22 Experts Reveal: The Top Ecommerce Trends in 2022
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For online retailers, the start of a new year means new ecommerce trends to navigate.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ecommerce industry has undergone monumental changes over the past two years. While this situation has certainly created its fair share of challenges and disruptions, it has also generated opportunities for brands to connect with their customers in new ways.
All of this rapid global change has also caused new ecommerce trends to emerge and others to accelerate.
Biggest 2022 Ecommerce Trends to Watch
From multichannel customer support and the growth of subscription models to video marketing and a renewed interest in brand storytelling, ecommerce experts are looking ahead to some truly exciting changes in 2022.
We interviewed 22 of these top ecommerce experts to ask them to share their predictions about the biggest trends that retailers should be prepared to leverage in the new year.
Below, these experts answer the question: What are the top ecommerce trends for 2022?
22 Ecommerce Experts Answer: “What are the top ecommerce trends for 2022?”
Our chosen ecommerce experts share their best advice for ecommerce business owners looking to take advantage of these key trends in 2022 and beyond.
Lily Ray
Amsive Digital
Senior Director, SEO + Head of Organic Research
Google announced a number of new products and features at its annual Search On 2021 summit that are worth noting for ecommerce retailers. For one, Google Lens will become "shoppable" in the sense that Google Lens users can take a photo of a product and instantly shop for that product on Google.
Google also expanded upon its Shopping Graph, which is powered by merchant feeds and helps them to display various attributes about products directly in Google's search results. Any ecommerce retailers not leveraging Google's Merchant Center feeds (which are now used for both organic and paid listings) are missing out on this massive opportunity.
Also, Google's Local Product Inventory Feeds mean that shoppers can see whether a product is in stock at local store locations, which is a significant development for brick-and-mortar businesses.
Galen King
Lucid
Founder & Creative Director
I think we will see more brands realizing the importance of aligning their marketing and implementation strategies. We will see more synergy and collaboration between marketing, design, and development teams, which will lead to more personalized content and experiences tied more closely to the audiences and inbound traffic. Tied to this, I expect to see more focus on buying-focused landing pages with more emphasis on merchandizing, content, and storytelling.
AJ Hauser
Fix My Website
Partner & Senior Design Lead
These past few years we've seen an EXPLOSION of video: video reviews, video examples, video reactions, video ads - and it makes sense as this is the EASIEST content to consume. Facebook Ad costs have gone up, Google Ads are also more expensive - yet the combination of video and a focused message directing people to a high-quality product continues to work - and work well. A TOP-NOTCH product or service is paramount, followed closely by authenticity and a professional presentation, and an engaging story helps garner additional interest. This combination is what has been moving the needle for our clients.
Deborah Mecca
LTV SaaS Growth Fund
Director of Marketing
Social commerce and group buying will be even bigger trends in 2022. From TikTok purchasing directly from content to offers going out to a group of friends with allocated discounts, social commerce will continue to be on the rise. Conversational commerce is going to continue to grow and be a big trend. Upselling and cross-selling in pre and post purchasing will also continue to be the upward trend. If you're already spending money driving clicks to your Shopify store, you're going to want to maximize that opportunity with customers to buy more and related products to deepen their relationship with your brand.
Joe Dempsey
Liquify
Front End Developer
We're seeing a lot more weight being thrown towards online retail since Corona hit and there's not much sign of a slowdown. Competition is heating up as those who didn't prioritize ecommerce over traditional retail are now playing catch up. Top ecommerce trends for 2022 - more competition & tighter margins, more aggressive use of marketplaces, less talent available to hire, heavier use of subscription based retail & product personalisation.
Carson McComas
Fuel Made
CEO
Right now, we’re seeing merchants struggle from the impact of the new consumer privacy changes to iOS and third-party cookies. Ad costs have skyrocketed, making the acquisition side of the business extremely difficult—not to mention, frustrating.
Unfortunately, this trend will continue into the new year.
On the flip side, the ecommerce trend that’s combatting these privacy changes is that more brands will place a much larger focus on conversion rate optimization and retention.
Rather than spending most of their budget on paid advertising to acquire new traffic, brands will change gears and prioritize their existing traffic, using their owned marketing channels to nurture longer-term relationships and drive up LTV, AOV, and their conversion rates.
