Accelerate Ecommerce Success in 2021

There is a coming trend in 2021 called “revenge spending.” Cooped up at home for more than a year, millions of people are excited to get back out into the world, and they’ll be making up for lost time: purchasing nice clothes, traveling far and wide, and rewarding themselves with some fine dining. Additionally, people also got new pets, bought starter homes and made other bold purchases that need to be cared for over the long term. As a result, consumer spending should be considerable in the second half of the year. U.S. GDP is set to grow 7.9% this year, for instance, a hefty amount.

Despite the coming gradual retail reopening, 2021 is blessed with the strongest ecommerce foundation in history. Last year, ecommerce grew by record numbers around the world. In the United States, ecommerce surged 31.8% and in Western Europe it rose 26.3%. At Kibo, we saw demand for our ecommerce solution grow by 73%, and saw ecommerce sales shoot up 83% during Cyber 5. With so many more transactions happening online, ecommerce is now a major channel for every retailer, even brick-and-mortar brands that had held out until the pandemic forced their hand.

People have gotten used to spending online. And with that, they’ve gotten used to its convenience and immediacy. Even when everything’s open, shoppers will keep those online habits and the heightened expectations that come along with them.

To meet the moment, here’s how to accelerate ecommerce growth in the coming months.

Invest In Rapid-Response Architecture

Predicting how your customers will behave six or 12 months from now is nearly impossible. Past insights, as we’ve seen recently, can be basically useless now, and the future remains foggy for many. Having the right technology in place to be able to respond rapidly to changes based on real-time data puts companies in the best situation to respond to changes in consumer demand.

The pandemic was a proving ground for the value of rapid-response architecture—software that provides real-time reporting and highly flexible scalability.

Here are just a few of the elements of effective rapid-response ecommerce software:

• Headless design: Ecommerce software that offers “headless” architecture allows companies a lot more flexibility to customize the software to fit their needs and fit into the rest of their commerce and marketing technology stack without the need for a separate UI.
• Microservices architecture: A microservices design allows companies to use only the capabilities within a platform that they want presently, and easily add more later. This reduces the weight of the integrations and makes for a more streamlined user experience.
• Open flexible design: An open design ensures that software can easily be integrated with other technologies and that APIs can be used to quickly connect data and workflows from third parties.
• Cloud architecture: With software based in the cloud, companies don’t have to implement and maintain software that is on site. Updates happen automatically and remotely. Cloud architecture also allows for rapid scaling when consumer demand changes quickly.
• Real-time response: Software that uses data in real time to provide instant feedback and a solid foundation for best practices like personalization.

AMMEX, a manufacturer of industrial and medical gloves, saw an 800% increase in demand for their gloves in March and April of 2020. And with Kibo’s ecommerce technology, they were able to seamlessly scale their site and even direct customer types to different offers in real time.

Similarly, City Furniture selected a headless ecommerce offering in order to maximize extensibility on their site. By going headless, City Furniture can easily customize online shopping experiences. With a headless design, the retailer can create promotions and checkout experiences that are unique to their own business.

Support End-To-End CX With Native Order Management

A deeper level of personalization happens most successfully when ecommerce is integrated with native order management capabilities. Order management unifies the entire picture of inventory and fulfillment with the customer journey to create a single, seamless flow that points to a happy customer.

Leading ecommerce software should allow you to view, edit, create, and fulfill orders directly from a single platform with tools to manage the end-to-end commerce experience while increasing efficiency. Empower both customers and associates with more flexibility and more options:

• Give associates and customers instant access to the full inventory catalogue at the right price.

• Personalize offers from search results to shipping times.

• Offer different types of fulfillment like BOPIS and curbside pickup for different customers based on their location and your fulfillment capabilities.

For the full list of strategies, download our 2021 Accelerated Commerce Guide.