How quickly technology changes. You will fall behind if you can’t keep up with the pace. Once upon a time, the only thing sellers could do was put their items on eBay. Then Shopify and WordPress came along and changed this. Building your own online store is now easy.
But that’s not the end of technology. If you can build your own online store now, there are probably other things that will become popular in 2023. So, look at our list of the top nine so you can start planning ahead.
Chatbots
Chat is, without a doubt, the new way to talk. It has gotten rid of phone calls and texts. No one will call you on the phone today. Instead, people will talk to you. But you can’t expect customers to start chatting with you.
You have to have a chatbot that will start talking. A chatbot is a robot that shows up on your website whenever a customer is there. You can put a picture of yourself or your company in the chat logo. What matters is that it has your brand on it or that the customer can see something on your site that makes it seem trustworthy.
Chatbots will definitely be the next big thing. According to surveys, about 53% of companies plan to put chatbots on their websites. So, why is it important, and why will it be popular in 2023?
The e-commerce industry will use chatbots because of the following:
- Presence In Real Time: These chatbots are always on your website. You don’t have to run it yourself, and you don’t have to hire someone to answer questions from customers.
- Customer Support Anytime: The chatbots are programmed to answer customer questions, so they can help customers at any time. You can also use chatbots with questions that customers can choose from. Then, you can put the answers to these questions into a computer.
- Customer Service That Is Proactive: the chatbot can pop up on its own and encourage your customer to ask a question. If a customer sees this, he’ll feel important and cared for, which will make him more likely to buy from you.
- Get Information About Your Customers: Chatbots can collect information about your customers, especially about their questions and concerns. The data will help you figure out which products need to look better, which ones to get rid of, and a lot more.
- Save Money On Hiring People: If you want your website to be up and running 24 hours a day, you need at least three people. You need more than that, though, because all three of them need a day off, too. You don’t have to pay people to work when you have a chatbot. You only have to pay a one-time fee or a fee to join.
As time goes on, chatbots will get better at what they do. And as they do, the robots will take over customer service, making sure that everyone has the same experience.
Video marketing
Blogs and other written content are being replaced by videos. Consumers find it easier to understand how a product works when they watch a video about it, and they want to see how the product works before they buy it.
The biggest problem with videos now is that they are hard to make. You need to learn how to take pictures, edit them, and add sound to them.
55% of people watch a video online every day, according to statistics. 90% of people think that videos are better than blogs for showing off products. Every day, more than 8 billion videos are watched on Facebook alone. Your conversion rate can go up by 80% if you use videos.
If you want to keep up with what’s popular in 2023, you need to put money into video marketing. You also need to make live video streaming that your fans can watch and follow. If it’s live, they’ll know you’re a real person, which will give you more credibility.
Here are some other ways videos can help e-commerce:
- improve a page’s search engine ranking
- Improve conversion rate
- People find it easier to understand videos.
- Increase clicks and shares
- People will find it entertaining, and they may buy something on the spot.
- Build trust and credibility
- Make a virtual show of how the product works.
- fewer returns of products
If a customer saw how the product works in action, he is less likely to ask for a refund or return it. This is because he won’t feel like he was taken advantage of, which is what often happens when they buy something based on pictures alone.
Checkout by email
Most people today think that emails are just another way to sell things. People in business use email to sign people up for things, but they don’t know yet that they can also use email as a way for a customer to check out and finish the purchase.
Email shopping is the other way to check out by email. It’s a new trend that will be all the rage in 2023, since people who shop on their phones can now do so from within their emails.
The “Buy” button is now built right into the email checkout. If a customer clicks on that, he will go to the checkout page and finish his purchase there. This is a much easier way to sell because all you have to do is remind the customer to finish the purchase.
Here are the reasons why it makes sense to use this feature in 2023:
- Find unclaimed checkouts
- Make quizzes and polls that are interactive in the email body.
- The email body makes it easy to check out.
- Since you know who bought what, it’s easier to gather information.
If you want to know more about this, you should check RebelMail. This kind of technology was first used by a new company. It’s called “interactive mail,” and its founders thought, “If we can send follow-up emails to the consumer, why not let them check out or shop from the email itself?”
