The 2019 ecommerce marketing trends that will grow your Nashville business
Ecommerce businesses are growing in popularity. As more consumers turn to the internet for their shopping needs, the demand for high-quality and trustworthy ecommerce brands expands as well.
Here are some of the ecommerce marketing trends that you should be keeping an eye on in 2019.
Social selling
Social media advertising for ecommerce brands is here to stay. The biggest social platforms for ecommerce marketing right now are Facebook and Instagram. One reason for this is the ease of running consistent advertising across both platforms using Facebook Ads Manager. Instagram in particular has seen an increase in ecommerce ad activity due to the introduction of Instagram Business pages.
Instagram has a few more stats that make it a compelling platform for ecommerce brands to market their products including:
- The average order value for customers from Instagram is $65.
- 60% of Instagram users report learning about a product or service on the platform.
- Brands see 58x more engagement on Instagram than Facebook, and 120x more engagement than on Twitter.
If you are looking to create digital ads, Instagram could be your top choice.
Site performance
Mobile web traffic surpassed desktop traffic in 2014 and there’s no sign that will be changing anytime soon. Your customers are more likely to engage with your ecommerce site on their phone than any other platform, so your site needs to be mobile optimized.
One of the most important metrics of optimization is your site’s load time or page speed. Research conducted by Google shows that 53% of mobile users will leave a website that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Furthermore, if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, the probability that a mobile user will leave increases by 90%.
However, the average site speed in 2018 for retail websites in the United States was a glacial 9.8 seconds. Huge images and crowded home pages can bog down your mobile page speed which means you’re losing customers – and money.
Augmented reality
The marketing potential for augmented and virtual reality is just now starting to be tapped. One of the advantages that brick-and-mortar retail stores have over their ecommerce counterparts is the ability for consumers to experience products before they buy them.
A tactic that could be employed to combat this desire for experiences is using augmented reality to allow customers to “try before they buy” using their smartphone. Some examples of augmented reality at work are:
- Eyeglass retailers allowing customers to see what glasses look like on their face using Snapchat-style filters;
- Furniture stores letting customers see if certain pieces will fit in their space or match their current style;
- Paint manufacturers offering the ability to virtually color the walls of a room with any color of paint in their catalog; and
- Clothing companies allowing customers to upload their measurements to see what clothes will look like on their body type.
However, you don’t have to even get that fancy with your augmented reality. You can create a customized Snapchat filter, sticker or lens for less than you might think!
Mastering Amazon
Amazon accounts for 49.1% of all ecommerce retail spending in the United States. This can be a terrifying piece of information for small ecommerce brands, but it doesn’t have to be. Beating Amazon may not be possible so, as they old saying goes: “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
One of the biggest growth areas for Amazon is their Marketplace which allows third-party retailers to sell on the platform. That could be a major boost to your ecommerce brand’s bottom line, considering more people in the U.S. start their product searches on Amazon (46.7%) than Google (34.6%).
No matter what you think about the retail giant, ignoring the platform as a way to expand your business could be a real detriment to your brand’s growth.