Digital Trends That Will Change Businesses In 2019

“By 2022, at least 5% of digital commerce orders will be predicted and initiated by AI”

In the past, purchases were more transactional in nature but now it’s become a journey with more emphasis placed on relationship building, not just buying. Therefore, reinvention in shopper journey is a most universal business trend right now. The ideal shopping journey blends a brand into the entire customer’s experience by providing the value before, during and after the shopping and builds a strong relationship.

Technology is interlinked into almost every step, with the mobile application development keeping their customers bind to the company for forever. With the help of a plethora of available technologies, businesses are in the middle of a head-to-toe makeover.

Now, retailers are more focused on the strategic initiatives that will give them a competitive advantage in the future.  

Though physical stores will continue to play an important role in tracking customer behavior and shopping pattern, they need to evolve more to serve efficiently internet-connected shopper as well. If more experiential shopping experiences will be built around purchases, it will help businesses to know their customer and their requirement more closely.

“Artificial intelligence is expected to be the most impactful technological advancement for businesses in the next five years”.

Nearly 59% of 602 industry professionals surveyed by Euromonitor International in September 2018 ranked AI ahead of other buzz-worthy technologies. It also moved ahead of the IoT, which respondents in a February survey ranked as being the most impactful technology in the next five years.   

Top Digital Trends to Watch in 2019

1. Conversational commerce

Texting and voice chatting via a mobile application such as Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and WhatsApp enable people to discover and purchase goods and services easily. Although conversational commerce bots met with mixed success but with the help of AI mobile application development and related technologies improvements are on the way.

2. Immersive commerce

Today most of the technologies like AR, VR and 360-degree video allow retailers to project their products virtually into the physical environment to configure for fit or function. For example, people can view furniture and clothes in 3D then project the selected items into a physical space to check if they fit, or not.

3. Unified commerce

In the market, there are various mobile applications are available and customers use a number of channels throughout both the buying process. And they want a seamless experience across channels at various stages of the shopping journey. To make their journey seamless and appealing organizations should interact with customers in a way that they want by understanding their preferences.

4. Subscription

Currently, Subscription commerce is in trend, it enables organizations to build and manage a subscription business model. Now everything from socks to video games can be sold on a recurring and automatically renewing basis. Mobile app development companies benefit from repeatable, predictable revenue and customers like the cost savings, customization, and convenience.  

5. Personalization

Now technologies have become more mature as compared to the past because of which personalization throughout the customer journey has become possible. Now, there are more opportunities in hand to personalize the purchase such as landing page, search, product recommendation, banners, and offers. It has various paybacks including increased ROI and lower cart abandonment.

6. Visual configuration

Visual configuration is a combination of technologies such as 2D/3D images and video, floor space planning and computer-aided design, and can be used together with AR and VR. A visual product configurator presents an exact outline of configurable and customizable products, allowing customers to have a compelling experience interacting with the product.

7. IoT-Enabled Digital Commerce

“IoT” provides greater visibility across the fulfillment process. It also enables retailers to meet the demands of the modern consumer who is purchasing online. This furious technology also allows companies to track customer behavior and orders moment.

Today with the blessings of IoT, connected machines can make purchases on behalf of human customers directly by gleaning their demands based on rules and preferences. The main benefit of IoT commerce is to reduce customer effort and friction in purchases.

8. Enterprise marketplace.

Enterprise marketplace is a growing business model, as instead of selling own products, organizations are selling third-party products that are owned by someone else. Early adopters such as shopping malls, mobile app developers and manufacturers already have large numbers of customers and partners for examples Walmart, Fraport, and Sinopec.

9. API based commerce

To enhance the new customer experiences, organizations are partnered with API-based commerce to separate the frontend from the backend and quickly integrate new capabilities without affecting the existing architecture.

Today businesses are building commutable platforms instead of relying on a single commerce solution.  

10. Artificial intelligence

AI is a combination of multiple technologies including machine learning, natural language processing, deep learning and others that can deal with big data and can make conclusions without being specially programmed.  

Now organizations are availing AI for content personalization, price optimization, fraud detection, and virtual assistants for categorization and customer segmentation.

Summing Up

New digital trends will not only lead to tremendous financial rewards, but also spark new possibilities, and opportunities for seamless and secure sales. Online shopping has undergone several significant transformations with the help of mobile applications as purchases through mobile phones have increased globally.

In 2020, according to the market predictors if next-generation 5G networks achieve their promised super-fast internet speeds then it will start a wild ride for both businesses as well as customers.

To know more about digital trends, contact us at +1 (512) 333-1321 or visit Consagous Technologies.