Sometimes I think that what will be the future of e-commerce? as new activities just like blogging ,internet marketing are introduced. An answer from my inside comes that any business activity performed online is a part of e-commerce. Some campaign like SEO are introduced to boost the e-commerce.
I’m confused - what does SEO have to do with the purchasing of a good or service?
Well yeah that was a bit confusing. Yes SEO helps ecommerce i think all website does specially when its a new site. But that does not define the future of eCommerce.
Allyson,
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Blogging, social, paid media, seo, they are all tactics that present different methods to grow a business either with new customers or returning ones. The names and ways in which we bring traffic in will evolve but digital commerce will certainly continue to grow as well the utility of digital in driving offline purchases. Clearly in the short term mobile will continue to boom, but again, how much direct sales it generates versus assistance remains to be seen.
Beyond that it’s as much about how humans bring technology into their lives as what sites do. With innovations like SQUARE it seems reasonable to assume that transactions will continue to move away from cash, kiosks will become increasingly utilized but at the same time the expectations for service and support are also increasing as people discover and have the option to vent about their options.
To me the question is not what the future of ecommerce is but rather when will we stop calling it ecommerce and look at it all as one ecosystem for educating on a product, facilitating a transaction and building a relationship with the customer.
e-commerce is only a tool to be shown up in the Internet so that people can see our store existance. I also wonder how the future will be for e-commerce.
Currently, from I’ve seen the example of direct selling, they don’t have a physical shop initially. Today, I can see that they have started purchase/rent a shoplot and display their products to the public.
I think the convention business style - own a shoplot is still the basic. E-commerce is only an additional tool for Internet exposure for the business.
Given that over 70% of consumers in may internet developed nations research products online including general household items I’d say that that “internet exposure” is about as much of a necessity as taking credit cards these days.
I will have to agree with Ted. Granted there are some other effective methods of advertisement such as bulk mailing catalogs. An internet website is key for advertisement, and SEO is even more important then that. You can have a website but no one will know it exists without proper SEO. SEO is basically anything you do to make your website known, and it obviously gets way more difficult then that.
I would not agree you need a base business. You can do mailings and websites from your home or really anywhere with a computer period. This is of course depending on the size of your business.
Although none of this has anything to do with the future of E-commerce, but the other posts started it. I’d say one day we will be doing all of this from are smartphones, as they become increasingly cheaper, and the internet speed becomes increasingly faster. There will be no need for computers we’ll just plug a mouse and keyboard right into are smartphones. That is my guess for the distant future, I guess not just of E-commerce but of the whole internet.
Interesting question. I think the current trend is that eCommerce in general is growing at an incredible rate. With a limited pool of customers, that means they are moving away from traditional brick and mortar commerce, which I think will continue. The real change will not be in technology, but in the attitudes of people as a new generation of internet and eCommerce savvy become adults. It will become more acceptable and common to buy things online, and offline distribution will move to accommodate this.
Traditionally, one of the biggest obstacles to buying online is receiving the merchandise days later, whereas in a traditional store it’s instant gratification. Amazon already offers same day shipment in some places, where you order the item and get it that day. This will become more and more common as the on-the-ground infrastructure shifts to support eCommerce.
I am kind of confused by some of the answers here. Why do we always go back to SEO?
Here are my 2 cents on the future of eCommerce:
FASTER CHECKOUTS will increase conversion rates… so we will have some kind of login into the cloud, where our desktop, documents, contacts, and applications will reside. Then we will utilize a SECURE identity that will allow us to purchase from SECURE sites that WILL NOT require us to fill out a checkout or registration form since our information will be in the cloud. We will then get an email which will display on our smartphones asking us to confirm our purchase, and that’s it.
We are linking an eCommerce transaction to a physical device with a human interaction being required so no bots making fake purchases.
Anyone implementing this after reading my post please contact me for proper attribution.
Thanks,
-Daniel O.
eCommerce Developer
“Research is Key”
In future it could be happen that everyone would like to do business in e-commerce. Because it is much cost effective than a traditional business. It can be done only by staying at home. No need for large investments to start an E-Commerce business.