisfaction by providing instant answers.Bonus Tip: Chatbots can also suggest products and even collect customer data that can be used for later contact or marketing emails.
- Inventory Assistance: AI can use seasonality, market trends, and forecasts to help predict demand and optimize stock levels, streamlining your inventory logistics.
- Marketing Support: Whether you need some extra help in creating targeted campaigns or delivering them, AI can:
- Develop personalized marketing email sequences, like loyalty campaigns and abandoned cart reminders
- Create programmatic advertising plans
Bonus Tip: AI can help you tailor your messaging, target the right customers, and help you deliver your message at the optimal time.
- Dial in Your Marketing Strategy: One more extremely valuable way that AI can help your business is with your overall marketing strategy. Instead of combing through your customer data on your own, AI tools can help you discover insights you may normally miss. Blending that information with forecasted behaviors and trends, AI can help you craft a successful overall marketing strategy.
- Content Creation: You can use generative AI to either optimize the content you have or even to create something new.
Here’s just a sample of what you can use it to generate:
- Product descriptions
- Content variations for A/B testing
- Marketing copy
- Catalog content
Don’t Forget About Mobile in Your E-Commerce Technology Strategy
With smartphones accounting for 77% of online retail traffic, your site’s mobile commerce technology has to be up to snuff. Your mobile shopping experience should be seamless and fast, and load perfectly on smaller screens.
Some special technology considerations for mobile shopping:
- Augmented Reality (AR) Features: This tech allows your customers to virtually “try on” products or place your products (think furniture) using the front- and back-facing cameras on their phones.
- Digital Wallets: Payment methods like Apple Pay and Google Pay will handle 61% of global e-commerce transactions by 2027. Prioritizing this convenient way to pay will help you stand out in crowded online markets.
Staying on top of current e-commerce technology doesn’t have to feel like a full-time job. Use this guide as a jumping-off point for getting your online retail business up-to-date and future-proofed. Need an extra hand? We’re here to help you take on tech updates to grow your business now and for whatever tomorrow brings.
We offer free consultations and fully customizable plans, perfect for any budget.
