There is a sense of urgency among e-tailers today — capture the attention of online shoppers and persuade them to buy. The reasons for this frenzy could be forecasts made by Statista, which predict that by 2018, global B2C e-commerce sales are expected to reach 2.3 trillion US dollars. Statista also predicts that the transaction value in the ‘digital commerce’ segment is expected to grow by 152.1 % until 2021 which could be pushing brands — both big and small — to capitalize on every opportunity in the highly competitive e-commerce landscape.
So, how do retailers address these dynamics of tomorrow’s e-commerce correctly? For sure, brand strategies have to outgrow emphasis on fancy storefronts and alluring advertisements! Instead, retailers must prioritize personalization and understand every customer’s preference and behavior to the tee. The result — bang-on promotions, optimized prices, and faster deliveries. Personalization that is derived from insights through real-time analytics, contextual marketing, and dynamic pricing is the way forward for e-tailers.
New insights not every week, but each microsecond
The online shopping experience is about 24/7 operations. This means that downtimes and webpage errors have to be minimal and enterprises must have the capability to fix issues within the shortest possible time. It also implies round the clock monitoring of customer clicks, product sales and advertisement campaigns to preempt the customer’s next move.
All of this mandates the need to accelerate website data analysis and customer segmentation. However, insights based on website traffic of the past week will most likely fall short of the mark.
In the age of mass digitalization, the emphasis is on microsecond processing and express insights. Thus, brands are pushing the data and analytics envelop to a new level through real-time analytics to avert the snowballing of errors into failures and convert browsers to buyers. What’s more, the latest advancements in natural language processing and artificial intelligence have ensured that analytics tools not only segment data, but also recommend relevant offers and promotions based on a consumer’s persona and past behavior.
Customized offers for every store visit
With the capability to choose from multiple brands, diverse shopping channels, and ever-expanding product catalogs, consumers are controlling the future of retail. In an era of information overload, engaging customers and getting them hooked to a brand is a herculean task. At a time when every apparel store offers similar discounts, delivery timelines, and product assortment, getting a consumer to buy products from a single brand requires some innovating marketing.
In other words, personalized marketing that separates a consumer from the crowd will make or break the retail brands of the future. Using data and analytics, retailers need to augment their marketing strategies with real-time offers, coupons, and points.
Imagine that you walk past a store and get a notification from it on your mobile, stating that you can get a 60% discount on your favorite jeans for the next one hour! Won’t that compel you to visit the store and purchase immediately? Or visualize that you visit an online store two days before your birthday and a pop-up appears on the screen stating that you can get a birthday special offer of 50% discount on any purchase for the day. Will that not impress you? This is what contextual marketing is all about.
Personalized offerings through location-based commerce, accurate customer segmentation, real-time analytics, and more are redefining marketing in the e-commerce space. Brands that understand the customer’s context and provide appropriate offers stand to increase engagement, satisfaction and conversions.
Bargains that outsmart competition every time
The price of a product is a key driver in many purchase decisions. Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, customers can more easily compare prices by toggling webpages in the online space. So, how do e-tailers offer the best price? Insights-driven dynamic pricing is the solution. E-tailers can compare product prices across competitor websites, time of the day, and seasonal trends to recommend the best pricing strategy. In fact, leading brands like Amazon are known to change product prices every day.
Success in the future of e-commerce is governed by relevance and context through real-time insights. Retailers must invest in analytics platforms that deliver valuable insights for better business strategies.
At Infosys, we have years of experience in integrating social data, market intelligence, and analytics to provide rich, contextual insights. Skava Commerce’s search engine has a built in analytics feature that allows brands to measure KPIs from a centralized dashboard, or leverage an existing analytics platform. Using the analytics microservice, we provide retailers with real-time insights that fuel accurate business strategies and optimized execution.
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