E-commerce Trends That Will Dominate 2018

 Voice Search Compatibilities

As Amazon Echo, Google Home, and other voice-activated devices grow in popularity, voice search can become the popular method of search. 400th of millennials are already exploitation voice search before creating a web purchase.

It’s essential to optimize your business for voice search in 2018, otherwise, you might lose the overwhelming majority of shoppers United Nations agency prefer to search through voice-activated devices.

Walmart created it possible for shoppers to order any of their things by voice on the Google express, and within the future, they’re attending to permit shoppers to place in-store pickup orders via Google Home. Target,

Costco, Kohl’s, Staples, Walgreens and lots of alternative stores are within the method of making similar choices for shoppers.

Since voice search is 3x additional likely to be native, it’s also vital to make sure your business listing is updated on Google to achieve those native searchers (with correct hours, associate degree up-to-date address, photos and reviews,

Automation and Chatbots for Online Ordering

With 1.3 billion folks on Facebook messenger, it is sensible to require advantage of chatbots for promoting, customer service, and sales.
With e-commerce, you'll be able to take it a step additional.
Domino’s uses its messenger bot, Dom, for full-menu ordering. The implications of this are huge: when quick and easy are priorities for shoppers, Domino’s can beat out all the competition.
Plus, chatbot ordering is a chance for Domino’s to cater to its audience in a new manner, proving itself to be a useful and forward-thinking company.
If it is sensible for your business, I’d suggest making a chatbot like Dom whereas it’s still an open field. in a few years, this might become a thought mainstream of ordering, and lose a number of its current novelty power

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

Augmented reality and virtual reality are planning to gain some serious traction in 2018. Eventually, it'll become commonplace for corporations to offer AR and VR choices.
Houzz, a home design and interior decorator company, found AR created their shoppers 11x additional likely to buy a product, and also unbroken them within the app a pair of.7x longer.
IKEA Place is an augmented reality app that lets shoppers expertise, experiment and share adding Ikea product into any space. product are in 3D and faithful scale, therefore shoppers will see whether or not the furnishings or accent can work and what it might seem like in context.
Ultimately, these added advantages are definitely worth the initial investment in new technology. As e-commerce grows, shoppers are planning to obtain from corporations that allow them the choice of visually testing out the product before purchase.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency

Cryptocurrencies are more popular than ever with online retailers. Microsoft, Etsy, Shopify, and Stripe all support Bitcoin.
Rachel Jacobs thinks they'll be a game changer in 2018, that she puts all the way down to edges equivalent to advanced transactional security and just about zero risks of payment frauds.
However, the e-commerce trade has been treading more carefully once it involves Blockchain, the peer-to-peer encryption technology underlying cryptocurrencies.
“A few e-commerce giants are quietly experimenting with Blockchain,” Rachel points out. “Alibaba is presently victimization Blockchain to trace the origin of food merchandise and cut back the number of counterfeit products being sold-out. And Amazon recently registered 3 cryptocurrency internet domains.”
Rachel believes that Blockchain, that manages transactions and currencies while not the interference of central authorities equivalent to banks, has the potential to revolutionize the complete e-commerce trade and can be used for tasks equivalent to order fulfilment, security, and instant order chase within the future.

Machine Learning and AI

You come across machine learning and AI a day. you only won't know it.
Take Netflix: instead of dividing viewers by age, location, or gender, Netflix created 1,300 “taste communities.” Netflix makes recommendations on the similar movie or TV show preferences supported what is preferred for the viewers in this community. this is the future of machine learning.
Other e-commerce platforms can presently see personal edges from using machine learning and algorithms to uncover that content they must deliver to that audience. within the future, content is divided by machine learning and AI, thus customers area unit fed only the content (or products), they’re most interested in.