Staying on Top of eCommerce Trends with Director of Strategy Max DesMarais
In case you haven’t noticed, eCommerce is kind of a big deal these days. According to Forbes, 20.8% of retail purchases took place online in 2023. What’s more, research by Statista shows that B2B sales aren’t far behind, with 17% of sales generated online, for a total sales volume of $1.8 trillion. So naturally, when our friends at WPEngine invited our Director of Strategy Max DesMarais to participate in a webinar on current eCommerce trends, he put on his nerd hat (to be fair, he never takes off his nerd hat) and entered the chat.
Watch the whole webinar here, or read on for some key takeaways.
2023 eCommerce Trends
- Trends highlighted for 2023 include social commerce, influencer marketing, voice search, artificial intelligence, omni-channel marketing, and SEO intent.
- Social commerce sees a resurgence of real people in ad campaigns and influencers playing a significant role.
- Voice search and AI are becoming increasingly important, with chatbots and AI-driven SEO results changing the way people search for and consume information online.
- Omni-channel marketing is crucial for reaching audiences across various devices and platforms.
- Influencers play a significant role, especially with the ability to buy directly on social media platforms.
- SEO intent is evolving, and there’s an increased focus on understanding and adapting to changing search engine algorithms.
Ecommerce Marketing Strategies
- Multi-Channel Marketing: Emphasize the importance of multi-channel marketing, utilizing platforms like Google, social media, and email to reach a diverse audience.
- Personalization: Tailor marketing efforts based on customer preferences, leveraging data to create personalized experiences and targeted campaigns.
- Data Utilization: Leverage data effectively, especially in the context of AI and analytics, to inform marketing decisions and predict future trends.
- Technical Preparedness: Ensure technical infrastructure readiness, including website scalability, load testing, and monitoring to handle increased traffic during peak times.
- Product Page Strategies: Keep product pages active, even for out-of-stock items, to maintain SEO visibility and offer alternatives or capture leads for restocking notifications.
Ecommerce Customer Acquisition and Retention
- Beyond Transactions: Expand customer acquisition strategies beyond transactions, offering content like buyer’s guides and ebooks to capture email addresses from potential buyers.
- Customer Segmentation: Implement hyper-segmentation to tailor marketing messages, avoiding overwhelming customers with irrelevant information.
- New Customer Offers: Experiment with exclusive offers for new customers, encouraging them to provide email addresses for unique codes and testing different promotion strategies.
Future eCommerce Strategies in 2024
- AI-Driven Personalization: Embrace AI technologies for personalized user experiences, including content customization and AI-driven chatbots.
- Hyper-Segmentation for Marketing: Hyper-segmentation remains crucial for delivering targeted messages and preventing customer opt-outs due to information overload.
- Testing New Customer Offers: Experiment with new customer offers to attract and retain customers, moving away from the always-on promotion model.
Throughout the webinar, Max stresses Vital’s full-funnel approach to driving more eCommerce sales. In his own words: “People often get stuck on eCommerce transactions as the only way to acquire (customers), and there’s such an opportunity that’s still missed by tons of brands.” He encourages brands to consider creating content higher up in the buyer’s journey — such as buyer’s guides or eBooks — to capture email addresses from users in the decision phase. You can then nurture those leads via email until they’re ready to make a purchase online.
This is especially important for the kind of high-value purchases typical of B2B sales — and it holds equally true in the competitive higher education market, where a full-funnel lead-generation strategy is essential to building a healthy enrollment pipeline.
Want to Nerd Out with Max?
I’m volunteering on his behalf! Fill out the form below and we’ll put you in touch with the real, live Max DesMarais to chat eCommerce strategy.
