Businesses must adapt to an ever-changing world to keep growing and keep up with their consumer demands and competition. Entrepreneurs should expect several industry shifts going into 2022 due to changing customer priorities, new technologies, societal movements, and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Below are a few of these trends.
Virtual and Augmented Reality
Online shopping helps the consumer save effort and time. However, there is often a considerable difference between the service or product displayed on a website and delivered. Virtual and augmented reality solves this problem by allowing the buyer to get a better feel of the product and how it will fit into their everyday lifestyle, increasing their confidence in making intelligent buying decisions.
According to a recent survey, approximately 71% of consumers prefer e-commerce businesses implementing augmented reality shopping. Recent research also predicts roughly 120,000 stores will integrate augmented reality into their shopping routine in 2022.
Mobile Commerce
The goal of any business is to reach customers, wherever they may be. In recent years, people have been spending a lot of time on their phones. Companies can take advantage of the evolving mobile commerce and make great strides.
They can use it to entice customers away from massive competitors. Companies with efficient e-commerce strategies gain an advantage over other businesses, especially since the pandemic.
Chatbots
Customer service is crucial in both large and mid-sized e-commerce organizations. However, few businesses can hire hundreds of customer service agents to solve customer queries. The last few years have seen significant advancement in chatbots that could simplify customer service operations.
Incorporating chatbots into customer service enables a business to suggest product recommendations, collect feedback from surveys, and answer frequently asked questions. Such tasks simultaneously promote faster and more accessible communication with numerous customers, providing personalized responses to customer queries.
Voice-Search Shopping
The general public increasingly prefers to speak directly to their convenient voice-enabled gadgets. Research predicts the worth of the voice-assistant-speaker business to rise to approximately $4 billion by 2022.
The study also projects voice shoppers to increase by 55% and the voice shopping market value to hit $40 billion in 2022. Therefore, e-commerce business owners should apply voice-search-optimization tactics to rank for key phrases and words that accurately suit voice-search queries.