6 New Online Shopping Trends & Forecasts for 2024 to Watch Out For

Competitive pricing, ultimate convenience, and fast delivery are fueling the blistering growth of online shopping. For this, many well-known brands have paid the price. Yet the signs show that these new breed of businesses are just starting. Hence it pays to know where these online shopping trends are heading and how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected them.

This is true no matter if you’re an intrepid entrepreneur breaking new grounds in this exciting industry or you are an avid fan of online vendors.

We are actively watching where the future trends in online shopping are heading to provide you the essential signposts that you should not miss. Below we list the ones we believe should top your list. With the big picture on the goings-on in the online shopping space, you can plan your strategy more meaningfully.

It’s hard to blame online sellers who think they have the world in the palm of their hands. In the first place, their main man, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, is the richest person in the world, showing distinctly what lies ahead for many of them. The growth of online shopping, which shows no sign of slowing, will further boost the assets of the men leading the charge.

Secondly, there’s barely anything that they have to worry about, except for the trifling fact that slow-loading web pages irk spoiled purchasers. With faster internet rolling out everywhere, they have good reasons to complain, too.

Of course, there are also valid challenges that they have to deal with. Foremost among them is the tendency of online buyers to abandon shopping carts. There are solutions, but cutting down shipping costs will most likely do a lot to lessen the abandonment of carts.

Another thing is that there is still a sizable percentage of people—56% of them, in fact—who prefer the tactile availability of physical stores (NPR, 2018). However, the COVID-19 pandemic changed all that and galvanized a 30% increase in the number of US online shoppers (Finch, 2020), and the percentage increases among nations with burgeoning ecommerce markets like Brazil, Mexico, and India are even higher (Digital Commerce 360, 2021).

With COVID-19 continuing to force people around the world to stay home, online shopping will further accelerate the modern ecommerce era. What used to be a reluctance to transact digitally is gradually becoming the norm, and this applies to various consumer goods. Online shopping statistics suggest a sea of change that is exciting for online sellers.

1. Physical retailers’ loss is online sellers’ gain

With more than 163,000 companies forced to close owing to the COVID-19 pandemic as of August 2020 (CNBC, 2020), the economy has been hounded by doom and gloom. But the disruption caused by pandemic opened a sizable window of opportunity given that much of the population is literally left to their own devices at home.

The US economy took a nosedive by 31.40% in the second quarter of 2020 while the unemployment rate was a grim 14.7% (Forbes, 2020). However, the country is poised to recover in 2021, with a projected GDP growth of 3.7%, and reach its strong pre-pandemic state in the middle of the year (Wall Street Journal, 2021). One of the sources of growth happens to be the ecommerce industry. US online sellers received a staggering $861.12 billion from consumers in 2020, representing a 44% increase over that of 2019 (Digital Commerce 360, 2021).

What’s startling is that this occurred when brands are continually closing physical stores (CNBC, 2021), so what we are seeing is a shift in focus on the part of merchants and the further strengthening of ecommerce sites like Amazon (ABC, 2021) and Alibaba (Investopedia, 2021).  As such, more brick-and-mortar stores will likely close shop, but online stores will be there to pick up the slack.

Most Popular Shopping Cart Software

With more physical stores closing shop, now’s a great time to transition into e-commerce with these top shopping cart software.

1. Shopify Plus is the perfect cloud-based e-commerce platform for high-volume merchants and enterprises.
2. Squarespace has an intuitive interface so you can start selling online as quickly as possible.
3. WooCommerce is a powerful eCommerce plugin that makes setting up an online store as quick and easy as possible.
4. Volusion offers four modules to help you create and grow your online store.
5. PrestaShop allows you to customize store elements and internal functions, and it’s free, too.

2. Online groceries are poised for prime time

After apparel and electronics, the next shelf ready for online shoppers to raid is the one for grocery items. In fact, in terms of revenue growth, ecommerce for food and personal care in 2020 accounted for 40.71%, more than any category of consumer goods (Statista, 2020). Viewing the numbers is even more astonishing. What started as a $43.69 billion online grocery industry in 2019 is expected to reach an astounding $209.28 billion by 2026, with an annual growth rate of 24.8% (MarketWatch, 2021).

It’s hard to match the leading Chinese players like Alibaba in Asia, but in the US, it’s a free-for-all for the likes of Amazon, Walmart, and Target. Oh, and let’s not forget Google. They are all fighting for a larger share of online grocery shoppers, who in turn, registered a growth of 41% during the pandemic (McKinsey, 2020).

Amazon already took direct measures to gain a sizable portion of the pie. One of these is the purchase of Whole Foods in 2017. In fact, Amazon is quite busy these days, as these Amazon trends amply describe. After all, 63% of all product searches online start from its platform (Finch, 2021). Other similar outfits are expected to follow suit.

3. Brace for more consumer activism

It used to be that people associated environmentalism and sustainable consumerism with Greenpeace and consumer rights groups. No more. In fact, with the pandemic forcing people around the globe to stay home, consumer activists have more free time to take their advocacies online.

