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New technologies, improved Internet accessibility and increasing popularity of mobile apps and e-wallets are making it easier for e-commerce portals to reach a larger market

The Indian e-commerce sector, driven by the growth of the start up India movement, is one of the most dynamic, innovative, and exciting sectors in the country. There is a lot of experimentation taking place in the industry. New technologies, improved Internet accessibility (not yet enough, but it’s improving) and increasing popularity of mobile apps and e-wallets are making it easier for e-commerce portals to reach a larger market. This makes it the right time to bring in global best practices and create processes and systems that are financially and economically beneficial to everyone — be it vendors, e-commerce portals or the end consumer.

Among the current emerging trends, the four global trends that I’d like to see replicated or adopted by the Indian e-commerce ecosystem are:

Adoption of contextual shopping instead of personalisation

The days of simple personalisation are over. Now it’s contextual shopping that is helping provide customer delight and enhance user experience. A step ahead of personalisation, contextual shopping helps predict not only what the customer usually buys or prefers but also his buying pattern and frequency of purchase. It can help you serve the customer even before he actually runs out of his product supply.

For example, if a grocery store customer purchases seven cartons of milk every month, with the help of contextual shopping technology, the store owner will know when to arrange the next delivery to customer before he runs out of supply.

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Where personalisation was limited to and generally used by e-commerce portals to remember the name of the customer and his preferred brands based on his/her shopping history, contextual shopping is powered with advanced customer-centric analytics and is also being used by the off-line stores to map their customer’s purchase journey, keep track of his demands and notify him when the product is available or provide him with information regarding the product as and when he needs it.

A recent example of contextual technology is Master Card’s partnership with Cubic Transportation Systems. With Cubic Transportation’s technology, Master Card will provide its customers with real-time insights on their travel routes and also offer them fare discount updates on their mobile phones.

Use quality and informative content to keep users engaged and convert a visit in to a sale

When compared to offline stores where one can usually turn to a sales person for help, online shopping is an impersonal experience and keeping the customer engaged is both challenging and important. Lack of interaction and not being able to physically check and touch the product (although lot of companies are trying to fill this gap with more granule pictures) affects the online conversion rate which is globally between 1-3 per cent compared to 25-40 per cent for offline stores.

To overcome this shortcoming, e-commerce portals must invest in quality and informative content, create robust FAQs, give detailed product descriptions, and provide live chat facility to guide customers throughout their visit on the site. Proactively engaging customers in this manner will ensure that the customer will gain confidence in the portal and will be encouraged to try out the product.

Personalisation of email communication

According to a study by Salesforce, 64 per cent of emails that reach Indian online shoppers contain promotional emails containing deals which may or may not be of use to them. This percentage is comparatively lower in Southeast Asia (55 per cent ) and the US (44 per cent ).

Personalising these promotional emails and sending a more targeted communication to customers will ensure that they remain engaged and the brand remains relevant to them. In short, it helps in reducing nuisance which customers feel towards unwanted promotional emails.

Adopting alternate payment methods

Currently credit and debit payment methods are dominating the transactional market but according to CBEC report, 59 per cent online transactions will be done by alternate payments methods by 2017. It includes e-wallets, digitisation of banks and mobile apps. Though, the pace is a little slow but similar trends can be seen in the Indian market as well. As the use of mobile payments and e-wallets are on rise globally, cash-on-delivery and debit card market share is expected to decline to 6 per cent by 2017.

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According to global forecast data, 63 per cent of Asian/Pacific e-transactions will be made using non-card methods. Alternate payments are increasingly gaining importance. Companies (online as well as brick & mortar based) need to realise this trend along with local preferences of payment methods if they want to maximise their transaction rates.

Although, new technology is making it easier to pay at point of sales by using smartphones and various apps, the adoption rate can only be improved by providing safe and secure IT infrastructure.

Adopting these global practices will help bring the Indian e-commerce industry at par with the global industry.

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