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On May 12, 2020 we had the pleasure of taking part in the webinar “The future of e-commerce: reflections on COVID-19, tax news and Brexit”, created in collaboration with Ayming. It was an important opportunity to analyze how the world of online sales has reacted to this period of health emergency, measuring in particular the main changes that have affected it. Let’s see in more detail how e-commerce is changing and the new trends that emerged during the webinar.
The impact of the Coronavirus on online sales
The health emergency that hit our country first highlighted a series of critical issues related to the penetration of e-commerce in Italy, still very low at the end of 2019 compared to other countries in the world such as China, United Kingdom, Germany and the United States.
Nonetheless, Italian e-commerce recorded a significant increase in online purchases, also due to the fact that the target audience has expanded. In fact, there is a greater use of e-commerce in the over 55 age group, which are added to millennials and users between 35 and 44 who represented the main buyers in the pre-covid era. It is therefore clear that the world of online sales is also growing strongly in Italy and that more and more customers are inclined to an online and digital shopping experience.
How users’ shopping experience is changing
This greater propensity of customers to an online shopping experience, however, requires greater attention from e-commerce than the habits and needs of buyers. The main task of e-commerce is now to transform online shopping into a real experience, as similar as possible to that typical of the offline world. It is therefore essential to constantly implement and improve the experience that the user experiences during the purchase through the digital platform, using new technological solutions, such as mobile App, virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR). . From the new trends in e-commerce, therefore, the importance of eliminating the barriers between the online and offline world emerges more and more: the e-commerce of the future is therefore a platform perfectly integrated with all sales channels and which allows users a unique, complete and personal shopping experience. Hence the growing trend in the importance of professional figures such as the personal shopping assistant and the “digital salesman”, who guarantee users live support, for example via chat.
The new sales strategies: the “one-channel”
These new online shopping experiences of buyers, characterized by new technologies and new paths, bring out the strong interconnection between the digital and the physical that will characterize the e-commerce of the future. We are therefore moving towards an increasingly articulated e-commerce, integrated with each sales channel and composed of a series of processes, functions, workers and platforms that will work in unison to ensure a complete, 360 ° experience. Therefore, we can no longer speak of an omni-channel or multi-channel strategy, but of a “one-channel” strategy: e-commerce must become a single large ecosystem that touches all the touchpoints, both physical and digital, of the customer purchase.
These emerging trends were explored and analyzed in detail during our webinar: you just have to start watching it to discover and understand what the e-commerce of the future will be like.
For more information on the world of e-commerce, do not hesitate to contact us!