With doom forecasts from climate scientists occupying the headlines, the likes of Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion advocates and sympathizers have rallied even closet activists to come out and force irresponsible state and economic forces out of the social equation. These green sleuths will subject any type of product to their stringent social ethics test: carbon dioxide footprint, waste disposal system, use of harmful substances, treatment of endangered animals, or the use of minor-age workers, among others.

The price to pay could for non-compliance range from a negative reputation to loss of sales. Offending vendors could expect to see their brands dragged in the courtrooms of social media too. When this happens, they would find it extremely difficult to put off the wildfire. Worse, they could be facing outright investigations, which may end up with them paying the ultimate price of instant closure. On the other hand, the emergence of strong consumer activism paves the road for green brands everywhere to make a dent in the markets. For example, Ikea is already capitalizing on its green credentials, as do others like Patagonia and Keurig.

4. Social media digs deeper into online shopping

Social media platforms and the social media management software solutions they breed are already critical pieces in the vendor-customer connection puzzle. The pieces could be about customer support, social media listening, or product reviews. Up ahead, it will mostly be about selling. In fact, in 2020, social media commerce was valued at $89.4 billion and it is projected to grow to $604.5 billion by 2027, with an annual growth rate of 31.4%.

Admittedly, Facebook and YouTube are already into it. In fact, Facebook has already launched a platform through which users can sell goods (Facebook, 2020). Facebook Shops allows digital merchants to design their homepage to attract buyers and empowers them with the option to avail of paid ads. Similarly, Instagram accounts have been turned into online stores since the platform is image-driven, has a vast userbase, and links seamlessly with Facebook, which has an even bigger network, in regard to ads.

On the customer side, personal Facebook and Instagram accounts are the recipient of digital ads. Finding online stores is also easy, especially if the shops use certain hashtags. Other sites like Pinterest and Snapchat have also hopped on the digital store bandwagon (Pinterest, nd; Snapchat, nd)

This trend is already in full swing, with 81% of online shoppers using Facebook and Instagram to research products. In addition, 48% of Pinterest users cite shopping as a top priority (Hootsuite, 2020). With the growing prevalence of social media commerce, it makes perfect sense to pair selling with payment gateways as traditional retailers do, since they improve workflows.

5. AI is taking over merchant content copywriting

Many—especially—creatives, did not see it coming: a robot or more technically an AI or a chunk of computer codes producing 20,000 lines of merchant content a second (ZDNet, 2018). If you’re like Alibaba, however, it’s that or nothing. As these ecommerce statistics show, the staggering volume of products and services offered by Alibaba partners has gone to such an extent that humans simply could not hope to handle the volume of SKUs mounting up exponentially.

Activating the smart tool couldn’t be easier for brands and advertisers too: all they have to do is feed it the link to any product page. When that is done, AI takes over. It uses natural language processing technologies and deep learning models to generate the copy. Anything is possible with that technology and copywriting happens to be part of its capabilities, with companies rolling out AI-powered written content (Samuel J. Woods, 2020).

Truth be told, AI is not writing product descriptions over at Amazon and other major ecommerce players, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their own AI automating tasks now beyond the reach of humans. In the case of Amazon, it employs its own AI engine to help merchants produce real-time product recommendations when they use the AWS console. Similarly, Adobe and Stokes have their own AI systems that do the same for them.

With consumers pushing online sellers to increase their catalogs, it would only be a matter of time before we see the increasing employment of AI software solutions to take care of the humanly impossible task of writing the copies for these merchant product lines.

Alibaba has employed an AI to write the product descriptions for its merchants, like this one.

6. The taxman finally catches up with online sales

June 21, 2018 will live long in the memory of online sellers, at least for those with US operations. On this day, the US Supreme Court decided that states can collect sales taxes from online businesses (US Supreme Court, 2017)  even if they don’t have a physical presence in the state. The ruling overturned the Court’s 1992 decision.

Unless you are living in Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon, you can now expect to see an additional line in your takeout page for the state taxman. It’s a vindication of some sort for the physical stores that have either folded up or are currently struggling from what they see as unfair competition from their online counterparts who, until the ruling date, enjoyed the distinct advantage of offering lower prices because of the absence of sales tax.

While it could be a consolation too late for the fallen brick-and-mortar stores, it is a toss-up whether it would actually help the cause of the physical stores now. What is clear is that it’s game over for the online buyers who previously enjoyed tax-free deals from their go-to online retailers. The bigger question now, of course, is whether this landmark decision will have a domino effect on the rest of the world.

Aside from the immediate effect on consumers, the US Supreme Court move is seen to affect SMB online vendors negatively the most. Compiling and computing for taxes put an immense burden on individual vendors who already have a lot in their hands with stocks and sales matters. Not all is lost, however, with the presence of these leading tax software programs to make this task less complicated than it could be. More powerful accounting tools also integrate many functions that should help these small businesses handle the new tax law.

Goods at your fingertips

At Comdex 1994, Bill Gates made the line “Information at your fingertips” (Microsoft, 2013) reverberate throughout the world. Twenty-five years forward and we are all the living embodiment of the fulfillment of that phrase. And more.

