7 trends to watch out for in 2021 eCommerce

Minimal headers

Now that mobile traffic has permanently overtaken desktop traffic, we can finally trust that condensed menus work JUST FINE and customers know how mobile menus work. 

Having crazy over extended navigation items are no longer necessary and just add to consumer confusion and cognitive overload. Header strategies will center more on brand recognition, tactical promotion messaging and getting out of our customers way.

Animated copy makes a comeback

Motion design doesn’t have to be incredibly complex, but creating movement and energy in your design is an underrated bonus to increasing customer engagement and moments of joy in an experience.

More return traffic = need for fresh content

With more people stuck inside this winter, stores closed to the public and more time is being spent online by all demographics, this also means the likelihood of your current customers visiting your site over and over again is much higher. 

Keep your audience engaged by offering fresh content more frequently on your site. Double down on your blog, social media, and email to keep your top-of-mind customer base engaged.

Merchants should take advantage of streamlining this process by making some templates and then making 1 piece and turning it into 7 different pieces of content for instagram, your website banners, blogs, Pinterest, instagram post and story, email newsletter and a tick tok/reel.

Video hits different

A lot of merchants sell products that, let’s face it, don’t photograph well.

In most wellness and fashion industries, on figure product shots or products with a grounded staged background, tend to outperform products on isolated white backgrounds and really helps elevate your look with little effort.

But as we become more reliant on the web for understanding products' tactical information, a picture is worth 1,000 words but a video is worth 1,000,000.

Video helps set mood, and give kinaesthetic context to products as they move through space. When you can see, feel, or understand how large a product is, video content helps your customers get that much closer.

And with the incredible quality of video you can get through just a smartphone, brands should take advantage of simple yet effective vertical video format for product pages and instagram content to tell the story.

Regionalized content will dominate the next Black Friday season strategy

If you were like me this Black Friday, I stayed really clear from my email inbox and mass deleted promotions. Email was the primary strategy for most merchants black friday strategy, and this was really the big ticket season where you would see the fruits of your labor if you were focusing on list building this year.

I think next year that as eCommerce has greater reach for more retails across time zones and into international markets that regionalizing the content for your customers will create the biggest breakthroughs for email marketing and big sale seasons.

Take a look at your analytics, audience demographics, average engagement times, and create a content calendar to speak to your international customers. Putting out ‘Americanized’ sales calendar content can alienate your audience that needs more nurturing to help you expand into new markets.

Things you can think about:

1. How do the holidays differ and can you send email blasts based on national holidays?
2. What is the conversation in the news for specific countries about, and can you send out very topical messaging that deals with those topics that shows those customers you are paying attention?
3. How can you update your copywriting to be sensitive to cultural anomalies with different cultures?
4. Can you take advantage more with specific regions weather patterns at specific times of year (where it’s gloomy 90% in the pacific north west, but always sunny in Arizona a ‘winter blues’ promo might not hit well down south but might knock it out of the park in the Pacific North West) 

Subscription fatigue

Covid-19 has changed the way households feel about being protective of their money. For so long, the average debt to income ratio in Canada was 1.7:1, which means on average most Canadians were spending or had loans that were worth 70% more than their household income. 

Credit card debt, loans, subscriptions, and more takes a toll on your monthly expenditures. With every indy brand coming out with subscriptions for non-essential items, I think subscriptions usage will take a bit of a nosedive this year if countries go into third rounds of lockdowns. 

To keep your customers interested in spending with you month over month it’s never been more important to story brand your subscription programs and communicate the value the factor of convenience brings to your customers life.