The growth of the ecommerce industry in India and across the globe is showing no signs of slowing down. From $14 billion in 2014 to the projected growth towards $350 billion by 2030, the industry has created opportunities for businesses of all sizes and scales to start selling online.
All the buzz that you have heard around ecommerce has two touch-points. On one side, customers are shifting more towards online buying. While on the other, there are online and offline sellers stepping up their game by selling online and providing their customers with a smooth shopping experience.
You can easily find Direct to Customer (D2C) brands paving their way to becoming popular brands in the country. With the changing consumer behavior, there has been an exponential growth of the Internet-user base, thereby allowing direct selling brands to gain momentum alongside. The search interest for D2C brands has risen by 533%, making the growth projections of the D2C market in India to reach the $100 billion mark by 2025.
In the ever-changing ecommerce landscape, business owners need to know about and adapt to the latest ecommerce trends. Want to follow the trends to enable significant online business growth? Let’s take a look at the top seven ecommerce trends for 2022:
- Social commerce
- Mobile commerce
- Buy Now Pay Later (or BNPL)
- Loyalty programs
- Focused branding
- Community building
- Personalized customer experience
Let’s get into the details
Ecommerce trends for 2022
Social commerce
The rise of social commerce or social selling is backed by the exponential growth of social media users over the last few years. As of January 2021, there are 448 million social media users in the country, which also accounts for a 21% rise of users between 2020 and 2021, says the stats.
The entire customer journey – from finding the product to making a purchase, happens on social media. From the business point of view, it also provides customers with a path to interact with brands they buy from. A reliable report also confirms that 78% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand after having a satisfying experience on social media platforms.
If you haven’t started with social selling, now is the time to make your brand stand out and sell more via social media
Recommended Read: All About Social Selling
Mobile commerce (or mCommerce)
Mobile commerce, as the name suggests, is a process that enables people to buy or sell both products and services using a mobile device (smartphone or tablet). This location-agnostic benefit has made Indian consumers respond strongly towards mCommerce.
As per research, 83% of people who own a smartphone buy using their mobile devices. The rise of mobile phone usage has led many business owners to shift towards mobile-first business strategies.
From allowing you to reach more customers to enhancing customer lifetime value, mobile commerce can provide you with tons of opportunities.
Buy Now Pay Later
You might have heard about this solution as a way to pay for things later instead of paying the entire amount upfront. As a short-term financing option, it allows customers to divide the purchase value and pay in no-cost or low-cost EMIs depending on the chosen repayment tenure.
Since BNPL promotes affordability amongst the masses, its growth projections as a payment mode paint a bright picture for the future. As per stats, adoption of BNPL is expected to rise at 28.9% CAGR during 2021-28.
Since customers have many reasons to love BNPL, ecommerce retailers in India have also started adopting this payment solution for reduced cart abandonment rates and higher average order value. Besides this, it also creates a seamless shopping experience for customers to provide them with a flexible way to pay during checkout.
To set up Buy Now Pay Later on your store, read this: All You Need to Know About Buy Now Pay Later in India
Loyalty programs
In most niches of the e-commerce industry, the customer acquisition cost has risen and made brands focus more on developing long-term customer relationships. Most D2C brands can be found competing for customer attention in different ways, one of which is offering loyalty programs.
Popularly known as rewards, ecommerce loyalty programs are an effective way to retain customers for repeat purchases. While the rewards can be anything from cashback, discounts, or next-purchase coupons, it helps cut down marketing budgets for new customer acquisitions.
As per the research carried out in this regard, shoppers engaged in loyalty programs of different brands spend 12-18% more in a year than non-loyalty program members.
Bonus Tip: Another way to build a loyal customer base is to offer an uninterrupted payment experience on your ecommerce store.
Focused branding
If you think that branding does not hold much importance in growing sales, you must know this:
80% of consumers prefer researching things online before making a purchase (Source). What stands out amidst the clutter is a strong brand. When you focus more on branding the right way, you are most likely to get organic leads and retain customers.
Hence, instead of sacrificing on brand building, do focused branding and make your business reach your audience’s minds whenever they want to buy products/services you sell.
Community building
Have you seen customers joining brand-specific communities, online groups, and forums?
Many D2C brands follow this approach to interact with their target audience, listen to their queries, and solve their problems. Such proactive interactions help them know their audience better and solve their major concerns.
Personalized customer experience
The growth of a brand relies heavily on the solutions it offers to solve customers’ problems. The truth is – each customer might be looking for a product specific to his/her problems. Hence, it is important to personalize the overall customer experience in the online retail space.
Grow more with the latest ecommerce trends using Paytm Payment Gateway
Irrespective of the ecommerce trends you would like to follow for business growth, payment processing is integral to them all. At the end of the day, you would want your customers to pay you for the purchases without facing any inconvenience. Payment security, ease of making payments at the checkout, or bank offers/EMI option, you want to benefit your customers in different ways possible. It is where the selection of a reliable payment gateway matters a lot.
Switch to Paytm Payment Gateway for the exclusive benefits it offers for online selling. Several reasons confirm it to be the best payment gateway in India, including:
- Trusted by leading unicorns in India
- 100% online onboarding of merchants
- Quick and easy integration
- Maximum payment sources supported, including Paytm Wallet and Paytm Postpaid
- Bank offers and EMI support
- 0% MDR on UPI and RuPay transactions
- Next day settlements into your bank account
Recommended Read: What Makes Paytm Payment Gateway the Best in India?
It’s all about the customers you want to sell to
Ecommerce businesses have their fair share of challenges to tackle. But with new trends come new and exciting opportunities for growth. The key to running a successful ecommerce business in India in 2022 is to keep an eye on the latest ecommerce trends and follow what suits your brand the most.
The more you pay attention to the customer’s journey with your brand, the better you can serve them beyond the purchase.