The two key ways we’re seeing brands start to build retention directly in their owned channels are by:
Collecting zero-party data through email preference centers, quizzes, and pop-ups to learn customers’ shopping preferences and habits. Then, using this data to segment customers and send personalized emails, SMS, and content.
Improving their ecommerce site performance with better accessibility and faster page speed to rank higher with Google’s Core Web Vitals, which in return improves SEO performance and conversions.
In 2022, these trends will become even more important for ecommerce businesses to survive. Acquisition isn’t looking any easier, so start nurturing your current traffic to keep it around long-term.
Travis Johnson
WITTY
Founder
Headless - The talk about moving to headless is becoming more and more common every day. I think developers are going to continue to innovate in the headless space exponentially in 2022 in an effort to make it WAY easier for e-commerce brands to make the shift to headless.
AI-centric apps - I believe that more and more apps are going to be developed that use some level of AI to make the UX of a store so much better at an affordable cost to the merchant.
Paul Rogers
Vervaunt
Founder
One of the most interesting trends we've seen recently is brands really doubling down on uniqueness, story-telling and generally trying to bring their personality out online. There's so many DTC companies with huge budgets disrupting industries and aggressively growing via paid channels, that traditional brands are now trying to invest in on-site experience to compete. These brands are still pushing the performance channels, but now need to provide a better experience as well (with lots of more long-standing brands neglecting their websites from a technology, content and UX perspective). The most common example here is fashion, which I would say is where this is most prevalent.
The majority of our clients are working towards a CAPEX project at the moment, comprising a redesign, a review of brand guidelines and a roll-up of their backlog and lots of roadmap items, with a view to accelerating their online growth.
Zak Hardage
Hardage + Hardage
Owner, Web Developer
Complexity will only continue to increase. For customers, merchants, designers and developers, regulators, admins and moderators. Next year brings an opportunity to stand out by doing less. All the gains made from making sites faster, from optimizing checkout flows and marketing campaigns, are quickly lost to frustration. Frustration from clearing newsletter popups, tracking consent banners, and chatbot widgets.
Thinking about your customers, and what is actually useful to them, will look like redesigning for accessibility; forgoing data collection for things like segmentation and retargeting; opting out of buy now/pay later schemes; and only sending useful messages (think order notifications and not requests for reviews).
This is the year to drop the gimmicks and get back to fundamentals: customer research, user testing, photography, copywriting, logistics. Thoughtfulness is obvious to customers. It makes a difference. It doesn't scale and can't be copied.
Michael Maher
Cartology
Chief Idea Officer
Amazon — many brands are going to finally be capitalizing on Amazon, as it controls 40% of the ecommerce market and growing. There is a lot more revenue than 5 years ago but also more competition.
Big retailers are going to continue to develop their ecommerce platforms and really lean hard into that. Instacart is already big but Kroger is making moves and other retailers like Walmart, Target, along with others are pushing.
Walmart.com is going to continue rise as a solid competitor for Amazon and start quickly growing their marketplace site.
Continued focused on connecting with the consumer as much as possible, especially through email marketing, SMS, and any other forms of direct access.
Jessica Thiele
VL OMNI
Director of Marketing
The rise of B2B ecommerce.
B2B ecommerce is growing at an accelerated pace and will likely outpace B2C in the coming years. That being said, growing buyer demands and changing wholesale channels are encouraging B2B sellers to pivot their whole selling approach to self-service online sales.
Before businesses first jump in or expect results from B2B ecommerce in 2022, merchants must understanding how different B2B is from direct to consumer (D2C) selling. In our latest guide, we dive into the myriad of B2B ecommerce considerations and best practices you need to keep in mind to sell online and grow at scale. Check it out here.
Keep Omnichannel Selling Top of Mind
The future of shopping is arguably more interesting and uncertain post-pandemic along with changing customer expectations and industry trends. That’s why brands need to shift to an omnichannel approach to tackle the changing nature of shopping to bridge the gap between traditional retail and eCommerce. Find out what improvements your brand needs to make now for the future here.
Operate at peak efficiency with seamless integration
During peak sales periods, there is an influx of traffic on websites, sales, and pressure on applications across your business. To avoid major failures in your operations, you need to make sure you are sharing your data broadly throughout your organization. This will allow everyone on your team to have visibility on that data, allowing them to see holes or flaws in systems and processes before they happen.