At first, Rebel Mail just wanted to improve the look of email newsletters. Aside from that innovation, the company’s founders wanted business people to be able to see how customers or email recipients act or respond to these emails.
With this kind of email service, you can combine your email marketing campaign, cart abandonment strategy, and conversion rate efforts into one.
Fulfillment centers are getting bigger
A warehouse is what a fulfillment center is. You send your things to this warehouse, and when they get them, they’ll put them in a list. After that, you can sell your items on the platform. When someone places an order, the warehouse group will ship the item.
For a long time, Amazon was the only company that did it. Fulfillment by Amazon, or FBA, is the name of the service. Shopify said it would open a number of fulfillment centers in the United States in 2021.
When a small company like Shopify is ready to go up against a huge company like Amazon, other companies will surely follow suit, and it will become a trend.
The thing about fulfilment centers is that the seller has to pay for the space where the products are kept. He doesn’t have to worry about shipping the items himself in exchange. This is exciting because having more fulfillment centers could mean less money spent on shipping and handling fees.
Here are some of the reasons to use a fulfillment center:
- Lessen the cost of shipping
- Better organization
- Reached farther
- Service to customers got better
- orders are easier to track
- Better facilities and quick delivery of orders
- More time for marketing
Shippers and fulfillment centers work together in a special way. Because they ship thousands of items every day, they pay less than the average person. Because of this discount, you will also pay less for shipping, and so will your customers.
Logistics, or how the products are moved, are also better because they have people on staff who are experts in this area. And because they have a special deal with shippers like FedEx or DHL, you can ship internationally and reach more customers.
If you do this by yourself, you probably won’t make a sale because you might charge more for shipping than the product is worth.
Used-goods market
What is the market for used things? It just means “pre-loved” or “used” items. People will do this more in 2023, when they realize that not all used things are bad.
In fact, eBay began as a place where people could sell used items. eBay made a lot of money with this model until it started selling new things as well.
Today, selling used goods is making a comeback. You can see this most often on websites that sell used mobile phones. Companies usually buy used items, fix them up, and then sell them online.
So, how will this trend help you? You can either put these items up for sale on your website or fix them yourself. If you choose the first one, you can sell as a dropshipper or become an affiliate and earn commissions.
If you choose the second option, you’ll need to spend money on used goods, fix them up, and then sell them.
Here are some things you should know about the second-hand market:
- Used goods are easier to sell because the prices are lower.
- When you recycle things instead of throwing them away, you help the world.
- If you sell something that was once owned by an actor or actress, you’ll be surprised at how quickly it sells. The same is true for branded clothing.
- You don’t have to just sell refurbished smartphones. You can also sell used books, cars, bikes, and a lot more.
The market for used things is very big. In China, there are more than 1.9 million people who use this market, and more than 80,000 transactions have been made. In 2021, this market also brought in $29 billion.
Social commerce
Social commerce is when people use social media sites to sell things online. At one point, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook all added “buy” buttons to their websites. They took it off for some reason.
But that’s not a problem because you can still sell things on social media even if you don’t have a “buy” button. Instagram has been known for a long time as a place where Instagram stars can sell things to their fans. With the launch of the Facebook Marketplace, Facebook is growing its business today.
You can post your items online, like on eBay, and Facebook will show them to people in your area. You can only sell real things right now. You can’t sell food or digital things, which is fine. Facebook will surely allow these things soon.
You can even set up your own shop on Facebook. Listing products is free, but Facebook still doesn’t have a way to buy things. Even so, a lot of sellers and businesses depend on social media to make sales. Getting social proof on social media is easier than making your own website.
When you use the power of social commerce, you can:
- Use of it is free.
- A lot of interaction from users
- Consistent growth in users
- Search engine rankings that are high
- The social media algorithm will automatically show people in your area or country your products.
- You don’t need to do that much advertising for your product.
Since Facebook and other social media sites have to get more users, you will be able to use this growing traffic to your advantage. Even if some people stop doing things, younger people will take their place.
Drone delivery
If you think that this is just an idea, you are wrong. Now, advanced trials are happening, and Wing, which is part of the Google group, is in charge of them. Amazon is also a leader in this technology, and we can see that once this is approved by the government, it will become a trend quickly.
