Where is ecommerce going

Other more intangible benefits include avoiding emissions comparable to million cars, the creation of , jobs, and capturing million new tons of recyclables. Public-private partnerships are thus vital for these efforts to reach their full potential. The Recycling Partnership is bringing together various stakeholders at the same table, to rebuild the recycling system in America and achieve just that.

In , inflows into sustainable ETFs were 63x higher than in We show how investors can implement climate investing in their portfolio. Clearly, investors are recognising the urgency of climate change and the need for related investing strategies.

In this graphic from iShares by BlackRock , we define climate investing, the forces giving it momentum, and how investors can begin to implement it in their own portfolios. This helps investors align their portfolios with the transition to a low carbon economy.

In response to this momentum, the number of companies disclosing on climate change has almost doubled in the last five years. This transparency can enable investors to make more informed decisions. New products with climate considerations are helping investors with the transition, and one widely available vehicle is Exchange Traded Funds ETFs.

In fact, annual inflows into global sustainable ETFs have grown substantially. In , inflows into sustainable ETFs were 63 times higher than they were in ETFs are a useful tool because they offer the transparency investors need to pursue specific financial and climate goals. Within sustainable ETFs, there are a range of funds that incorporate climate considerations.

To bring clarity to this space, BlackRock has categorised climate investing into three key approaches:. Connect with us. Some payment options include: Digital wallets Mobile payments Cryptocurrency Cryptocurrency is especially trendy, as companies become increasingly more open to blockchain tech and cryptocurrency as payment. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form. Sign up. Related Topics: artificial intelligence augmented reality ecommerce Online Shopping ecommerce landscaoe omnichannel shopping visual commerce online payments.

Click for Comments. You may also like. Published 13 hours ago on November 11, By Sponsored Content. The Reality of Recycling Issues in America Of 47 million tons of total generated recyclables in a year, only one-third is actually recovered.

Recycling in America is broken—so why is now the opportune time to fix it? How Recycling Investments Can Pay Dividends In the long run, the potential return on investment ROI in recycling in America could be nearly double the amount of the initial amount put in.

Not only do shoppers want to buy online, they also expect it to be fast and convenient. Consumer surveys indicate that these shifts will be sticky. Other shifts that took hold during stay-at-home orders are also expected to persist, including shopping online, using mobile payments, and video calling and conferencing.

Sourced from Global Web Index. Stickiness will depend on how satisfied consumers are with their new digital experiences. This varies by country. Chief executives around the globe say digital is here to stay , the shift to ecommerce is structural , and behavioral changes are permanent.

Focus on creating innovative digital experiences that make life easier for your customers, reinventing traditional shopping experiences for the post-pandemic world, and bringing your brand to life in new ways.

Start by making sure your customers can do business with you wherever they like. Connecting the online and offline worlds allows the customer to choose where they buy.

It also allows you to capitalize on their desire for speed and convenience. Local pickup options are faster and cheaper than shipping, and another opportunity to bring customers back to your store and experience your brand in real life. The faster and easier you make it to check out, the more money you can make.

The next opportunity is being able to pivot between the digital and physical worlds and provide a truly blended shopping experience. Augmented reality simulates in-person shopping experiences online by allowing customers to see how a product might look on them or in their home.

With AR, customers click on a product and instantly see it overlaid wherever they point their mobile device. Helping customers better see the size, scale, and detail of your products drives conversions. Use 3D modeling or 3D versions of your products to show product shape and texture from any angle. Combined with AR functionality, 3D modeling creates intimacy with your products by allowing consumers to try before they buy in degree realistic experiences.

While more popular in China , livestream shopping events in the U. Viewers can chat with hosts and stylists, then click on items for purchase. Drive sales by converting traditional shopping or marketing experiences into virtual ones:.

Intimate apparel brand Knix pivoted from its international growth plans when COVID hit and launched digital versions of traditional physical experiences, most notably, a virtual fitting room. Customers learn how to take their measurements accurately, and find the right size and fit.

Knix also hosted a virtual warehouse sale that achieved:. No more workarounds, patches, or hacks: With Shopify Plus, you can run your online store and retail locations with hardware, software, and payments that were made for each other.

