E-commerce: the 5 trends for 2014

According to the French firm Vente-Privee Consulting (consulting service in digital strategy) the scenario of the “digital ecosystem” features the need to involve evermore aware users, favoring a satisfying shopping experience. This involves five phenomena that need to be studied, with considerations valid aboveall for the fashion field, but useful for all sectors.

Big Data For a more precise profiling of the customer, 2014 features the introduction of new cloud solution applications that  ease the reading and interpretation of Big Data, favouring the use of top management decisional processes.

Customer centricity The new online shopping community express and share tastes, orienting brand proposals upstream. Hence the personalised offer reconfigures the customer-seller relation and cross-selling represents the future: internet as a tool offers the opportunity for promoting offers via a channel open around the clock.

Objective quality of contents What with greater customer awareness, creative contents need to be devised that are pertinent and have a high added value, that also aim at a better positioning within the search engine.

Opportunity for fashion Overcome the obstacles that inhibit online purchasing (choosing the right size for example) enhanced reality tools like “virtual” changing booths can be adopted: with the aid of a webcam the e-shopper can take a photo of him-herself at the moment of purchase enabling the website to identify the right size, the brand and the type of article to be worn.

Pricing strategy If price is the first criteria for online purchases, the challenge is not so much that of offering the lowest price,  but  the right one in relation to the quality of the service. To develop e-commerce the company has to concentrate on niche  and innovatory products or else extend its offer horizontally.  Solutions are being developed that enable the monitoring of the prices of competitor websites within a predefined competitive perimeter. Some SaaS solutions perform the mapping of competitor websites and offer an aggregate view of the prices applied by the same, including shipping costs.