E-commerce has now gone on a long way since its inception and it is getting larger and larger day by days. As technology growing continuously and rapidly, e-commerce retailers are working to adopting newer technologies to enable their buyers and sellers to buy and sell online easily. As the rates of penetrating internet are dropping both for mobile and web interfaces, so it increases population of internet users and increases traffic on e-commerce websites. It is the key to driving people attention towards e-commerce. The use of social media and mobile devices has helps more to accelerate this drive further, shaping the e-commerce trends for Indian market.

Consumers are now more connected than before and more source of information choices at their single fingertips today. They are now leaving their traditional interests, behavior and choices and attracting towards new products it will helps e-commerce companies to analyze interests and offer more better and competitive products. This digitization of everything affecting the e-commerce business model and it is driving growth for e-commerce merchants in Indian market.

Let’s now see the current scenario and upcoming trends in e-commerce market:

As by study of Accel partners, online shopping of physical goods will be growing to US$ 8.5 billion in 2016 and strength of online shoppers will be more than double to 40 million in India. And internet users should be increased to 300 million by 2015.

Does it mean that e-commerce is trying to do this for staying in the market, and every small and big fish wants to? This is not the real case. But these are the deep pocket incumbents who show great interest to succeed in e-commerce business and they have experience, concepts and also have variety of offerings and try to grow faster as compared to other existing players in the Indian market. Even Indian e-commerce players are trying hard to bring the concepts of international competitors.

The trends of current market and technology that define e-commerce in near future include:

Loyalty of Brand:

Price has been the main factor in Indian market and customers never hesitant about changing brands frequently if they met great lucrative offers presenting by competing brands. So, Indian e-commerce players would have to do much to make their customers feel special to retain them, as loyalty wear away fast when the shopper is confronted with promotions and deals. Know what your customer ‘interests and behavior.

Retailer’s Own Planning and Management i.e. Logistics:

It have been a great issue for online retailers in India, which leads to making strategies to handle cash-on-delivery and same day shipments. Online market leaders are selecting for building logistics such as Flipkart, who has launched ekart that is open for its rivals.

Need of Reducing Cash on Delivery:

Indian market is not yet comfortable to adopt payment via credit cards or debit cards. COD is accounts for 60% of transactions in India. It adds 3% additional costs on Cash on Delivery and also some additional process is required for COD orders, higher instances of returns and associated costs are affected margins.

Improve Customer Experience With Attractive Offers and Options:

With the advancement of technology, online retailers are focusing on attractive delivery options such as same day delivery or delivery within an hour, buying by mobile apps and buying on social media like via Facebook “Pay now” button which leads to improved customer experience. The other special features or services you provide will be added more customer experience like drones and pop up and fulfillment stores. The technologies that will affect these trends and help in shaping e-commerce business include:

Big Data:

It is must for running the e-commerce business. It is necessary for identifying the customer behavior, interest. Suppose a customer visits a website and purchases some things and saw some things then this data is saved in database of website and when customer next time opens this website or email registered with it shows these type of items, hence data saved is the big data that capture the customer’s behavior and increases the brand loyalty, adoption. It is used in target base marketing.

Mobile:

Online retailers have realized that most of the customers using mobile phones for online shopping, so they are concentrating on mobile phones so that they can provide more features and they can easily shop like provide mobile app and they can directly shop by using this shop. Moreover E-commerce website should be mobile friendly as consumers grow more if they more comfortable with using mobile devices for browsing and shopping. Now they are more open to getting messages from brands via mobiles. Thus mobile helps in increasing online shopping and online marketing.

Social Media:

This becomes more important consideration for marketing because feedback via social media channels has an impressionable effect on the customer’s mind.

Conclusion:

Indian e-commerce and online shopping are trying hard to touch heights in the next few years. This is not done by just increasing internet population but by increasing infrastructure, so, digitization and utilization both should be considered to increase e-commerce percentage in India.