And unlike marketplaces, you own your brand and customer experience across every touchpoint, synced right in Shopify. With analytics at your fingertips, stay on top of growing trends in your business across in-store and online sales. Powered by Shopify POS, you have all the tools you need to manage your business, market to customers, and sell everywhere. With the cost to fulfill orders soaring , brands must turn fulfillment into a strategic asset.

Fulfillment must be smarter, closer to the consumer, and automated. The majority of consumers in the U. Proprietary data from Shopify shows the number of brands offering free shipping has increased 5.

To answer consumer demand while maintaining profitability, brands are setting free-shipping thresholds. Three-quarters of U. Many will also pay a premium. The focus is on zero-waste packaging , where all materials are used, reused, or recycled. Minimalist packaging , reduced package sizes , and redesigned shipping cases are also high priorities.

Are you ready to buy environmentally friendly products even if they cost a little bit more? The unboxing video era almost guarantees your packaging will be seen by shoppers researching your brand and products.

Packaging influences purchasing decisions , inspires customers to recommend your product , and can increase customer retention. It must simultaneously impress consumers and meet their desire for sustainability. Complex consumer demands have coincided with rising shipping costs.

The shift to ecommerce has resulted in shippers operating at peak levels for the majority of Worldwide, FedEx announced an average 4. UPS is also charging more: Its new chief executive has prioritized aligning pricing with the value the company provides.

Ecommerce is also making order profiles more complex: Distribution centers are fulfilling smaller DTC orders faster to meet aggressive cutoff times and shipping deadlines. Sourced from Kardex Remstar. The global nature of trade, though strained by U. Purchasing power is shifting from the U.

With Asia Pacific as ground zero for ecommerce, fulfillment complexity is compounding for brands selling cross border. Even more challenging, consumers increasingly expect free returns. Returns are also rising as more online shoppers "bracket" their purchases, buying multiple versions of a product with the intention of returning some items.

Brands have little choice but to creatively reimagine fulfillment. Around the world, businesses are prioritizing fulfillment to fight rising costs and meet consumer expectations. And that creates innovation and pricing pressure on the establishment of providers. Fulfillment networks are expensive to build, so brands are partnering with third-party logistics providers 3PLs to tap into their vast fulfillment networks.

Businesses are now focused on improving order fulfillment productivity, improving picking and handling processes, and streamlining inventory management.

Sourced from Shopify. In protect your margins from rising costs and give customers everything they want—fast, free, sustainable, and branded shipping—by improving your fulfillment capabilities.

Choose a 3PL with a vast network of strategically located fulfillment centers in the regions you want to ship to. This allows you to stock the right merchandise at the right location so orders can be shipped faster and routed more efficiently. A fulfillment partner should be able to:. Inventory management is key to building an efficient fulfillment network. Your inventory management system should accurately forecast demand so that inventory can be purchased, replenished, and managed effectively.

This saves time, expedites fulfillment, and reduces shipping costs. Automate returns to instantly give customers store credit, pre-fill return labels, and support self-serve returns. You can also use an automated returns solution to segment and track serial returners, then modify the promotions they receive to protect margins. Put returns on autopilot with:. Instead of returns, consider incentivizing customers to exchange products or accept store credit.

Click-and-collect commerce in the U. Some brands are taking fulfillment into their own hands by offering local delivery. Local delivery is faster than traditional shipping, provides more work to your retail workers, and gives you full control over the customer experience.

Customers can choose to pick up their orders or have them delivered from their nearest retail location. Scale your business with shipping and fulfillment services that put your brand and customer experience front and center. Deliver world-class shipping with preferred rates from trusted carriers, or take advantage of Shopify Fulfillment Network, the most advanced, robotics-driven fulfillment centers in the world to help high-volume businesses fulfill quickly and affordably.

And you can deliver your best service close to home with local delivery and pickup. Cut the uncertainty of third-party services with hands-on delivery to nearby customers. Or let online customers skip the shipping rates and checkout lines to pick up orders in store, curbside, or at other convenient locations. In a world where marketplaces dominate, and search is often unbranded, brand building has never been more important—or more difficult. Half of all global ecommerce sales occur on marketplaces , and the sheer volume compels brands to participate.

Virtual marketplaces are one of the fastest ways to scale globally. They also help smaller businesses fulfill orders more efficiently. But brands often perceive marketplaces as a necessary evil : driving sales, but pressuring margins. Brands have long been concerned about ceding customer relationships and data to marketplaces.

