We live in an era of rapid change, and marketers need to prepare for anything new happening in the consumer market. Keeping up with these trends in retail is either an advantage or a disadvantage if you run a business.
What will happen to the retail industry in 2023? The following are 5 of the most innovative solutions and technologies that have already transformed the sector.
Learn how to stay on top of the newest trends in the industry and beat your competitors by reading on.
Table of Contents
What is Digital Commerce?
Digital commerce refers to the buying and selling of goods and services using digital channels such as the internet and mobile networks.
Digital commerce offers customers the opportunity to buy goods and services through a self-service and interactive experience. Additionally, it is composed of the processes, people, and technologies for executing analytics, developing content, describing products, driving customer experience, acquiring customers, and coordinating pricing at each touchpoint in the customer purchasing journey.
Importance of Digital Commerce
There is no doubt that digital commerce will continue to grow, and it will soon become the primary means of making purchases for many people. In 2023, e-commerce is projected to make up 22% of total retail sales, up from 14.1% in 2019 and more than double what it was in 2017. While COVID-19 may contribute to the trend of online shopping, shoppers began doing so long before the virus spread. Among the advantages of digital commerce are 24/7 access and the lack of parking, traffic, and crowds that physical retail locations offer.
By generating revenue and value over an extended period, digital commerce enhances the benefits of eCommerce. But why should businesses adopt digital commerce?
Here are some points to show how important Digital Commerce has been over the past few decades:
Visibility to drive sales– The buying journey is now completely agnostic of the channel. Buyers prefer seamless transactions regardless of the channel. In addition, businesses have multiple opportunities to become visible to consumers through social media, online markets, brand websites, and mobile apps. Multiple sales opportunities arise as a result.
More personalization and better targeting- The more customer insights you get, the better you become at targeting and personalization. By using digital commerce, you can track the purchasing habits of every customer, so you can determine the most effective ways to promote your goods and services. In eCommerce, targeting gender, location, and cart abandonment rates becomes easy. When you suggest items for add-ons while purchasing a particular product, you won’t disturb the customer because you’re only suggesting add-ons to the customer.
Legitimacy is essential– If a brand is considered genuine and authentic to its brand, it can perform well, regardless of size or size. According to some research, nearly 70% of online consumers seek out a social proof before making a purchase. Through social media, reviews, and relevant content, digital commerce allows companies to gain authenticity.
Reach New Customers– The owner of a physical store might be able to reach a certain number of buyers. Further, they might create home delivery services, but their reach would remain limited. Digital Commerce, on the other hand, allows you to connect to new customers around the globe at a more affordable cost. Additionally, you can view diverse target markets and segments on a worldwide basis.
Digital Commerce Solutions & Services You Must Know
- Sekel Tech- The Sekel Tech digital commerce solution helps retailers increase in-store sales by using search, social media, and mobile. To assist business owners in bridging the online-offline consumer experience and seamlessly integrating the digital and physical worlds, it provides a suite of simple-to-use, rich content generation, and distribution tools through a single software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.
As compared to BigCommerce and Shopify, Sekel Tech is the all-in-one platform for running affiliate websites and digital commerce websites under one roof. Its greatest strength is its ability to be both powerful and easy to use, one of the biggest struggles of platforms that want to secure their users.
The future of retail is all about meeting consumer expectations. Brands are undergoing various costs to acquire, retain, and grow their lifetime value. Sekel Tech helps brands expand their market share through a low-cost, sustainable, and future-ready marketing and sales infrastructure. Sekel Tech is being able to drive the majority of your sales through your infrastructure instead of 3rd party e-commerce or aggregator websites, which sell your traffic and leads to your competitors.
The Sekel Tech solution balances complexity & simplicity to maximize a brand’s growth as it helps them develop digital commerce strategies. Sekel Tech provides its clients with end-to-end digital commerce services that transform the way they interact and transact with their customers on a multichannel basis. Also, Sekel Tech helps brands to get discovery and fulfill orders instantly, with higher margins.
There are some features included such as 1st Party Cookies Data, Low Customer Acquisition cost, Personalized Alerts & Recommendations, AI-powered Retail, and Zero Cost Advertising.
- WooCommerce – WooCommerce is the best single platform for running affiliate sites and e-commerce websites under one roof when compared to platforms like BigCommerce. BigCommerce and Shopify are better for eCommerce, but not significantly. It enables WordPress websites to be transformed into functional E-commerce sites. Additionally, some extensions enable integration with payment gateways, social media, email marketing, and 1-click selling.
There is no big issue with the setup; the user can find helpful tutorials on YouTube. Scalability is the problem. As the number of products and customers increases, users report it slowing down. It is free of charge. A few extensions have a price attached, and there are some expensive WordPress themes available. Some themes are free, so the user may not need those extensions.
WooCommerce is easy to use if users are familiar with WordPress. It only needs to be installed, added to the store, and set up. Those unfamiliar with WordPress will have trouble understanding the technical details. Users will need to buy hosting, install WordPress, set up their theme, and establish their plugins.
