A new year has just started and e-commerce in Sweden has put yet another fantastic year behind, with a growth of 16 % and a turnover of 42.9 billion SEK, with is 6.4 % of the total turnover in Swedish retail (1. During last year we experienced a very large interest in omnichannel, and we also took the opportunity to talk about this at e-commerce Stockholm in Kista last year. It also turned into a series of articles in four parts on our web page.
That 2014 was the year for the mobile unambiguous advance in commerce is something that no one can have missed. Several testifies about extreme increase of mobile visitors at their own sites, and you see how mobiles are used in the city, at the bus, in stores, yes everywhere.
At Global E-Commerce Summit 2014 in Barcelona, I had the opportunity to listen to Valeria Dominguez from Adolfo Dominguez and Elena Cusi Costa from Desigual. Their message was crystal clear. The customer doesn’t think omnichannel, but expects a uniform experience despite which channel the interaction with a store takes place in. I think this is a good summary and makes it clear that the customer must be in focus, and all customer interactions must be designed from this assumption. Read more about their observations here.
Enough about what happened in 2014, where is e-commerce going now?
We are of course convinced that the rapid technology development will continue and therefore continue to make the mobile revolution possible and easier. As a consequence of this we believe that we will see more apps of different kinds. We think that the decisive factor will be finding functions and incentives that really give the customer more value from the app compared to just using the mobile site/the responsive mobile adjustments of your site. An app offers more possibilities, and functions such as push messages, bar code scanners, RFID, camera, that can be easily built in. These are technologies that I think can open up for interesting solutions both in B2C, but also in B2B. Why not offer an app where you can easily see your price and availability on a product based on a bar code scan? This is a way to enter your competitors’ stores.
It is not just the app technology that B2B commerce can use, I am convinced that there is an enormous potential to improve several B2B sites by implementing a lot of the things that have become natural in B2C. It is the same people that shop at B2B sites, which also shop at B2C sites, which makes their expectations similar. A B2B buyer has a somewhat different focus since these orders often are more based on a need, which can lead to that inspiration to purchases will have a smaller effect, but it is just as important, or more, that the B2B buyer can clearly see which options that are available for a product that is available, and what the differences are. A lot of today’s B2B sites are very basic order systems, not entirely unlike placing an order in a business system. This makes the product overview and the exploring function that is expected in a site today often is completely lost.
The possibilities to make the order easier for a customer in B2B commerce is often larger than in B2C since it is often recurring orders. There is a lot that can be offered here to make the purchase need visible with prognoses, and just focus on making the purchase simple and user friendly. Please stop by e-commerce Stockholm at Kistamässan, March 24-25 and listen to our seminar about the future B2B-commerce to hear more of our tips and ideas about this.
Big Data and Machine Learning is an area that I think will have even more effect on e-commerce in the future. The reason is that it is created enormous amounts of data from all visits and traffic on an e-commerce site today. The one that can analyse this in the best way, and target information and offers based on these analysis will create an advantage. Performing these analysis as a human without help from advanced data analysis is impossible.
We have a very exiting year ahead of us, and we will most certainly see a lot of new impressive solutions that benefit from the new possibilities that the technology opens up for, and with the goal to make people and companies everyday life even more easy and simple.
(1 Internet Survey E-barometern 2014 PostNord