And those fears might become reality. Despite these concerns, transaction volume compels brands to have a marketplace presence.

With the purchase journey increasingly beginning on Amazon, consumers search by categories, benefits, and reviews. Search, according to analysts, has become the new brand :. Worldwide, shoppers are increasingly spending with their values. Gen Z, now the largest consumer group, leads the trend. The highest concentrations of purpose-driven consumers are in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

The demand for purpose-driven brands also aligns with a desire to shop with independently owned businesses. But satisfying this audience segment is increasingly difficult. With so many customer journeys beginning on marketplaces, brands often lack the data necessary to offer the personalized experiences that purpose-driven consumers desire. Brand discovery might often begin with brandless marketplace searches, but purchase decisions are influenced by the research that consumers do elsewhere online.

Reaching the purpose-driven consumer means re-evaluating your marketplace presence and offering rich non-marketplace experiences. Human connection is the new luxury. This has left many feeling wary about the role tech plays in their lives, and craving human interaction. From dynamic website content powered by real-time behavioral analytics to helping people customize their purchase journey, offering personalized experiences with a human touch is the antidote to marketplaces.

Strong brands recognize they have to get customers from a marketplace to their own properties so they can create a relationship with them that will last over time. Delivering on personalization means a combination of new technology solutions, and old-fashioned customer service that delivers unique branded experiences.

Sourced from Yieldify. Each of these channels offers opportunities to add the human touch. Improved collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence helps brands personalize storefronts with real-time publication of dynamic copy and creative. User-generated content promises personal online experiences through tailored microsites, responsive promotional videos, and livestreams with real-time interaction.

New brand-building opportunities are starting to emerge on marketplaces too. Walmart is changing the marketplace experience by enabling more branding opportunities like lifestyle photography. The goal is to make the marketplace local and personal, instead of a massive product dump.

As traditional retailers attempt to disrupt the marketplace experience, expect incumbents like Amazon to follow suit. Transform your marketplace product pages by replacing soulless images and forgettable copy with content that differentiates your brand.

Creative assets should automatically sync across channels and pages. Become an API-first brand, and build or buy marketplace experience dashboards that sync inventory, product information, and digital marketing resources.

In , U. The growth of e-commerce has not only changed the way customers shop, but also their expectations of how brands approach customer service, personalize communications, and provide customers choices. The future of online shopping depends on savvy professionals who can create a personalized, engaging virtual shopping experience for consumers. As retailers adjust to this digital sales boom, online marketplaces are changing the way customers shop. Amazon alone accounted for nearly one-third of all online retail sales in , according to Internet Retailer.

Other top online retailers also saw huge increases in their online sales. The pandemic, which pushed many consumers to change how they buy essential items, electronics, and clothing, has helped to reshape the future of online shopping and forced businesses to evolve to meet new needs and demands.

To capitalize on the opportunities presented by e-commerce, business professionals must be well versed in the latest technologies and trends, including the following. The future of online shopping relies on capturing patterns of shopping behavior. This allows a brand to create strategic pricing, advertising, and cross promotions on both an individual basis and based on widespread trends.

For example, a brand may run social media ads during peak shopping hours, promote items that are often bought together, or show an ad for a specific item a consumer has previously viewed. Business professionals trained in market research analysis use a variety of tools to process customer data and uncover insights. Analysts also use data to conduct product research, identifying which items are selling and how much customers are willing to pay. Product development, including what new products to sell and how to position them, is also increasingly data driven.

Analysts need strategic thinking, computer proficiency, and decision-making skills to succeed in the future of online shopping.

The recent explosion in online shopping provides an exciting opportunity for business professionals to step into a digital marketing role.

In the world of e-commerce, shoppers require a more personalized experience. Rather than manually analyzing customer information, data analysts use artificial intelligence AI and machine learning technologies to compile data and create customer profiles. Analysts use these profiles and insights with the help of AI to deliver personalized recommendations and relevant content, based on an intelligent algorithm.

A report from Liveclicker, the digital marketing solutions provider, found businesses that are investing in smart personalization in e-commerce can expect to see up to a fold return for every marketing dollar they spend.

Although AI handles much of the analytical processes, market research analysts apply their own insights and understanding of consumer behavior to make recommendations and spearhead the continued optimization of e-commerce.