Digital identity, enters a new era of e-commerce
Global e-commerce is gathering pace, yet, the increasing reliance on data presents enormous challenges for the industry. Digital identity technology is set to completely transform the way e-commerce operates.
The state of e-commerce
More than ever customers are turning to the online marketplace to purchase goods and services. According to Statista and eMarketer global sales will break the $3 trillion mark by 2019. The trend is expected to continue, achieving $2.8 trillion in 2018, $3.3 trillion 2019, and $4.8 trillion by 2021.
M-commerce (mobile commerce) contributes largely to this success. It accounts for 60% of the total of e-commerce sales, a 40% rise in 2017. According to eMarketer, China alone made up 67.1% of m-commerce sales worldwide in 2017. Significantly, sales are expected to nearly triple from $909.93 billion to $2.595 trillion between 2017 and 2021. Research suggests that as mobile phone use increases, customers are likely to become increasingly comfortable in making higher value purchases.
E-commerce has not changed
At the moment, the e-commerce business has primary control over how customer data is used and stored. According to a recent survey by KPMG, less than 10% percent of customers felt they had control over the way organisations handle and use their data today. Many customers are unhappy with their data being sold to third parties. It creates pressure for these issues to be confronted.
Customer data is vital to how your business operates. Embracing digital identity will release the burden of handling data, while creating a seamless experience for your customers.
Self-sovereign digital identity allows customers to take full control of their personal information and open up new potential markets for e-commerce.
While projections look promising, knowing e-commerce, you will be aware of the frailties that exist within the system.
Abandonments rates (the inability to convert the shopping cart to checkout) is costing businesses $ billions each year. According to a recent report, on average 3 out of 4 carts are abandoned.
The most common reasons for high abandonment rates are;
- customers need to create an account
- the checkout process is too long/complicated
- the customer doesn’t trust the website with their credit card details.
E-commerce in all sectors have struggled to bridge the gap. Providing a more efficient process between the customer and the site will be the catalyst to improving your conversion rates.
Bad data, a customer can easily mistype an address, and thus, cause a package to be send to the wrong address. Identity verification is a crucial element in verifying a customer’s address. A streamlined process will allow business to catch errors and therefore reduce costs.
User experience is an increasingly important factor for shoppers and online forms aren’t helping. Sign up, login and check out forms are often considered annoying, they are slow to fill out and put user experience last. Often too much information is collected from users even when it’s not required to complete the transaction. Imagine if you were standing in a shop and was told, as you’re about to give someone your hard-earned coin, that you have to wait. There you would stand cash in hand as they grill you with questions entirely for their own statistical use. No, thanks.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is a new EU legislation. When it comes into effect on May 25th, 2018, it will be the most comprehensive data privacy law in the world, and it will impact how companies use customer data.
The GDPR gives customers the right to access, correct, delete, and restrict the processing of their data, which is crucial if customers data is being used for marketing or advertising. And, although it’s an EU law, it will affect any company that is based in Europe or does business in Europe.
Therefore, it’s time to free your business of red tape and embrace a business identity platform.
Amazon’s new identity-verification feature gives businesses an additional layer of protection. However, being centralised means that the burden continues to land on business. Decentralised platforms will be the key.
A digital identity will provide customers the tools to manage their data securely. It also incentivizes e-commerce to develop new sign up and checkout processes, eradicate bad data issues, and improve overall customer experience.
Sphere Identity provides digital identity solutions for enterprises and individuals using the blockchain technology.
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