What is delivery by drone? It means that goods are brought to your door by small planes that don’t have a pilot. The person who is in charge of the drone is probably sitting in an office, or it could be on full auto-pilot mode.
This technology is important for a business like Amazon because it will cut its shipping costs by a lot. The FAA has already given United Parcel Service, or UPS, permission for its fleet of drones. Now that the technology is working, it just needs a little polishing.
If this becomes popular, your online business will be affected. You have to use this service on your own. The most likely thing to happen is that fulfilment centers will close down. Instead, drones will be kept in these centers.
After you place an order, the drone can come to your house, pick up your package, and then bring it to you. Since the drone flies in the air, delivery will be faster because there won’t be any traffic and it won’t have to stop at every house.
Here are the reasons why drone delivery will become popular everywhere by 2023:
- less traffic on the roads
- Faster delivery time
- No pollution
- lowered the cost of shipping
Drones fly in the air, so there will definitely be laws about them. But if they start delivering, they won’t need to use vans or other land-based delivery methods. And because there isn’t a lot of traffic on land, the parcels will get there faster.
Drones are powered by batteries. They don’t use fuel, which is great for the environment and will cut down on pollution. The drones also don’t need pilots, so no one has to deliver the product. If a logistics company has fewer employees, the cost of the service will also go down.
Direct-to-consumer
Dropshipping is a popular way to run a business today. It’s easy; all you have to do is list the manufacturer’s products on your website. If a customer places an order, the supplier will ship it to the customer.
Now, these same suppliers may do away with you, the middleman. If they do, this is called “direct-to-consumer” business. It’s already happening, and Alibaba and AliExpress are the best examples of this.
This is not to say that dropshipping will go away. After all, not all people who make things are good at selling them. A lot of them also don’t want the trouble of keeping up a website. All they want to do is put their products on AliExpress and Alibaba and wait for dropshippers to pick them up.
This is likely to become a trend, though, and only the biggest companies are likely to join in. For example, Casper is a company that makes beds and sells them online and ships them directly to the customer. You probably won’t find Casper mattresses in a big box store.
Here are some reasons why business-to-consumer will do well:
- There is no middle man, so the maker gets all the money.
- The product is exclusive; it can’t be bought anywhere else.
- Quality control; since there is no middle man, each product is not subject to wear and tear or bad handling.
Now, this might sound scary, but it’s really not. This might even be good for you. If a company starts to use this model, which is also called “direct-to-consumer,” they will likely need marketers to bring people to their website and make money for them.
And here’s where you can help. As a dropshipper or an affiliate marketer, you can sell the company’s products. You will get a commission either way.
Sales both online and in stores
It’s easy to understand how to sell online, but what about offline? The offline sale has nothing to do with putting up a storefront. It just means that you can charge your customers offline, and your online selling software will keep track of the sales.
Why will this become popular? Many people sell things today, but they don’t keep the stock. Many platforms have the problem that a customer has to be on the website before he can place an order. The only time a seller can buy a product from a supplier and finish the process is after an order has been placed.
But what if you could sell to your friends without them having to sign in? This is what is known as selling offline. In this method, you talk to people in person, pull out your phone, and let them pay through the offline software.
When you get back online, you can process the order, and the person you sold it to just has to wait for the product to arrive.
Here are some advantages of selling in person:
- Even if the buyer hasn’t signed up, you can still take credit card payments.
- Every chance you get, you should sell.
- Even if there is no internet, you can charge cards and process the charges later.
- Since you are in front of the buyer, you have more credibility.
Shopify and other platforms like Square now let you sell things in person. You have to download and install the software and pay for a subscription before you can use it. Most of the time, this kind of software is called POS, which stands for point-of-sale.
Summary
The year 2023 will be a lot of fun. As a businessperson, you need to keep an eye out for new trends and, if you can, be the first to take advantage of them. The best thing to do is to start learning about these nine big trends for 2023 right away, and then look at how you can use this information for your business.
Remember, the main point is that you want to increase the number of people who buy from you. Some of these won’t work for your business. Pick the best thing for you. For example, dropshippers who don’t keep their own goods don’t need to know about drones, but those who make and sell their own goods do.
