The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the operations of entire business sectors. E-commerce is no exception given that the virus caused brick-and-mortar stores to close for months and continues to make it difficult to shop in person in the future, even with a vaccine coming soon.
E-commerce, on the other hand, continues to grow rapidly as the pandemic persists. Online shopping has become increasingly popular with consumers and is likely to remain so in the future due to convenience and habit. While it is impossible to predict what the future holds for physical stores, e-commerce projections are clear: It’s going to keep going up. As new demands and rapidly shifting global events position e-commerce for greater growth, five trends are emerging that specifically affect cross-border e-retailers.
Customer Buying Behaviors & Expectations Will Continue to Change
Cross-border retail will benefit from changes in consumer preferences caused by a variety of factors. As they look for products they can’t find in their own markets, more people will shop abroad. Customers will continue to look to e-commerce to meet their needs in the near and long term, and they will no longer be restricted to the offerings of their local markets.
E-commerce activity will increase in proportion to the baby boomer generation. They may continue to restrict their international travel and instead seek out cross-border products that they may have previously purchased while on vacation in other countries, depending on the state of vaccinations worldwide. These people are becoming more accustomed to doing their shopping online, and now that they have developed the habit and realized how much they appreciate the convenience, it is likely that they will continue to do so in the years to come.
Shipping delays have plagued numerous industries as a result of supply chain disruptions. Since they began at the beginning of the pandemic, consumers are adjusting to these bottlenecks. In the future, customers will likely place orders earlier, especially around holidays in 2021, to guarantee prompt delivery in the event that global crises recur, further disrupting supply chains. Customers may also be willing to pay more for faster shipping or alter their expectations regarding delivery windows in exchange for free shipping.
By providing multiple shipping options that strike a balance between shipping cost and delivery speed, brands should be prepared for these changes. By utilizing a cross-border market partner, brands selling to international customers can eliminate the cross-docking step to reduce delivery delays and eliminate friction.
Budgeting Will Take Center Stage for Online Retailers
The competition will rise as cross-border eCommerce intensifies, making it harder to stand out from the crowd. When deciding where to spend their money on paid media, especially online, online retailers will examine their budgets more closely. E-tailers will need to think about putting money into digital marketing in different markets to get customers to brand websites. To put it another way, cross-border e-commerce brands will need to devise a comprehensive marketing budget and a well-thought-out strategy for distributing that budget among all of their global markets (including domestic ones) in order to attract international customers to their localized global experiences as well as domestic ones.
Budgets are allocated for international markets, but how those budgets are used in each market is different. The prices for various channels also vary. Because brands won’t have to divide their budgets equally between each market, these factors are important to keep in mind. Brands will need to think about adjusting their budgets by the market in order to achieve the results they want with their projected acquisition costs because, for example, paid ads and paid search terms are cheaper in many countries other than the United States.
Localized Customer Experiences Will Heat Up
As e-commerce continues to expand, both new and established brands will push digital boundaries to gain an advantage over rivals. The goal will be to increase on-site customer conversion in all international markets. In order to increase the number of transactions and, ultimately, sales, brands will focus more on enhancing the user experience on their websites and modifying the customer journey and checkout flow. This is where technology will become increasingly important.
The customer experience is directly impacted by the availability of multiple shipping options, multiple local payment options, multi-currency pricing, and accurately calculating duties and taxes. Conversion rates on an e-commerce website will be affected by many of these and other factors, and it can be difficult to properly localize all of these touchpoints on your own. Fortunately, there are technologies that can speed up the process and enable online brands to launch in more than 200 countries in just a few weeks.
Mobile-First Will Follow
Naturally, any online brand’s digital-first strategy must include a superior mobile experience. Every year, more and more people are using mobile devices rather than desktop computers to access the internet. Customers from all over the world need to have a great mobile experience, not just domestic ones. In order to increase sales and expand your business, it will be even more important to ensure that your website is mobile-friendly in all of your markets.
Because it makes it possible to interact with people on social media and discover brands through search engines, mobile has been a significant factor in driving sales in e-commerce. Social media sites, most of which are accessed via mobile devices, are becoming increasingly popular as a shopping option. As a result, many brands spend a lot of money on social media advertising to get people to look at their ads. Make sure your brand is ready for localization and mobile optimization so that customers can easily buy your products when they visit your website.
Cross-Border Will Launch In-Tandem with Domestic
The days when a domestic e-commerce strategy followed an international one are long gone. In particular, a lot of young digital native brands are going global from the start because they know their advantage is being able to quickly expand into markets where competitors might not yet have a strong foothold. As a result, more brands will adopt strategies that simultaneously launch domestic and international businesses.
Doing so won’t be as difficult as it would have been in the past thanks to cross-border e-commerce solutions. Brands can expand their digital presence into more than 200 countries with next-generation solutions that are based on solid technology. Apart from these trends, one thing that will stay the same is the emphasis on building relationships with customers and creating memorable online shopping experiences. While online brands can take these measures to safeguard their operations for the foreseeable future, no one can predict how recent global events will continue to unfold.
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