Since 2024 is fast-approaching, it’s high time we look into and elucidate e-commerce Marketing Trends for 2024!

Trends in the e-commerce industry keep on evolving, based on what customers buy, how they shop and their response towards different strategies.

What will work today, might not work tomorrow. That’s just how things work with e-commerce marketing.

And, being familiar with new, upcoming marketing strategies is utterly invaluable to get ahead of your competitors.

Keep on reading to know the latest e-commerce Marketing Trends for 2024.

1. Chatbot: An Ultimate Guide

Chatbots are trending across websites nowadays and look like they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon!

What is Chatbot?

A chatbot is nothing but a computer program, designed to streamline communication with visitors. It provides the right information to the user, thereby enhancing the customer service of a website.

Not just that, a Chatbot can also act as a personal shopping assistant that advises or recommends products in a different styles to different customers.

For Example, a Chatbot can recommend a specific product/service to the customer, based on their navigation tracking. Just like a human representative, it can also register a call back request or create a sales/support ticket for the visitor.

A chatbot is developed with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is what makes these bots learn new things and understand human speech efficiently.

2. Advanced Product Visualization

Poor product visualization is one of the potential reasons of cart abandonment.

After all, product visualization helps customers to get a closer look at the product and make a firm purchase decision. Seamless Zoom in and Zoom out feature is available on almost all e-commerce stores nowadays.

But what next?

In 2024, product visualization will go one step further with 3D imaging:

• AI analytics tools will be able to track the way users interact with 2D or 3D images embedded into product pages of your website.

• Important metrics collected from this analysis is displayed on a heat map.

• The map will show points of customer interest, dwell time and also the best angles for thumbnail product positioning. These metrics will help you manage product catalogues better and boost sales thereby.

For example, suppose the metrics from AI analytics tool tells you that around 1,00,000 visitors spent a generous amount of time to study the detailing on a certain dress. With such valuable data, the marketing team can further revolutionize consumer interest.

• These insights will help e-commerce retailers to highlight bestsellers and improve product visualization even better.

Zoom feature along with AI analytics tools can certainly change the way e-commerce retailers showcase their products.

3. AR (Augmented Reality) is the Key!

Augmented Reality has to be the biggest hit in e-commerce marketing for 2024.

AR works by creating a realistic environment for the buyer, where they can try out different outfits or makeup looks they’re planning to purchase. Thus, helping them make an informed decision.

• One great example of AR implementation is Lenskart, an Indian Eyewear e-commerce store- where you get to try different frames in 3D. Your face is detected and a virtual face is created right away, so you can try out hundreds of frames and choose for yourself.

AR is definitely one of the game changers when it comes down to marketing trends!

4. Virtual Reality for that Tester!

Virtual Reality is actually quite different than AI.

VR is a simulation of an environment or 3D image, created by a computer. Customers get to see and experience the products or activities, like its real!

• Few travel companies have already implemented VR in order to provide a 360-degree “tour test” for their customers.

VR marketing can really boost your sales like anything if used in an efficient way.

5. Personalized Experience is a Must

To witness sales gains, every e-commerce website needs to provide a personalized experience to the customer.

Personalization is all about how any e-commerce store appeals and targets a customer when they visit your website.

The biggest challenge here is customer segmentation and identifying behavior with the help of customer’s browsing history.

Intelligent machine-learning algorithms will help online stores to overcome this challenge. Product recommendations engine also play a huge role in this marketing strategy.

Nowadays, customers expect to receive offers customized especially for them, as it will directly address what they are looking for. Such a personalized experience is much better than receiving mass mail with general offers.

But, creating this personalized experience is time-consuming and challenging. That’s when machine-learning and AI comes in. These technologies can filter heaps of data, find out what is important for the customer and create a personalized experience.

With the help of AI and machine learning, 2024 is going to witness more personalized e-commerce websites.

6. Voice Search is changing SEO

We all know Smart Voice Assistants are hot in trend today!

More and more people are now using Google Assistant or Siri to ask any question. Result? Poor search engine results.

The traditional typed query in Google produces myriads of result pages, whereas Voice Search gets far fewer results. This is why e-commerce websites need to optimize their content for “Voice Search”.

How to do that?

• Make your site faster:If your website takes more than 5 seconds to load, you are likely to lose visitors. Mobile users are even less patient. As more and more customers use voice search app, it has to come up with good results within seconds. If your website is slow-loading, the voice search app won’t be able to fetch information quickly. Meaning, it will ignore and pass up your site.

You can increase your website load time by taking a reliable hosting plan.

• Prepare Voice Search Queries: When people type their queries on Google, the sentences are generally short. For example, “End of Season Sale deals” or likewise. But in voice search, users will use full phrases or sentences such as, “Alexa, what are best End of Season Sale deals in India today?” So, you need to optimize your site for voice searches with long-tail keywords, questions (phrases and sentences) related to your eCommerce business.
• Provide a good mobile experience.

This way, you can get ahead of your competitors and boost your conversion rates.

Websites providing voice-based services to the users- this is definitely something to look forward to in 2024.

7. Go Get Social

The year 2024 is estimated to see around 2.77 billion social network users from all across the globe. That alone is enough for us to understand the significance of social strategy.

Facebook and LinkedIn are just not going to be enough; online stores need to up their game!

Soon, social media is going to overtake search engine, when it comes to product research.

• Pinterest and Instagram are already working on this strategy.

• Just as Pinterest launched their “Lens” feature (a visual camera search function) in 2017, it has doubled their user base in a very short period of time. People are loving to carry out visual searches on Pinterest each and every day!

Similarly, all e-commerce stores really need to think on how such social platforms can help them with their brand and product exploration.

8. Quick Checkouts are always appreciated

Streamlining the checkout process and making them as simple as possible is a must for every e-commerce website there.

You don’t want to lose your customers to the competitors who provide them with quick checkouts.

Cart abandonment happens mostly because of a bad checkout experience and also due to extra costs added later.

Here are few tips to avoid this issue:

• Don’t force customers to create an account

• Provide Auto-fill fields

• Keep it simple with One Page Checkout

• Make use of proper input fields

9. Mobile-First e-commerce

With the increasing rate of smartphone users, making your website mobile-friendly has to be your top priority.

Right in the early stage of website development, e-commerce stores need to implement a responsive design.

What exactly should be done? Well, the mobile checkout process needs to be quick and user-friendly.

• Google poll tells us that the top reason of users’ frustration is because of slow load time on their mobile phones. 75% people abandoned the site when load time was more than 5 seconds!

• Around 79% shoppers are less likely to return back to a website with poor performance.

Improving your site’s speed will not only enhance users’ experience but also help your site’s SEO.

In 2024, e-commerce websites need to be as fast as possible, across any browser or any device.

• You can also go for AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) framework, which will help you create fast mobile pages across mobile phones.

• Use of AMP can effectively boost conversions, decrease bounce rates and also increase click-through rates in search engines.

10. Video Content

High-quality visual representation of the products is always great to let people know its quality and capabilities.

Uploading HD videos and visuals will appeal to more customers and allow them to get a better idea about the product. Thus, increasing conversion rates.

Conclusion:

In near future, e-Commerce is only going to get bigger and better with all the new marketing trends brewing up!

E-commerce store owners really need to abide by these new emerging strategies to provide value-oriented products/services to their customers.

Better the customer experience, higher will be your sales rate!