Ecommerce Optimization in 2024

Picture this: you’re the owner of a new ecommerce business in 2024, what would you do?

Ecommerce has been around since 1982, with the industry growing steadily over time since inception. In 2020, the first year of the global pandemic, ecommerce sales increased by 43%, from $571.2 billion in 2019 to a massive $815.4 billion in 2020, with this number representing just a fraction of the huge influx of ecommerce sales observed globally at this time. 

This uptick in ecommerce sales and enthusiasm as a result of the pandemic set the groundwork for rampant growth in the ecommerce industry for both B2B and B2C facets. It is projected that by 2026, the B2B ecommerce market will be worth $36 trillion, emphasizing industries such as energy, healthcare, and professional business services as just some of the main growth drivers. On the other hand, global B2C ecommerce revenue is poised to grow to $5.5 trillion by just 2027, with the ecommerce market acting as the starting point for 3 out of 10 consumers in their online product search. 

With ecommerce transactions being forecasted to contribute 41% of global retail sales by 2027, the growth prospects for ecommerce are undeniably bright. New trends within the space have created opportunities for cloud native tech to truly shine and create unparalleled value for ecommerce owners. While it may seem that ecommerce has reached its saturation point, new players in the space will be able to create various different revenue streams and capitalize on the ever-growing use of ecommerce as a retail outlet.

If you were in the shoes of the owner of a new ecommerce business in 2024, how would you approach this growing landscape?

Growing Trends in Ecommerce

In the two decades, our relationship with technology has changed tremendously, impacting the way we approach business and our consumer habits. With advancements in software development and AI/ML, amongst other prominent leaps in technological innovations, long gone are the days of a customer journey led primarily by the brick and mortar experience. With 81% of consumers consulting online reviews and search engines before even stepping foot into a physical store, a company’s online presence and tactics in maintaining crucial online touch points are critical now more than ever. This approach to ecommerce has led to the rise of several trends:

The Rising Use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has, undoubtedly, experienced a meteoric rise in popularity and enthusiasm over the past couple of years, with its utility proving itself across various companies and industries. 

With machine learning (ML) continually evolving widely used AI models, it’s a no-brainer that the ecommerce industry has expressed its support for the tech in different ways. Some of these uses include:

• Updating large scale product descriptions
• Generating item recommendations based on past consumer history
• Acting as the interface for online chatbots
• Providing better ad targeting to increase conversions
• Creating specialized landing pages on the fly for time-sensitive product launches

And more!

Optimizations within the online store itself is just the beginning of AI/ML uses in ecommerce. AI/ML allows users of any development skill level to create impactful changes to an online experience, whether it’s the marketer using AI to find high-impact SEO keywords for products, or the seasoned developer putting the finishing touches on a critical product launch. The use of AI/ML in ecommerce knows no limits!

The Importance of Social Commerce and User-Generated Content

On average, social media users worldwide spend 2.5 hours daily scrolling with unbridled attention. Tiktok, Instagram, and Snapchat are amongst the social platforms capitalizing on this attention by introducing their own in-house ecommerce capabilities, allowing users to host ecommerce stores right in the platform.

Integrating a fully-functioning ecommerce store into social platforms not only provides a seamless shopping experience for shoppers, but also presents the unique opportunity to reach a wider global audience, increase product discovery, and boost brand awareness in one fell swoop. In fact, it’s reported that 27% of consumers rely on social media to discover new products and 67% of consumers have already purchased products through social media. Ecommerce companies can capitalize on the usage of social media as a shopping outlet by creating an easy to navigate ecommerce site geared towards mobile users and designing a simple and streamlined checkout process.

The power of social commerce is further emphasized by the rise of user-generated content (UGC). As the name suggests, UGC is content generated by a certain user, usually catered towards their specific audience. UGC for your ecommerce has tons of benefits, including:

• Stronger brand credibility and loyalty
• Increased brand awareness and website traffic
• Boosted sale potential and lead capturing
• Cost-effective solution to unique content marketing

With the setting that social commerce has created for UGC, it’s no wonder that consumers that have interacted with UGC saw a 102.4% increase in conversion, with that number steadily rising as the popularity of UGC grows. 

An Emphasis on a Highly Personal Post-Purchase Experience

While making the purchase process as efficient as possible is important, the post-purchase customer experience makes leagues of difference in the overall customer relationship with your company. This sentiment is nothing new; post-purchase touchpoints are baked into the online shopping experience in order to maintain or increase customer retention, with professionals stating that the cost of getting a new customer would be 5-7 times the cost of retaining an existing one. What’s important is to make this experience as personalized as possible.