Share your data consistently in every application your business uses. Your ERP, CRM, WMS, POS system, etc. need to be sharing the same up-to-date data on customers, inventory, products, etc through well-strategized integration processes customized with your business rules.
Above all, ensure that you implement scalable and elastic integrations that can grow with you even under the greatest stress that peak seasons bring. More information here.
Arianne Foulks
Aeolidia
Captain & Founder
We have always been big believers in connecting with customers through storytelling, and this is even more important as everyone is reevaluating their priorities in life after all that went on in 2020 and 2021. People have a new perspective and higher standards for the brands they shop.
We saw some pretty wild traffic and sales spikes for many shops during the pandemic. Now it’s all about the importance of nurturing the relationship with people who became online customers during this unusual time.
Personalization and customization have been important to the shop owners we work with, and the interest in this continues to increase.
The pandemic has caused all kinds of supply chain and shipping issues, so finding ways to ease this pain for customers is a high priority.
Kate Stough
Penguin E-Commerce
Project Manager
I think the top trends are heading towards omnichannel marketing and selling through more channels than just your own website. Social media has been working for a while at creating a space to showcase and offer your products, and I think in 2022 there is going to be a huge shift in how businesses can interact with social media channels.
Igor Nesmyanovich
Eradium
CEO
Greater attention to fraud prevention and cybersecurity. Ecommerce fraud has been rising since the beginning of the pandemic as more retail volume moved online. A Juniper Research report indicated that online retailers could lose more than $20 billion in 2021 to ecommerce fraud crimes, including identity theft, chargeback fraud, and account takeovers.
Fraud prevention requires urgent attention from every ecommerce business because of its significant impacts on its bottom line. Merchants adopt more robust tools to detect and prevent a broad spectrum of fraud types and avoid adverse effects on customer experience. The new fraud prevention tools apply machine learning algorithms and identity management technologies to complement or replace legacy processes and systems.B2B ecommerce digital revenue is surpassing B2C. Historically B2B organizations have been significantly behind B2C brands in using digital commerce channels. Because of that, B2B companies were less prepared to operate under restrictions introduced since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Businesses had to accelerate the adoption of digital commerce at a record pace. This growth momentum that started in 2020 will continue in upcoming years. For instance, by 2025, 75% of B2B manufacturers will sell directly to their customers via digital commerce.
B2B ecommerce technology requires much greater integration with other internal backend processes within the organization and be able to support more complex sales process business to consumers online stores. We see the growing applications of headless commerce and machine learning technologies in supporting business-to-business transactions.Enhanced order delivery and fulfillment planning. We observed a clash of two trends since spring 2020: customers expect to receive merchandise as quickly as possible while the supply chain experienced multiple disruptions. Those two trends created tremendous pressure on merchants to become more resilient, diversify their suppliers, fulfillment, and delivery options. To support new, more resilient ecommerce technology platforms, extend their features to help inventory and order management with multiple suppliers, shipping providers, and delivery methods.
Sara Bacon
Command C
Founder
We’re starting to see a larger conversation in society around diversity and inclusion. And, like all conversations, they eventually bleed into the commerce world.
Ecommerce brands want to stay on top of what’s going on in society and ensure customers know that they’re part of this larger conversation, but without coming off as “jumping on the bandwagon” or seeming inauthentic. We’re starting to see some brands actively incorporate more diversity in their stores. Girlfriend.com showcases their clothes on multiple bodies, which allows for inclusion of customers with multiple body-types.
We’re starting to see more LGBTQ representation in lifestyle images on websites and in social media advertising.
In 2022, stores will begin to more actively consider diverse audiences both on their website and in their marketing. Brands will begin to take into account how changes to their store can be more inclusive, from photography to sizing charts to accessibility of a website for those with disabilities.
Consumers know the difference between a brand that truly respects a cause versus brands that are jumping on the movement because it’s in the news. Diversity and inclusion will become more of a core aspect of ecommerce brands, not just a marketing tactic.
Drew Poland
Spotfin Creative, LLC
Senior Developer
I hesitate to call this ecommerce since it's likely to be seen as non-traditional ecommerce, but I believe scheduling is a big trend that has already started to take hold for a lot of service providers that use ecommerce as a way to reach customers.
