How To Combat The Ecommerce vs Physical Store Battle
Online shopping has been around for a while now, but since its humble beginnings it has changed and adapted into what we see today. People are able to visit multiple sites in a matter of minutes, browse thousands of products, or simply search for the products they want, make the purchase, and then have it delivered to their front door in a matter of days. It’s no wonder that the global eCommerce sales are nearing a whopping $3 trillion – everyone is shopping online these days.
Plus, people are able to shop whenever and wherever they like, be that in the middle of the night lying in bed, on a train on the way to work, or at weekends, without ever having to leave the house. It is this ease and convenience that makes online shopping so popular and with every passing year, its popularity grows. Some brands are even introducing monthly subscription box deliveries</a>, another form of online shopping that’s gotten very popular in recent years.
Despite being so popular, there are certain points that make some individuals favor brick and mortar stores over online.
For example, some people like the fact that they can take products home with them the same day, or that they can ask a store owner for an answer to a question that they may have. Others like the fact that shopping in physical stores has a social element to it and that they can physically see and touch the products they want to buy.
These are all factors that digital store owners are trying to solve in order to encourage more people to go online. Some stores have already started to make these changes.
For example, some of the bigger online retailers, such as Amazon, have started to trial same day delivery with certain products and some have even started to use drones to deliver products in the hope of a faster delivery time and the need of less staff.
To combat the problem of lack of communication when shopping online, customer service automation is set to become a more widely used technique. In this way, less staff will be needed to answer customer queries and the customer will be able to get an answer instantly, without having to wait for a member of the customer service team to be available.
It is likely that videos will become more widely used in order to give people a better idea of what the product looks like, rather than customers having to rely purely on photos and a product description.
You can find more ideas about how the online shopping industry is set to change over the coming years by taking a look at the infographic created by the team at Subscription.
2018 has already been a big year for e-commerce and it looks like more changes are set to come in the near future.
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