We are in 2016, a promising year with the explosion of new ecommerce trends. This time, we want to mention to the prediction for new ecommerce flavor.

Smartphone revenue will overtake desktop.

Stuart McMillan, known as deputy head of ecommerce at Schuh, believed that the increase in mobile usage has been in several recent years but it will actually mushroom in 2016 and the revenue companies can earn from smartphones will far exceed revenue from desktop. The behaviors of spend more capital investing in mobile user experiences of companies show that they are all ready and confident in consumers shopping on mobile.



Prioritization of visitors, not visits

This is also a great opinion from Stuart McMillan. He has confidence in visitor based metrics when converting visitors into client is the final goal regardless of how many sessions/devices this process requires.

Taking a long hard look at third-party solutions

According Matt Curry, head of ecommerce at Lovehoney, this year, 2016, there will be more and more UK ecommerce companies pay more attention to solutions bank and rationalize to see which third parties actually drive value. Only when they cope with hard climate, do they gain the overview and take a good hard look at some aspects such as personalization, loyalty, social and community, they will find the destination to maximize profit with lowest cost.

Reducing reliance on Google?

That does sound strange but it is an interesting idea of James Gurd, head of Digital Juggler and co-host of ecomchat. This idea comes from the fact that free search traffic has become harder in 2015 and predicted to be continuing in following years. Google shows the importance of SEO but makes it be double-edged sword after building audience of addicts. In long term, business owners should think about build their audience outside and reduce reliance on the Google universe.

Investing in content-rich experiences

Matt Curry affirmed strongly that in crowded markets, retailers will compete with others by their unique data. It was not the time when just giving customers a photo and let them study about products by themselves. Clients nowadays desire more than that, they want detailed descriptions, social proof and super-rich experiences.

UX teams become CX teams

From the point of view of James Gurd, growth momentum of companies building out CX teams rather than just UX to cover core digital design tend to increase continuously. CX includes complimentary skills such as customer insight and quant research. It is the great leap forward of customer insight and data-driven decision making.

Mobile payment and loyalty to follow Starbucks

Once again with James Gurd, because the development of mobile trading, as the results, payments will be mostly made though mobile payment methods. 2016 is expected to be greater use of mobile payment tech and use of native device wallet functions to store coupons and loyalty cards.

Black Friday may wobble

In UK, 2015 was the year for carrying out Quick ratio calculation for Black Friday and they looked at the effect of it on Christmas sales. It seems not to be good for long term market share; therefore, UK retailers should consider continuing or eschewing it entirely.

Brand social over owned media?M

James Gurd said that in case you can combine brand-owned websites and the way social content consumption, it can tempt other consumer brands with a strong social audience to avoid the standard own-built web platform for a more flexible social platform coming with inbuilt mobile and search optimization.