6 Trends that will shape India’s eCommerce Market by 2020

Our beginning of every new year starts with discussing on what trends will shape our eCommerce industry specifically in India. And, here are the trends those are predicted for 2020.

India’s eCommerce market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 30% and will reach $200 million by the year 2026, as per the report by investment bank Morgan Stanley.

Also, as per Statista, India had around 224 million digital buyers in 2018, which will rise to 329 million by 2020, which is a highly rapid rise rate. Based on that we can expect it to reach somewhere between 273 million to 280 million buyers in 2019.

However, though there is mounting in sales numbers, it is turning tough to increase the customer base by just following the old business practices.

Today’s customers don’t wish to see what everyone else is exploring in the eCommerce marketplaces. Rather, they wish for something which appeals to them or that has been tailored or personalized for them only.

So, with the online markets turning increasingly competitive, here are six trends that are likely to thrive throughout 2019 and even persist into 2020.

1. Customer Journey will get More Personalized

The strategists of the eCommerce portals need to monitor their customers’ shopping behaviors, set up the products that best fit the present day behavioral trends and present in innovative way at right time.

Sellers can utilize buyers demographics like gender, age, pay scale and so on to customize digital  experiences.

The outcome will be much precise and targeted marketing campaigns will succeed if used smartly to further increase the online sales.

In the next 18-24 months, the informed shoppers would pick only those brands that will showcase customer centricity across all aspects of their business, right from personalization to customer-aware marketing offers to shopper-friendly shipping and better return policies.

Online business experts say that the near future of retail will undoubtedly be more personalized. The brands will use Business Intelligence and Machine Learning to capture buyers’ inclinations and show products which persuade them for impulse buying.

2. Swift Product Delivery will Turn Requisite

The time amid placing the order to receiving the delivery will trim down further and, in most cases, same day delivery will turn requisite to survive in the specific categories and regions. Most of the customers hate the extra waiting time, and quicker delivery options is the one thing that tops their wishlist while shopping online.

Although this is a hard-hitting expectation to handle for the retailers. Its execution will come with an assurance for more traffic at your shopping portal than before. Having this as a set expectations, company in delivery services can see steep demand in their services and players with good delivery networks are going to be next million dollar companies in India.

We ended our 2018 by sharing top four global future delivery trends for the eCommerce industry in 2019. And, here are they:

All of these four ways will help you deliver your products faster and that’s how you will even boost your conversions. But it seems difficult to have some of them in India looking at the infrastructure available.

To make sure handiness and well-being of shopper’s money, swift turnarounds, and trouble-free returns, as well as flexible refund policies, is highly required for you to guarantee it to your customers.  

3. Possibility to have voice-based search and online shopping

Google is consistently making alterations to its search results algorithm to make sure that more precise questions are answered with the spot on results. This is not an inconsequential update. This is an amendment which is a sign of how the next generation of internet users will interact with the web.

Today, kids do not type any longer, they straightforwardly ask Siri or Cortana or Google or Alexa and get the looked-for results. This fundamentally means that consumers are switching towards voice based content consumption.

Google search already takes voice commands which consumers use to find products and services around. We can presume that Google Shopping bringing voice based search as a functionality, which helps user to search product with voice and get the product feeds from all websites at one place. The same concept we shall expect to be inherited by Indian giants by providing voice search in their website/mobile apps.  

Myntra.com is a leading fashion commerce site which has already implemented voice based search in their app and which is providing ease to customer with less time.

That’s the reason why we consider voice-based online shopping a conversion hack for eCommerce businesses that instantly doubles the conversions.

4. Transition to an Integrated Omnichannel Presence

Having an Omnichannel eCommerce business model has become one of the top eCommerce Customer Experience Trends for 2019 which will continue even in 2020,

The online and offline disparity will blur soon. Customers will stop setting apart between online and offline mode of buying, and they will turn just channels. It will be an era of O2O (online to offline / offline to online). Users will be given a choice to see offline and order online or see online and pickup offline.  

Brands will eventually make the shift to an integrated Omnichannel presence, or new brands will build a diverse cost structure even for an offline existence.

Raymonds, Lenskart, Dominos, etc are the examples which have omnichannel experiences available in India already.

5. Niche players will rise and get own space, while big ones will continue to dominate

Flipkart and Amazon will carry on to be the most accepted eCommerce brands in India, even though specialists believe that distraction is bound to happen with other pioneering players such as Paytm having a cutting edge. Flipkart is having and will continue with an edge in towns, tier-II, and tier-III cities.

Amazon will make the cut in metros.

Niche players such as Nykaa in beauty care, BigBasket in grocery, Lenskart in eyewear, Pepperfry in furniture retail, Clovia in lingerie and Netmeds in selling medicines online will rise and get their own space in their specific markets. Specifically in Fashion industry niche brands are getting in to visibility and establishing themselves since last few years.

To cement their brand names, all these players will invest heavily in innovative marketing strategies and campaigns.

The enmity between Amazon and Flipkart will get severe by each day. However, their growth will increase at an incredible pace, and they will alter the ways in which self-governing merchants have to sell and operate online. But having said that, there will always be a space for niche brands.

6. B2B will adopt digital transformation

With the smartphone penetration in recent time, we are now observing the eCommerce customers in India are moving quickly towards digital payments more than cash on delivery business models.

Conversely, the eCommerce business which once commenced as a consumer buying behavior will now make sturdy inroads into B2B marketplaces.

As per Forrester Research, B2B business owners can save up to 90% on sales, support and operating costs by introducing and handling B2B eCommerce sites.

And, for B2B eCommerce success, it will become mandatory to have these conversion-oriented platform features. B2C like digital experience in B2B / wholesale selling will increase their market share, business growth and decrease their cost. It will bring speed, predictability and profitability to B2B segment.

Moving further, manufacturers and traders will utilize business intelligence (BI) and also use other advanced technologies, so they know what the buyers need prior to they ask. They will even respond by instantly fulfilling orders, and the complete order processing will turn automated.

7. Subscription eCommerce Would Have Hockey Stick Growth

In India, the subscription business model has been trending from the early 2016s. eCommerce businesses looking for growth, can think about a strategy to include subscription model in 2019.

It is good to follow footsteps of leaders and innovate further,

• Amazon launched Amazon Prime in 2016
• Zomato launched Zomato Gold in 2017
• Flipkart launched Flipkart Plus in 2018
• Swiggy launched Swiggy Super in 2018
• Myntra launched Myntra Insider in 2018
• All service commerce brands like Netflix, Dropbox, Shopify, etc are minting hockey stick growth in revenues due to Subscription models

This is why we published the following reasons why the leaders are aiming Subscription,

1. Better customer experience
2. Outperform competition
3. Improved customer loyalty
4. Addiction towards your brand

So are you the next one?

Indian eCommerce Market is Growing Faster

In the coming time, both customer and market demands will further continue to evolve. The users will be capable of uniting the real and virtual worlds at a time.

With AR and VR attaining grounds, they will be able to even explore digitally built shops globally sitting at home and be able to purchase products with hand gestures and as discussed above using the voice controls. Finally, the technology will commence thinking for you cutting out on all of the human contacts required today.

What do you think would be the next eCommerce market trend in India by 2020?