2024 ecommerce trends: the new customers’ needs

During the pandemic, the ecommerce market has experienced a great increase in its reach.  COVID-19 restrictions, such as social distancing and the lockdown, made a great deal of customers reach for the online retail market to meet their purchase needs. This change determined an important growth in terms of the number of people who prefer online shopping, instead of turning to the “old-fashioned” offline-purchase. This phenomenon has not only expanded the range and the variety of products available online but it has also led to an evolution in purchasing practices with an increasing number of individuals who prefer relying on the comfort and the safety of online stores and marketplaces. With the end of the COVID-19 emergency, these behaviours did not change nor did the rising trend of the ecommerce market. In 2023 in Italy, B2C purchases were 54,2 billion worth of euros, with an increase of 13% compared to 2022, and there were 33 million digital customers, a number destined to grow in 2024. The market’s steady and persistent growth has deeply changed the customers’ behaviours resulting in individuals that are much more demanding. For instance, in a scenario where business’ supply is unlimited, the challenge that brands face is to foresee consumers’ demands to meet their newly growing needs.

The rising consumers’ digitalization, a result of the great spread of mobile devices and internet accessibility, has caused a transformation never seen before in the online shopping world. This transformation is not to be intended as a mere quantitive change but as the birth of new trends in the online retail market that will radically transform the way businesses and customers interact with each other, as well as the strategies used by brands to promote their products. This change has witnessed a burst in the use of advanced technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, used to foresee customers’ behaviours. In this context, data analysis plays an incredibly important role for businesses since it helps gather detailed information regarding the tastes, preferences, and purchasing behaviours of their customers. At the same time, digitalization has changed the way businesses and consumers communicate. For instance, brands are investing more each day in technologies that will help them create a more personalized and direct way of interacting with their clients. This approach not only will allow brands to give instant and personalized assistance but also to forge stronger bonds.

The main 2024 ecommerce trend is hyper-personalization. Nowadays, customers require a captivating and tailored shopping experience and hyper-personalization is the key strategy for businesses to stand out in an extremely competitive market. This strategy aims to offer a tailored shopping experience created thanks to studies whose goal is to explore customers’ needs, preferences and behaviours. Data analysis allows brands to generate detailed profiles and hyper-personalise every step of the Customer Journey: from the homepage to the checkout, in the hope of engaging the consumer and increasing the chances for cross-selling. Other factors that help with the strategy's success are tracking clarity, one-to-one communication, easy access to data policy and safety assurance for online transactions. This does not come as a surprise given the fact that data shows that 47% of customers feel anxious with no personalized communication and this compromises the business’ credibility by 33%.

One other trend that is highlighted is conversational marketing. This strategy is the result of the optimization of the online experience since it merges ecommerce and messaging. Conversational commerce takes advantage of conversations in real-time to engage and help customers in their decision process, which goes from product exploration to assistance post-purchase. When analysing the different methods, live chats and instant messaging services stand out, mainly because these technologies allow live and personalized communications. The key to this strategy's success lies in the brands’ ability to give detailed information, break down concerns and doubts, and promote cross-selling opportunities and special offers. Conversational commerce helps grow trust in individuals, as well as gathering data and constantly monitoring the Customer Experience, producing optimizations when necessary. In a digital world, that is extremely interaction and personalisation-oriented like the one brands and clients live in, conversational marketing is essential since it ensures a satisfactory and engaging online experience.