To succeed in a rapidly changing marketplace, company leaders need clear vision and a detailed plan. If you're developing a product and ecommerce strategy to drive sales now and position your business for success in the future, you've probably given considerable thought to consumer trends, emerging opportunities and the challenges you'll face as you create and roll out your strategy.
What will the store of the future look like? We can assume it will be innovative, but in what way? When people think of innovation, some imagine the latest product - a widget that changes everything. But innovation doesn't have to be a revolutionary new widget. It can be a new way of thinking, a shift that changes cultural expectations of how we buy, consume or experience a product or service.
Innovation as a new way to experience an existing product or service
An innovation doesn't have to be revolutionary to be disruptive. Not every innovation is as direct as the invention of a driverless car or hyperloop. New business models and ways to experience or pay for products and services can be every bit as revolutionary. When you look at it this way, it's easy to imagine new possibilities. For example, think about how Google Docs disrupted a market by taking advantage of existing features of productivity software, removing others and then adding one unique feature - online collaboration. Google Docs gained an edge and gave people a way to access documents from anywhere and share their work in real time.
Other industry-disrupting companies also gained market share by offering existing services and products in a new way. Southwest Airlines, JetBlue and Virgin Airlines changed the way people travel without inventing a new kind of plane. While Netflix, Amazon and Hulu revolutionised the way consumers access content.
Moore's Law means more expectations of change
In the tech industry, Moore's Law holds that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years, accelerating the pace of hardware development. The resulting fast pace of technological evolution also has an impact on consumer expectations, making rapid change the norm rather than the exception. Today, standing still is like moving backward, and where once only smaller startups were willing to take bold chances, now corporate giants like Coca-Cola and McDonalds are less risk-averse.
As you think about ways to innovate in your ecommerce business, remember that adding a new feature doesn't always make a site, app or product better. Consumers are looking for innovations that make it easier and faster to access and enjoy products. Consider the evolution of music, from vinyl to cassette to CD. Industry advances originally focused on improving sound quality, but more recent innovations have focused on convenience and business models, including instant downloads and streaming services like Spotify, Pandora and Rhapsody.
New music delivery channels illustrate the reality of today's on-demand generation of customers who expect flexibility in the way they access your products and services. They also look for maximum flexibility in the way they pay. Netflix recognised this early on and took an innovative path that positioned them for success. First, the company offered subscription DVDs. As technology evolved, they enabled downloading and then content streaming. And now the company is offering original content, releasing entire seasons of new series for consumers to access where and when they want it. Flexibility has been the key to Netflix's success.
When looking at new ways to innovate your ecommerce company, think about customer interactions and the methods you can use to enable customers to interact with you on their own terms, online, through social media or in a virtual shop. Consider fresh ways to develop and manage relationships, focusing on methods that are transparent and personalised to meet the needs of the on-demand generation.
Innovating to create the store of the future
A generation ago, few people could have imagined visiting an ecommerce site that allowed customers to buy virtually any product instantly and have it shipped to their door next day or in some markets delivered same day. Few foresaw the ecommerce functions that are now commonplace, features that allow shoppers to instantly access product information and conduct transactions in multiple languages, currencies and payment platforms.
What will the store of tomorrow look like? No one knows for sure, but as innovators of the past and present have showed us, the store of the future's genius might be in rewriting the rules rather than inventing a brand-new platform or product. It might involve a disruptive new business model that shifts market share and changes the industry by changing expectations.
Taking ecommerce beyond the screen
As an example of how a new business model could change everything, consider a store of the future built beyond traditional buying processes and places. Think of a "wall of commerce" that allows customers to interact with products, select goods with a mobile phone, and buy products for same day delivery or instant pickup at a brick-and-mortar location. Imagine crowdsourced chat support.
All of these concepts take traditional ecommerce beyond today's boundaries. So could a loyalty program that rewards consumers for a whole new level of usage of products or services that they are not currently tracked or a group discount that rewards a buyer's entire social media network. Today, people can sign up for a variety of continuity programs such as auto-renewing subscription for socks and razor blades. But the next evolution may include usage data that supports an auto-renewing subscription for replacement running shoes or a toothbrush after it passes its recommended usage. These are just a few examples of ideas that could change the way ecommerce works without inventing new products.
Transitioning from ecommerce to mcommerce
Imagining the store of the future means betting on untested concepts and making predictions about how consumers will respond to new options. But if you're thinking about ways to innovate in your ecommerce business, there's one trend that's steady and clear: online activities are becoming highly personalised. Today, your customers expect you to remember them, make recommendations based on their past purchases and give them a variety of personalised options.
In the store of the future, this personalisation trend might manifest itself in surprising new ways, such as a shop that gives customers the option to use new 3D printing and 3D modeling capabilities to create unique products in any size, shape or color. Depending on how 3D printing evolves in the consumer and broader commercial markets, it might soon become possible for customers to select products, specify options and then either print products themselves or pick them up at a nearby shop or have them shipped to their homes.
Shopping venues might also change dramatically, fusing shopping and entertainment to create a space where consumers can shop while watching their favourite shows or playing a popular game. This "shoppertainment" model might use facial recognition and motion sensor technology to personalise your advertisements and recommendations, let customers interact with brick-and-mortar sales agents and experience products and interactions in 3D without ever leaving their sofa. Proximity-based merchandising, offers and payments are enabled by the growing availability of Beacon technology, a low-cost piece of hardware that uses battery-friendly, low-energy Bluetooth connections to transmit messages or prompts directly to a smartphone or tablet. In the future, consumers may see follow-up emails from a shop they visited but didn't buy from and get an incentive to come back and purchase or buy online.
The bottom line? No one can accurately predict what form the store of the future will take, but ecommerce leaders are already thinking of new ways to innovate. Some may invent products and services that are truly unimaginable today, but it's likely that many more will succeed by taking an existing process and making it better - improving a payment model, delivering a more enjoyable experience or connecting the customer with the purchase more quickly.
By James Gagliardi, vice president of product innovation at Digital River.
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