Social trends to look out for in 2016

1st December 2015

With competition so strong in today’s eCommerce market, brands need to ensure that their online presence not only meets customer’s expectations, but also exceed them.

Customers are now relying on the use of online and mobile to engage with brands more than ever. Due to this increased activity, brands will need robust eCommerce strategies across all customer touch points to succeed. It’s time for brands to shift away from traditional push messaging and be truly customer focused.

With eCommerce sales accounting for $100’s of billions worldwide, what can brands do to ensure they get a healthy share of this revenue? These are my predictions, I'd love to hear yours or understand whether you think mine are relevant or rubbish!?

Contextual Shopping

Personalisation is old news. Although it is still important, brands will need to focus on contextual based experiences to stay competitive. Personalisation offers customer’s products/services based on past interactions whilst contextual commerce offers customer’s products/services based on their needs. Contextual shopping blends online and offline experiences effortlessly. This is due to new customer-centric technology, allowing brands to anticipate customer’s needs, providing them with what they need when they need it.

Brands Need To Become Proactive

Similar to the previous point, brands will need to engage customers in different ways online to keep their attention and eventually lead to a conversion. There has been a significant rise in online retailers offering live chat to customers who are on their website to support their shopping experience and offer help. Online retailers are also promoting deals that are closely relevant to the customer’s buying habits to increase engagement. Online retailers will now have to be more proactive when customers enter their online store, they cannot wait for the customer to act or they will get left behind.

Mobile Commerce Will Continue To Grow

The importance of mobile commerce is not going to go anywhere, in fact, in all recent reports it is predicted the amount of sales done through mobile will continue to rise. Brands need to create a synergy with their online, offline and mobile experiences. If a customer is in store and a product isn’t in their size, they should be able to scan the barcode and order it through their mobile. If a customer has purchased jeans recently from a retailer, if they are physically near the store an advert should be served to the customer promoting any current offers on jeans.

Retailers Are Recognising The Importance of Their Online Services

Brands are beginning to staff their online services as they do their physical stores. Think about your favourite brand for a second, and then think about how you engage with them from their website to their social media channels. All online services now have a human element to them and brands need to continue to focus on improving this as they would offline services.

The Importance of Real Time Analytics

No longer are brands reviewing analytics from the past week, they are now viewing customer behaviour in real time. With real-time actionable analytics, brands can see what their customers are doing, where they came from and if they can offer support to keep the customer engaged. Programmatic advertising is also allowing brands to bid for ad space in real time based on very specific requirements and ultimately serve better adverts to customers.