Now, we may be ready to push another line to replace that: “Goods at your fingertips” will certainly resonate with many in the global population, from Asia to Africa. And the likes of Amazon and Alibaba investors would be smiling ear to ear with that too, along with their die-hard fans and supporters.

On planes, ships, trucks, cars, and motorcycles, goods are traveling the length of the planet to deliver goods even to the most far-flung places people could manage to get their orders online.

The Passing of the baton

Information may be good for the spirit, but goods take care of the rest of human needs. Thus, from one line to the next, we are seeing perhaps the most natural progression of the human love affair with technology. Together, information and goods are becoming too pervasive to the point of an outright deluge. But whatever we take them for, there is no doubt that they are ushering us to a level of opportunities unmatched in any period of history. And we are just starting.

Opportunities everywhere

If you are the enterprising type, there is in this development more than enough to whet your appetite for a lifetime. These days, social registers are humming incessantly from adding another batch of young millionaires to the club. What is more, with the ongoing pandemic, the rise of online shopping is further accelerated, giving entrepreneurs even more incentive to explore this avenue and invest more in ecommerce.

Whether you’re looking to getting your name there or just want to get busy with your next planned online purchasers, it pays to maintain a sense of compass on how our highly disruptive age will play out in the immediate and long-term. For that, this series of trends posts will ensure that you get it. Meantime, if you’re on the hunt for a shopping cart platform or simply curious about your options, our detailed guide on the 12 best online shopping systems should point you in the right direction.

Key Insights

• Growth of Online Shopping: The growth of online shopping is driven by competitive pricing, convenience, and fast delivery, which have been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Impact on Physical Retailers: The pandemic has led to the closure of many physical stores, resulting in significant gains for online sellers.
• Rise of Online Groceries: The online grocery sector is poised for significant growth, with major players like Amazon, Walmart, and Target competing for market share.
• Consumer Activism: Increasing consumer activism is pushing brands to adopt more sustainable practices, with the potential for reputational damage and loss of sales for those that fail to comply.
• Social Media Commerce: Social media platforms are becoming critical channels for online shopping, with significant growth expected in social media commerce.
• AI in Content Creation: AI is increasingly being used to automate content creation for merchant websites, enhancing efficiency and scalability.
• Sales Tax on Online Purchases: The US Supreme Court ruling on sales tax collection for online purchases has significant implications for online retailers and consumers.

FAQ

1. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected online shopping trends?
   The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly accelerated the growth of online shopping. With more people staying at home, there has been a marked increase in online purchases, leading to higher revenues for online sellers and the closure of many physical stores.
2. What is the impact of physical store closures on online shopping?
   The closure of physical stores has benefited online retailers, as consumers have shifted to online shopping for convenience and safety. This trend is expected to continue, with more brick-and-mortar stores closing and online sales increasing.
3. Which product categories are seeing the most growth in online shopping?
   Online grocery shopping is experiencing the most significant growth, followed by apparel and electronics. The convenience of home delivery and a broader range of products are driving this trend.
4. How are social media platforms influencing online shopping?
   Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat are increasingly being used as channels for online shopping. These platforms allow users to discover, research, and purchase products directly, making them essential tools for online retailers.
5. What role does AI play in online shopping?
   AI is being used to automate various aspects of online shopping, including content creation for product descriptions and personalized recommendations. This helps online retailers manage large volumes of products and enhance the shopping experience for consumers.
6. What are the implications of the US Supreme Court ruling on sales tax for online purchases?
   The ruling allows states to collect sales taxes from online businesses, even if they do not have a physical presence in the state. This decision levels the playing field between online and physical retailers but may increase the administrative burden on online sellers.
7. What is consumer activism, and how does it affect online retailers?
   Consumer activism involves consumers demanding ethical and sustainable practices from brands. This can affect online retailers by pushing them to adopt more sustainable practices to avoid negative publicity and potential loss of sales.
8. Why is online grocery shopping expected to grow significantly?
   Online grocery shopping is expected to grow due to the convenience it offers, especially during the pandemic. Major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target are investing heavily in this sector, making it more accessible and attractive to consumers.
9. How can online retailers leverage social media for better sales?
   Online retailers can leverage social media by creating engaging content, using targeted ads, and setting up online stores on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Social media also allows for direct interaction with consumers, enhancing customer engagement and loyalty.
10. What are the key benefits of using AI for content creation in online shopping?
    AI can generate product descriptions and other content at scale, reducing the time and effort required from human writers. This allows online retailers to manage extensive product catalogs more efficiently and provide up-to-date information to consumers.

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By Nestor Gilbert

Nestor Gilbert is a senior B2B and SaaS analyst and a core contributor at FinancesOnline for over 5 years. With his experience in software development and extensive knowledge of SaaS management, he writes mostly about emerging B2B technologies and their impact on the current business landscape. However, he also provides in-depth reviews on a wide range of software solutions to help businesses find suitable options for them. Through his work, he aims to help companies develop a more tech-forward approach to their operations and overcome their SaaS-related challenges.