E-commerce: What to expect in 2017

1. The rise of chatbots

A company’s customer service division takes up a lot of resources; they need to be on standby 24/7 to make sure each customer complaint or question is handled correctly. Tech Monster, Google, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter are all introducing their own chat bots to help with shopping, booking and customer service activities—Google Allo, Facebook Messenger, and Twitter Bots.

In 2017, people will spend more time on social media, so using chatbots based on social media platforms is a good move for companies dealing with e-commerce. The first of our e-commerce trends sees consumers beginning to get familiar with talking to machines. Facebook actually has 11,000 chatbots already available, although data on their use is unknown as yet.

2. Enhancing the User’s Shopping Experience

Providing optimized customer experience will prove to be an essential criterion for online stores looking to decrease cart abandonment. Contextual shopping can easily be labeled as the new way of personalizing the shopping experience. Owning a user-centric online store would bring competitive advantage to you.

Websites that provide context-based experience do not require a customer to be logged into a site to get the relevant information required that can help you through the online decision journey.

Contextual based shopping will take the shopping experience much beyond the level of item recommendation and give personalized greetings. With the advanced artificial intelligence technology now available, contextual shopping has shifted to an all new level.

Brands can now map the customer journey based on their past orders and anticipate their needs to equip the shoppers with the information they are looking for while shopping on your website.

3. Same-Day Delivery Service

Delivery time is one of the most common issues Southeast Asians face when shopping online. People would say, “I don’t want to buy online because it takes a really long time to get an item. I’d rather buy stuff from a physical store so I can take it right away.”

In 2016, we saw a lot of effort from e-commerce companies to overcome such issues. For instance, in Indonesia Bukalapak collaborated with GoJek for one-day delivery services. Tokopedia also used the same strategy with Go Send and Grabexpress, and Lazada made their own delivery service called LEX (Lazada Express).

In 2017, we will see more aggressive movements from e-commerce companies to crack this issue and grab more customers. On January 18, J&T, a logistics service, announced that they were collaborating with Tokopedia to offer free package pickups from users’ homes.

We have also seen a lot of rising app-based logistics services, such as Deliveree and Etobee, which offer more delivery options for Indonesian customers. PopBox and BOXiT, startups that produce automated parcel lockers, can also be used by other e-commerce players.

4. Security of Online Payments

When customers make a purchase from your online storefront can they trust you to protect their credit card information? If not, why would they continue to support your business? That’s why ensuring that your customers’ payment data should always be a priority. When customers trust you, it will ultimately benefit your bottom line.

Credit card fraud is on the rise, leading to charge-backs, refunds and expensive reversal processes. This is why online payment security should be one of the most important issues to be discussed for year 2017.

On of Visa’s agenda is to protect cardholders account data. When cardholders present their Visa card at the point of sale, over the internet, or on the phone they want assurance that their account information is safe.

That’s why all merchants and service providers who store, process or transmit Visa cardholder data must adhere to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which offers a single approach to safeguarding sensitive data for all card brands.

The PCI DSS is a multifaceted security standard that includes requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other critical protective measures.

For customers, there is a system to safeguard your information called tokenization that replaces sensitive information with a “token.” If hackers attempt to break into the database to steal information, instead of credit card numbers, they will find tokens that are useless to them.