eCommerce is one of the fastest growing industries online. With an increasing amount of people wanting to launch their own online businesses, simple to use eCommerce platforms are rapidly growing in popularity. eCommerce solutions such as Shopify or Volusion are becoming excellent options for people who want to build their own online businesses without any prior knowledge in the subject.

Due to the rapid growth of this business model, new trends evolve all the time. We’re going to expand on some of the hottest trends to watch out for in 2019. Get ready for a successful year as an online entrepreneur by preparing for these trends in advance.

Voice Searches are Exploding in Popularity

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital tool in order to succeed with organic traffic. However, SEO is incredibly difficult to master as it is constantly evolving. In 2018, Google rolled out their mobile-first indexing, which means Google now looks at the mobile version of your website instead of the desktop version in order to determine your rankings.

This movement was caused by the increase in searches via mobile devices. Another trend to look out for due to higher mobile device usage is voice search. Virtual assistants such Siri and Alexa make it easier than ever for people to find whatever they need online. With the press of a button, the user can simply say what they want to search for.

According to comScore, over 50% of searches will be voice searches by the year 2020. This means webmasters need to start adapting to this new type of SEO immediately. Shifting from focusing solely on keyword rankings and more towards natural speech terms is a great way to get ahead of this trend.

Chatbots and AI Taking The Lead in Customer Service

If you’ve ever watched any sci-fi movie from the 80’s, you’ll know that robots were bound to take over at some point in time. That day is closer than ever – with artificial intelligence being smarter than ever before, online store owners have begun using it as a means for customer support.

As you know, owning a business means customer support is of huge importance. You’ll need to be able to provide assistance to your clients and customers at any given moment. A high quality support team can make the difference between getting a new client or not.

Fortunately, one of the fastest growing trends means you’ll need to put in less effort and spend fewer dollars on employee salaries. Support channels such as live chat powered by chatbots and artificial intelligence is definitely worth keeping an eye out for in 2019. This technology is just starting out, but it’s quickly catching on. Automated responses are becoming increasingly accurate and chatbots are getting smarter by the day.

Native Social Selling

Selling your products via your website is a great way to launch your online business, but nothing compares to the viral touch of social media. Being able to get millions of shares, views and likes within hours is what social media can do for you. This makes social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram incredibly powerful for online marketing.

Most social media platforms have begun implementing their own marketplaces where vendors can sell their products directly from their fan pages. In fact, this is becoming so popular that many eCommerce platforms such as Shopify have begun adding native social selling directly into their platforms. This means you can sell directly on Facebook and other social media networks directly from your Shopify account.

You can expect this to grow massively in 2019. Instagram, Pinterest and many others have begun developing their own online marketplaces. Social media and online sales will go hand in hand in no time – it’s definitely a trend that you’ll want to prepare for.

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