- Volusion – Founded in 1999, Volusion is an e-commerce solution provider that launched in 2002. It is an excellent solution for those selling physical products since automatic digital downloads after payment isn’t yet permitted.
Volusion offers an easy-to-use site builder with drag-and-drop functionality.
Several free themes are available, as well as several premium themes. The SSL certificate costs an additional $180. Other platforms provide this digital commerce service for free, so this is a significant extra cost.
As well as that, it lacks blogging capabilities, which is a big problem these days with SEO relying heavily on blogs. Plugins and a third-party service like WordPress are required. Dashboards are nicely structured, with all major action areas located in the top navigation bar. Managing inventory and marketing can also be done there. Marketing options include SEO, selling on Google, eBay, Amazon, and social media.
- Shopify – Shopify Inc. is the world’s largest e-commerce company. This is also its proprietary platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The performance of Shopify is marginally superior to BigCommerce in several areas, such as one-click upsells after purchase. In addition to their product offerings, many users prefer WordPress to Shopify because it has an affiliate revenue model and they’ve worked with many Shopify sites in the past.
Shopify’s drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to set up an online store and even beginners can get the hang of it within minutes. There are some features related to store management, such as reporting and analytics, staff management, order histories, and customer management.
A Shopify marketing module offers SEO, email marketing, social media integration, and a discount code. Inventory counts can be tracked in real-time, and products can be delisted when inventory runs low.
- BigCommerce – BigCommerce is an e-commerce platform that provides retailers with software as a service. Its platform offers small businesses and enterprises marketing and security, search engine optimization, hosting, and online store creation. This platform’s robust product search tool makes it the best option for larger retail brands. In addition, it’s a good choice if users want to start an e-commerce store, or if they already have a shop and want to expand their business. Several tools make it possible to succeed in any niche or industry.
If a user is not familiar with coding, they can use the user interface to design their online store, sell their products and market their brand without knowing how to code. Although it’s designed for those without much web development experience, it also allows tech-savvy people to customize the HTML and CSS.
Across the fly community, there are many designers and developers. Find an expert via the partner directory. BigCommerce users can get help with their store through live chat, phone support, and email. Customers can review their case history and reply to BC support.
Digital Commerce Trends
Artificial Intelligence(AI) – Digital Commerce integrates AI to send specific sales materials to customers based on data from users. The goal of artificial intelligence is to use advanced analysis and logic-based methods, incorporating machine learning, to interpret events, make automated decisions, and also take action based on those decisions. A few examples of AI in e-commerce include site search optimization, product recommendation, and personalizing the shopping journey.
Content and Commerce Omnichannel Strategy – Creating meaningful engagement with consumers across all channels is imperative for digital commerce professionals. Also, Create a consistent customer experience across all channels by serving the right content at the right time and place. By analyzing cross-channel data, cross-channel insights can also be gained about customers. Users’ content must inspire their customers to succeed in content commerce. As a result, their brand will become more visible to customers who share their content.
The API-based Digital Commerce – The API-based commerce model circumvents these problems by allowing different business systems to interact through the API. With a lightweight API, data is transmitted between separate systems – content, products, customer data, financials, and other systems exist in separate systems with no limiting code. To achieve omnichannel design, retailers need to develop custom layouts in much less time compared to implementing a coupled system to create the same results. The technology lets users ensure their customers are provided with relevant, contextual, and consistent product and content experiences on all their websites, apps, and other touchpoints.
Personalization- Personalization is the act of generating a particular, individualized interaction to maximize the user experience. User experience is optimized through the use of personalization, which creates a relevant, individualized interaction. It should be incorporated into the core of the user experience and influence every point of interaction. Product recommendations, browsing data, landing pages, and site searches should all work together to create a comprehensive picture of the visitor’s journey. By using ads tailored to the target audience’s online activity, users can give them a sense of personalization and make them feel that the brand understands them better.
Data analytics for customers- As “big data” has grown in popularity over the past decade, practices and technologies have emerged to ensure good digital commerce service while protecting privacy. A truly enhanced customer experience will require marketers to step back, and identify the data and technologies that will deliver the experiences their customers expect. Data analytics helps businesses make informed, data-driven decisions by understanding customer behaviour.
What Makes Sekel Tech’s Digital Commerce Solutions and Services Different from Others?
In digital commerce, Sekel Tech has provided content marketing, organic discovery, and customer engagement solutions to over many companies.
Sekel Tech is an all-in-one single marketing platform that offers companies innovative ways to own the digital commerce space, whether Kalyan Jewellers is driving revenue with first-party data or HD Supply is increasing revenue from search.
Sekel Tech Digital commerce services combine content with commerce to offer a great digital experience.
With Sekel Tech Commerce Experience Cloud, you can manage content and experiences while leveraging market-leading, AI-powered search, merchandising, and personalization.
