Why Loyalty Will Dominate E-Commerce in 2020

From loyalty to payment flexibility, there are plenty of factors that help create a successful e-commerce platform. Tryzens has gathered four main categories which they predict will dominate the industry in 2020.

“Innovation for engagement will continue to drive retailers’ priorities in 2020, and with this in mind, our talented team of digital commerce practitioners have outlined the key trends we see impacting e-commerce agendas in 2020,” explains Andy Burton, CEO of Tryzens.

1. Contextual Commerce

   This will be one of the biggest areas for e-commerce professionals in the new decade. It’s defined as the ‘notion of retailers taking on the relevant concepts that enable consumers to purchase wherever, whenever and however they want’. How will this impact online retail? For retailers, it ultimately means aligning the shopping experience remains aligned with consumer habits.

   This includes how the consumer finds the product and simplifying it. As an example, utilising innovative search platforms like voice and image. Furthermore, contextual commerce relies on keeping pace with how they use and interact with various technologies.

2. Payment Preferences

   It’s no secret that payments have changed rapidly over the last few years. There has been a cultural shift (mostly from the Next Gen shopper) from credit cards to Buy Now, Pay Later services. As such, there has been an influx of BNPL services such as Afterpay, Klarna, Zip and many others which have already understood this growing category.

   “The overarching theme running throughout all of these trends is keeping the customer at the heart of everything a retailer does; from recognising how they want to shop, to manging them across multiple channels, to demonstrating a commitment to sustainability, and to enable them to purchase through their trusted payment services,” Burton says. “Those retailers recognising this and implementing the right technologies to enable these experiences will be the ones we see come out on top in 2020.”

3. Going Green

   Again, you’d be living under a rock if you didn’t realise that sustainability is one of the most vital trends for retailers this year (and every year going forward). Providing a transparent view of how your business handles waste and its responsibility to the environment is a key tool for success in 2020. According to the Tryzen report, 84 percent of consumers ‘expect brands they shop with to have sustainable practices’ and 83 percent ‘expect sustainable packaging’.

   It’s not just the likes of packaging and delivery options, it’s even small things like enabling ‘dark mode’ on mobile sites. This not only reduces the stress on the user’s eyes, due to the lack fo blue light, but it also reduces energy consumption.

4. Componentised Commerce

   Traditional commerce platform has its benefits, but in the new decade, it’s time to move forward with the times. Often built on ‘enterprise software’, it’s comprised in an ‘all-in-one’ platform. If there are material changes within a traditional e-commerce site, this will result in a ‘hungry, lengthy and, unsurprisingly, costly’ transformation IT deployment.

   That’s where Headless Commerce comes in. It ultimately is a ‘technical architecture’ which drives reusability of common capabilities’, time to market benefits for changes, transactional scalability and efficient launch of new channels. Its benefits include the ability to integrate a wide variety of social, visual and in-store digital touchpoints, from the customer-facing front-end to a back-end e-commerce platform.

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