I can't think of very many services utilized in the past year I haven't had to schedule time on a website for. Think of services like:
Haircuts
Chiropractic work (some were semi walk-in pre-pandemic)
Massages
Salons
Apple Store (no longer walk-in)
So while not traditional ecommerce as in buying a product, I've seen some very archaic websites suddenly have checkout/scheduling functionality added to them to accommodate the new world we live in.
I think this will continue as businesses are really seeing the benefits of having a structured work week. You could streamline processes and "touch" by a front desk staff, making their jobs easier, reducing paper waste, and more.
Start to add payment processing, memberships, and customer data...you now have a full fledged CRM & POS you can use to reach and contact those customers with specials, deals and more.
You could take it further and use this data to project business outcomes, goals, and what the effort would be to take you to that next goal.
Laura Dolgy
Dolgify
Founder
Conscious shopping. I believe more consumers are researching the social and environmental impacts of the brands they purchase from. Consumers are looking to make a difference with their purchasing behavior and are choosing to purchase from brands that are supporting a specific social cause or who are actively reducing their carbon footprint.
This is a unique opportunity for brands, as they can connect with their customers authentically and start to build long-term relationships with them.
Keir Whitaker
Consultant & Coach for Shopify Partners
In no particular order, my three predictions are:
Email will reign supreme for ecommerce marketing, but I believe brands will start to embrace more "personal" messaging through SMS and WhatsApp. Both will become popular platforms to showcase new products, handle customer support, and manage subscriptions.
As differentiation becomes increasingly complex, companies will need to work harder to build meaningful long term relationships with their customers. Branding, tone of voice, content, and their "mission and vision" will be essential tools in their marketing toolbox.
Online merchants will need to embrace new ways of incentivising customers to buy. Expect to see more cause-related marketing, donation incentives, and offers that shy away from "race to the bottom" discounts. Brands will lean into the fact that modern consumers are driven less by price and more by the company's values.
Irina Lanina
HeyCarson
Partnerships Manager
One of the effects of the new reality that our world has found itself in over the past couple years, is that the ecommerce industry has received considerably more attention, from all sorts of new audiences.
We're noticing certain trends becoming more and more relevant and gaining traction given that present circumstances are recalibrating how the world interacts with the web. Live video shopping and voice commerce, for instance, are increasing their presence with more and more people spending time at home, and therefore shopping online.
1. M-commerce. Mobile shopping will continue to grow.
According to this industry study in 2021, mobile makes up about 73% of all Ecommerce sales; and as recently as 2016, it represented 52.4%. This means that almost three out of every four dollars spent on online purchases are coming from mobile, and growing at an accelerating rate.
Globally, according to eMarketer, mobile commerce sales will be upwards of $3.5 trillion by the end of 2021, and there are no signs of that slowing down anytime soon, as the number of mobile users is continually growing as well.
We, at Carson, are working on a daily basis with multiple ecommerce stores, and can only confirm this trend, as more and more brands are looking to enhance the mobile version of their sites.
2. Live video shopping and voice commerce increasing their presence
While still a new eCommerce trend, live video shopping is something worth paying attention to. It allows vendors to showcase and sell their products by streaming them live to their targeted audience.
Along with the continuous expansion of smart speakers and AI assistants, voice shopping has been increasing its presence ever since 2017, thus becoming a growing trend as well. It allows people to shop their preferred products with voice commands. At this point it can be expected that voice commerce will only gain traction in the coming year. JuniperResearch predicts that voice-assisted shopping will account for $19.4 Bn by 2023.
3. Green consumerism is here to stay
With shoppers being more and more environment-conscious, green consumerism will make an impact in 2022, as most customers begin to view the participation of online retailers in this practice, as an ethical requirement. Over the past couple years, interest in the impact of online shopping has increased exponentially, as people are looking to become eco-friendly.
4. AI technology will continue to penetrate the industry in various aspects
More and more ecommerce brands are turning to artificial intelligence to help streamline their operations and maximize efficiency. A heavy emphasis is put on personalizing the customer's experience, as online retailers are adopting these technologies. As you can probably guess, this covers many aspects, ranging from researching customer behavior, to personalized product recommendations, and forecasting best marketing practices, to name a few.
Camilo Parra
BrainPower
CEO
More and more Amazon-only brands expanding to Shopify or similar DTC channels and vice-versa.
