Future Proof Your Online Retail Strategy

Jim Gillon
Director of Sales
Magento, an Adobe company (@magento)

The online retail landscape is undergoing a metamorphosis as merchants explore a variety of emerging technology trends to try and stay ahead of ever-shifting buyer expectations of what defines a great online shopping experience. Join Jim Gillon, director of sales at Magento, an Adobe company, as he looks at how emerging technologies including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), personalization, advanced data insights, and more are enabling leading online merchants to stay ahead of the innovation curve and delight their customers with engaging experiences across their owned marketing channels.


Jim began by discussing the anticipated growth trends for ecommerce, comparing photos from his dining room table filled with received packages verses two lone shopping bags from less and less frequent mall trips. Then he moved onto statistics:

• Between 2018 and 2021, the number of people making online purchases is expected to rise from 1.8 billion to 2.1 billion (roughly the population of the US).
• mcommerce is projected to nearly double in sales between 2018 and 2021 with its contribution to overall retail eCommerce sales rising to 73% by the end of 2021.
• By 2022, 1/5 of gobal online retail sales is projected to be cross-border, up by 5% by 2016.
• B2C and C2C ecommerce sales of products and services is forecasted ti ruse ti $4.59 trillion by 2021 and account for 17.5% of global retail sales, up from 11.9% in 2018. (Amazon accounts for 35% of retail sales in the US while Walmart accounts for 3%. However, this point was not supported online. Cf, https://www.pymnts.com/consumer-insights/2018/walmart-amazon-share-of-consumer-retail-spend/)

After discussing new ecommerce technologies, like virtualization and the progressive web, he warned that fifty percent of Fortune 500 companies have disappeared in the last twenty years, mostly because they failed to evolve their sales models to reflect shifting commerce models.

Trends to watch for, according to Jim, include redesigning the retail experience to support seamless omnichannel journeys. Eg, mobile traffic is now 60% of online traffic, and 32% of online purchases were picked up in-store in the last 30 days. Also, convenience and personalization are increasingly important with 80% of surveyed consumers wanting personal service in-store and online but only 52% of retailers score themselves as providing moderate or high personalization. Further, 40% of online retail will be transacted on marketplaces by 2020 and 25% received a subscription box in the last month (mostly millennials, ages 18-29).

Finally, data is driving ecommerce with 75% of businesses using AI in one or more commerce applications and 58% of retail leaders stating that analytics have significantly improved their competitive position.