The Future of Digital Commerce
In 1883, after five years of hard work and development, a pub owner out of Dayton, Ohio, revolutionized commerce. Fearing that in his dealership of “pure whiskeys, fine wine and cigars” the employees would pocket substantial amounts of what the money customers handed over to the saloon, he had invented the cash register.
Ever since technology has driven commerce. It changed how, what and when we buy. The way we interact with brands and products have been subject to constant evolution. From advertising to payment everything is influenced by a continuous flow of innovations.
Today online is the key. In the US 57.6% of consumers shop online. It’s 80% in Japan. In India, it’s 10%. And the numbers are still growing.1 An increasing share of this giant market happens on mobile devices. Business Insider’s research service estimates a market of 284 billion US Dollars for the United States alone by 2020 — that’s 45% of the total US e-commerce market.2 In the UK mobile commerce already reached 36% of all digital sales and mobile traffic has overtaken the desktop one.
By now it should be evident that the digital revolution in commerce is far from over. It is just beginning. In fact, the market grows, and consumer behavior evolves so fast, that “Business as usual!” is not even an option anymore. We need to look at the future trends. The order of the day is literally: adapt or die.
But what are the future trends of digital and mobile commerce? For one digital commerce is global commerce. If people want the service or product — they buy it. Point blank. Businesses need to deliver. And they need to fulfill the consumer need of a fast delivery on a global scale — or risk customer satisfaction and loyalty.
This development sparked further megatrends — one visible and one that’s quite a bit counter-intuitive. First the obvious one: Businesses in e-commerce work hard to make same-day-delivery possible. They go as far as developing new business models. Amazon Prime, UberRush and Postmates pop into the mind. And they are willing to tackle the many challenges that come with it. Click-and-run seems the way to go. And it demands easy and safe forms of payment.
The second development sparked by globalization and the wish for a fast, flexible delivery is an increasing localization of the online market. What seems like an oxymoron at first glance, is indeed pretty logical. It seems that local online dealers can beat the giants with a number of qualities — they can adapt to locality-specific demands quicker and better. And speed is not a challenge. This might very well explain why the big players are willing to put anything in finding a solution. Even if it means to change their business model.
What else — next to globalizing, localizing and speed-delivery — do we observe by 2017? Consumers expect tailor-made offers. Offers that fits them and their needs. No wonder that the trend to personalizing and customizing the shopping experience continues. Let’s be honest, a wrong Google search entry might still lead to a barrage of ill-targeted facebook and Google ads. Advertising and e-commerce are still figuring it out — but they will get there.
Last but not least play is an ever-increasing factor in retail. Indeed we can tell both less and less apart. Customers don’t want to “just buy.” They want to be inspired to buy. Consequently, the borders between inspiration, play, buying, and shopping begin to break down. Accepting this fact — and the challenges it brings — seems to be the hardest challenge for more normal digital business.
At wysker, we are pretty convinced that we are right on target with the big trends in digital and e-commerce. Let’s take a closer look.
wysker is not a conventional retailer. We are “product brokers”. wysker brings buyers and sellers together, consumers to the shops, and shops to the consumers. There is a careful pre-selection process. The thousands of already listed shops represent a global best-of. Catering all tastes and styles, mainstream trends and underground ideas, local and global business. And all of that quality checked. wysker hence moves smoothly through the traps the dichotomy of globalizing and localizing sets for e-commerce. We offer more choice and more relevance at the same time.
Driven by the goal to combine choice and relevance we highly customize the user experience. Indeed we do it so successful, that we can predict purchase intent with unmatched precision. This claim may sound outright arrogant — considering we claim to achieve what way bigger guns don’t. Rest assured: we were completely taken by surprise during our test runs. We knew we had something good. Even very good. But when we became the guinea pigs of our code, some in the office questioned the results. This was either foul trickery or our tastes to stupid. More tests. More of the same effect. This experience sparked our obsession with privacy and data rights — as you can see from the countless articles we posted on the topic in this Medium channel.
At this point we got globalizing, localizing, customizing and privacy sacked. What else? Gamification, play, fun, inspiration. Well, this is how wysker started. It is our core business. The whole wysker App was built to bring the joy of window shopping to mobile phones around the world. Placed right in between inspiration platforms like Pinterest and Instagram and buying ones like Amazon, we believe we are entirely on target here. Add to that a one of a kind navigation that lets you ride the wave of products and ideas with one thumb, at any speed from super slow to an incredible 30 products a second and you are there.
But what does all the talk mean, if you don’t like it? After all, you are the user. You are the consumer. And you should have all the power over your buying experience. Our suggestion is simple: The wysker App will start to go online in January 2018. By mid-2018 we will be globally active according to our plan. Why don’t you try it?
Sources:
1 FMI Research Services; “Digital Commerce Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2016–2026“, https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/digital-commerce-market
2 Meola, Andrew; “ The Rise of M-Commerce: Mobile Shopping Stats & Trends“, 27.10.2016, http://www.businessinsider.de/mobile-commerce-shopping-trends-stats-2016-10?r=US&IR=T
3 eCommerceWeek.co.uk; “Mobile overtakes desktop traffic“, 13.02.2017, http://www.ecommerceweek.co.uk/news/461/mobile-overtakes-desktop-traffic/