The ecommerce world is changing rapidly and one of those changes is brands realizing that there’s a new opportunity to increase their sales by expanding to new channels they’ve never sold on before, including retail.
Ashley Scorpio
Hawke Media
VP, Partnerships
First-party data is top of mind and we're not going to stop hearing about it any time soon. With the existing adjustments from Apple's iOS and impending changes expected from Google, the Cookiepocolypse is here and brands need to make adjustments (if they haven't already) to be sure they collect and own their customer's data or they're going to be back at square one. Ideally, brands have developed (and even implemented) their first-party data plans by now, but if not it is imperative in 2022.
Jane Magoffin
Reload Media
Ecommerce Strategic Lead
If you look back a year ago or even a few months, the vast majority of ecommerce businesses and digital agencies would only look at your marketing activity in a 1:1 direct return (e.g direct ROAS) model. What we’ve seen over the past few months and what I expect to continue into 2022 is more businesses moving their KPIs to center around their overall impact of Marketing. When we look at more holistic KPIs, this includes such as metrics like MER (Media Efficiency Ratio), or CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) which tells us the effectiveness of a more omnichannel marketing strategy.
This has become particularly important as we’re seeing big movements in data, tracking, and privacy (hello iOS 14 App Tracking Saga), which gives us less visibility on a specific marketing tactic’s direct returns.
In turn, as we see editorial, content & brand awareness become a bigger focus for many brands into 2022, we see brands turn to a more holistic method of benchmarking their impact.
Caitlin Teed
Govalo
Director, Partnerships
Gifting as we know it is going to revolutionize. From the traditional experience of a cold hard gift card, to extra costing for a wrapped box and card from a big store retailer, we will see something that resembles more of the digital world we live in today.
Gifting will become easier for ecommerce, more personal, gifting campaigns will become a part of every marketing campaign a DTC brand runs — the dusty gift cards in your bedside dresser and archived in your inbox will finally get put to work.
Linda Ferguson
Whitecap SEO
Technical SEO Consultant
Contextual advertising is making a comeback due to Google’s phasing out of third party cookies on Chrome. Planning for the use of first party data marketing and other alternatives is crucial in 2022 (and even now) to plan for this eventuality.
Video product marketing and livestream marketing will continue to be a trend that will grow in 2022 and beyond. As an example, Etsy encourages sellers to create a short video of products, showing the details of a product, how it might be used, etc. Many Gen Z consumers prefer videos as opposed to a static image or series of images. Adding video structured data can enhance visibility of videos in search results.
People still love free shipping, although the search trend of this has been declining over the past few years. This could be because people expect free shipping and may take it for granted these days. Competitive pricing is more important for many consumers than ever as inflation has become a reality.
The partnership between Google and Shopify announced this year makes it incredibly easy for Shopify merchants to get their products into Google’s Shopping Graph with Shopify’s Google Channel. This enables Shopify merchants to add their products directly to the multi-channel shopping platform. If you’re not a Shopify merchant, Google has made it easy for you to add your products by submitting a feed to Google’s Merchant Center. Optimizing your product and landing pages to take advantage of this will become more important than ever to compete with other merchants.
Civic responsibility and corporate activism. Younger buyers want more from the brands they buy from. People want to know if products were tested on animals, if the product was produced by people earning a fair wage, where the product was made, etc.
Want to Leverage These 2022 Ecommerce Trends? Here’s What You Should Know
Staying ahead of the curve is a good way for retailers to differentiate themselves from the competition, reach new audiences, and improve their conversion rates.
Here is a summary of some of the key 2022 ecommerce trends our experts identified:
Growing Competition — Ecommerce competition has increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to more aggressive use of marketplaces and a boom in B2B ecommerce.
Customer Retention — As acquisition becomes more competitive, brands should focus on nurturing existing customer relationships by nailing the basics like user experience and by offering subscription models.
Storytelling — A growing number of brands are successfully differentiating themselves through engaging storytelling that highlights their personality, uniqueness, and values.
Conscious Consumerism — Shoppers are increasingly favoring brands that prioritize social and environmental responsibility, inclusivity, and activism.
Omnichannel Communication — Retailers can set themselves apart by giving customers a choice in how they want to communicate, including through email, social media, SMS, WhatsApp, and other channels.
Video Content — From product and review videos to live streaming, video marketing is going to become increasingly key to user engagement in 2022 and beyond.
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