Online Shopping: 8 Trends to Watch Out for in 2021

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Customers are always right, or haven’t you heard? Whether it’s shopping at brick-and-mortar stores or online, customers are key and customer experience is a major determining factor in whether they are loyal to a brand or not. 2020 – the year that was – brought huge changes leading to challenges and loss for businesses and people at large.
Yet the challenges were also met with innovation and ideas that overturned the status quo and expedited digital experiences to meet customer needs. The dawn of the digital era coupled with the pandemic, gave rise to the evolution of e-commerce, which revolutionized online shopping and also introduced the concept of live online shopping to the world.
This changed customer experience in dramatic ways, both for consumers and the brands that serve them. With the overnight transformation in the retail industry, brands and businesses had a tough time shifting to new models in real time.
That being said, there has been a permanent change in consumer expectations and 2021 will leave little room for error when it comes to customer experience. In a nutshell, those who’ve invested in providing great customer service will thrive, and those who haven’t will need to act quickly in order to remain competitive.
Consistently meeting the demand for an above-average customer experience can be an arduous task, but with so much competition for online business, it’s one that companies simply won’t be able to ignore in 2021. Luckily, technology is also adapting at rapid speeds to help deliver tools that can make customer experience a truly seamless experience for businesses as well as consumers.
So, what do companies and businesses need to know in 2021 that will help them win over customers’ hearts and minds and give them a good year in sales? Let’s explore the top trends in customer service that businesses need to look out for this year. Even before the pandemic took over the world, 70 percent of businesses had or were working on some kind of digital transformation strategy.
But while organisations may have understood the need for digital transformation before, there’s no doubt that the pandemic created an urgent need to accelerate these plans. From cloud-based remote working to digital customer service, many small technology deployments were implemented rapidly as quick fixes in response to the crisis.
Therefore, 2021 will see more strategic digital transformation initiatives move from planning to execution. Consumers are more open to trying new experiences and new forms of consumption to fight feelings of isolation.
This means that consumers are giving brands the permission to be creative and to experiment with new ways of engaging with them. But keep in mind: sincerity and authenticity matter more than ever, and ploys to manipulate consumers’ emotions will turn them off.
While the key factors of customer experience like customer effort and convenience still matter, trust and safety have become even more important. Consumers are concerned with whether brands make them feel safe during the pandemic.
As a result of this trend, consumers are becoming much more selective with the brands they’ll interact with in person. To make that select list, companies must focus on designing experiences that instil confidence.
The 2021 customer pays attention to you as a brand. They look to see how empathetic you really are.
Today, luxury hotel and spa guests are asking employees how they have been treated by their employer. You are being evaluated on the human scale more than ever before.
As a result, your value proposition is evaluated on ‘how’ you do your business. In 2021, real-time insight will be key to customer experience strategy and delivery.
This means that customer journey orchestration and visualisation will come into their own. Visualisation gives brands real-time information on their customers’ complex, non-linear, often unplanned journeys – and what the ideal journeys should look like.
Orchestration makes those ideal journeys a reality, cost-effective and scalable.  It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way businesses interact with customers. With AI and machine learning, brands can be available 24/7 at every stage of the journey.
In 2021, we’ll see more businesses use this technology to synthesise customer data and deliver personalised experiences at scale. This will lead to higher conversion rates, improved customer satisfaction, cost reduction and increased customer loyalty.  If your company is not operating with a focus on omnichannel communication, now is the time to adapt. A true omnichannel approach includes the ability to deliver a seamless and consistent experience across a variety of communication channels – all whilst factoring in the different devices, behaviours and preferences of the consumer.
Studies have shown that customers no longer just desire the ability to communicate with companies when and where it’s most convenient for them – they expect and demand it.  Shopping via smartphones is growing exponentially. Customers are becoming more comfortable with devices because the needs of the pandemic required quick adoption to digital channels, including mobile. Customers who had never even considered shopping via their phone are now doing it with gusto.
That trend will continue to grow as more brands offer better mobile experiences to do so. Mobile devices are becoming necessary to view restaurant menus and avoid touching kiosks in airports, hotel lobbies, and other populated places – this change will also be seen in online shopping practices.
So, there you have it – 8 trends that will dominate the virtual shopping and online video shopping experience in 2021. Perhaps it’s the isolation, but consumers are hungrier than ever for experiences they can curate and navigate.
It is clear that the pandemic has had a huge effect on consumer behaviour and the way their channels are organised. But the trends that stand out, and the ones that will most affect online businesses in the coming years are not just because of the pandemic.
These trends were already there, waiting to surface, and now they have ‘just’ been greatly accelerated.  Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com The author of this article is a professional having years of experience in the field of Digital Marketing and currently associated with Proxgy. The author is an expert in writing on virtual travel, online video shopping and Digital marketing topics..