The Rise Of 1 Time Buyers!
eCommerce without a doubt blew up over 2020 with Covid forcing shoppers to leave the high-street and turn to their mobiles and tablets. However with the explosive growth came a new challenge, one-time buyers! With infinite choice at ease, customers are browsing more than ever before, meaning retailers must focus on their shopping experiences, personalisation and brand building to establish long-term relationships with their customers.

The Boom Of MultiChannel Personalisation
After speaking with clients and retailers alike, we’ve found personalisation is once again at the top of everyones agenda. No more batch and blast, but intelligent, recommendation-based personalisation using behaviour and signals across all marketing channels and platforms. Most of the e-commerce world has touched on personalisation, but it’s currently very platform specific. We predict brand new solutions will appear to enhance the personalisation journey for customers, across all channels and platforms simultaneously. Utilising data to ensure a smooth, consistent and meaningful journey across all activity – in sync.

The Year Of AI – Finally!
AI has been the buzz-word for years, but apart from tech giants like Facebook and Google, we’ve seen no real integration in businesses at scale. We predict that next year, businesses will adapt new AI technology, from customer experience, service delivery, website maintenance, recommendation tools and more. Not only do we think AI will be rolled out across customer experience, but using tech to help smaller businesses optimise forecasting, pricing, merchandising, stock management and internal systems to achieve more efficiency and performance.

Higher Competition Across Payment Providers
One common bug for most retailers is their checkout, and there’s always room for improvement. In 2022, businesses will adopt more ways for customers to pay, to reduce friction at this crucial point in their experience. Last year, digital wallet usage increased by 23% and with the likes of Klarna/ClearPay/LayBuy taking up huge amounts of market share across payment processors, we can’t see this competition going away anytime soon. We also believe more retailers will be offering options such as bank transfers, e-wallets, more flexible finance options and even cash-based digital payments to help meet the needs of their customers.

Green Green Green
Finally, next year, we expect to see more ‘green consumerism’ within retail. As tech giants like Google and Apple maximise their efforts to inform users on climate change and environmental sustainability, it won’t be long before this is the top priority for SME’s nationwide. It was only this year when 50% of global consumers said they’ve become more eco-friendly in their habits (2021 Global Consumer Insights Pulse Survey), so no doubt this will reflect in the brands they shop with too.

What trends do you think we will see in 2022?