In 2015, e-commerce is all about relationships: service, shipping, visibility and personalization. From now on, measurable success in an e-commerce business will rely on finding new ways to reach, engage and keep your customers happy. Staying one step ahead of these shifts, and your competitors, will help lead to both retention and revenue. There are a few things I see in the digital landscape that will continue to have massive effect on an e-commerce business as a whole, and if you do not have them in place now, you must start thinking about the how. In other words: they’re not even trends anymore, but necessary for your business’ growth:

Mobile Experience
This has been on the top of everyone’s to-do-list for a few years now, so this will be no news: your site needs to be mobile-friendly. A good mobile experience is a huge part of the buyer’s journey – more consumers spend time researching products and making a decision to purchase on mobile devices than ever before. One third of e-commerce purchases are happening on mobile devices. Firstly, being visible in Google’s index, having clear navigation allows your customers to move between the awareness, consideration, and decision stages of the buyer’s journey with ease. The customer is both savvy and demanding, and wants instant access to information. If someone is not satisfied with their browsing and/or shopping experience, they’ll simply move on to the next ranked page in the Google results. Google’s mobile-friendly label will have even more impact. Google will start to take the responsiveness and ease of use of your mobile site into account for rankings. No matter how good your SEO or marketing is, if you’re not mobile-friendly, you will lose valuable ground.

E-commerce merges with brick-and-mortar aka The Omni-Channel Experience
Online shopping behaviour is not a linear process. As a retailer, you must be consistent and accessible across all channels, at all times. This means that your online brand experience must be consistent with all other marketing and purchasing channels – social networks, online stores, and brick-and-mortar stores. It’s clear, every channel your business appears on needs to be optimized and maximized. To have an integrated approach to social content in your channels is no longer optional – it’s crucial. Consumers expect not just a cohesive, unified brand experience across channels, but also the ability to segment different parts of this singular buyer’s journey through multiple platforms.

Shipping and Delivery
Growing bigger online means having the small luxury to ask “can we keep up with order demands?” – the key word being demand. The online shopper is demanding because they know they can shop at any time of the day, from anywhere. Your online shop must be able to meet these demands, or you’ll end up losing their business. A good system to gather and sort overnight or early orders must be seamless to ensure you’re able to fill those orders as soon as possible. If you can’t compete with this, you need to find other ways to stand out from your competitors. Good value, loyalty programs or excellent customer service. Always be transparent.

I know this all sounds theoretical, so I will post a few simple examples of how to implement this in your day-to-day operative work, as well as your digital strategy.