The benefits of a personalized post-purchase experience are major. Besides the cost savings, maintaining a positive relationship with a customer can result in benefits such as an increase in brand loyalty, increased sales, stronger brand presence through word of mouth, and uptick in customer satisfaction just to name a few. The methods in creating a personalized post-purchase experience aren’t necessarily the most pocket-draining either, some include:

• Loyalty discounts and exclusive offers
• Streamlined shipping notices
• Personalized product recommendations
• Exclusive gifts for extremely loyal customers
• Interpersonal customer support experience

A trend throughout these ecommerce trends is the idea of incorporating efficiency and convenience into every customer touchpoint as well as sales and development operations.

Emerging Challenges of Ecommerce 

The prospects of ecommerce’s growth in the next few years are undeniable, but the challenges associated with ecommerce businesses are certainly daunting. Ecommerce businesses face challenges such as:

• Upholding customer loyalty and support
• Managing global shop support
• Drive lead generation and conversion

To name a few.

Some of the most prominent challenges within the space are:

Upholding Cybersecurity and Data Privacy and Protection

In 2022 alone, losses accrued as a result to ecommerce fraud totaled to $40 billion, signaling that there is an outstanding cybersecurity problem within ecommerce. Despite the ecommerce fraud detection and prevention market steadily growing, cybersecurity risks are still an ever growing threat.

Approximately 2,200 cyberattacks happen daily, with a variety of ecommerce based attacks including fraud, spamming, malware, phishing, and so much more. Ecommerce stores generate immense amounts of data daily, from transactional data to sensitive customer information like names, addresses, and credit card information. Leaving your ecommerce website vulnerable to cyberattacks can damage customer information and operational data, ruin your brand’s reputation, and leave your website vulnerable to more leveraging.

Ecommerce owners must be cognizant of upholding strong security and can achieve so through various methods. Getting industry-standard regulations and compliances, as well as upholding data security standards set by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) are the starting steps for security and data protection. Data protection methods like data replication and backups, data encryption, and role-based access control also play important parts in protecting your data.

Creating the Best Customer Website Experience Possible

In 2022, it was reported that ecommerce experienced a bounce rate of 48.4% for desktops on average. For every 100 website visitors, 48 of them would leave it without even visiting another page. Having a website able to provide a smooth and intuitive customer experience is of the utmost importance for ecommerce businesses everywhere, 60% of consumers even cite poor web experience as a main driver for why they abandon purchases. 

Ecommerce businesses face a variety of challenges when it comes to providing their customer experience:

• Providing a unique, personalized web experience that can rival brick and mortar
• Creating a website flow that makes purchasing seamless
• Personalizing experiences based on customer habits and past visits
• Converting visitors into customers
• Driving quality website traffic

And so much more.

Despite the challenges posed by a website-only business, ecommerce businesses gain tons of utility and flexibility through their website operations. Through a mix of web development innovations, marketing capabilities, and sales assistance, prospects can turn into customers with the right website experience.

Ecommerce Innovations with Lyrid

Despite being an established part of business for quite some time now, ecommerce is just getting started. With the pandemic providing much needed emphasis on this facet of business, ecommerce is experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity, the industry shows no sign of slowing down in the near future. Trends in the ecommerce space right now include the use of AI/ML, the use of social commerce and user-generated content, and the emphasis on great post-purchase experiences. Challenges that ecommerce owners face include safeguarding data and buffing up cybersecurity, find global support assets, and providing a seamless web experience. 

That being said, here’s how Lyrid can streamline your ecommerce operations and grow your business:

Addressing Security Concerns

As mentioned, a prevalent challenge that ecommerce businesses face is safeguarding data, implementing privacy protocols, and providing security to important systems. With a noticeable uptick in ecommerce security leveraging, how can businesses stay ahead of the curve when discussing cybersecurity?

To start, the Lyrid platform has built-in security and is compliant with all industry standards, namely HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR. Security features such as risk assessment and mitigation, data encryption during rest and in transit, and role-based access controls are just some of the add-ons included in our platform that are dedicated to protecting your business.

Lyrid Managed Database offers an efficient and secure way to create production-ready databases. Offering databases in forms such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, and more, Lyrid Managed Database provides in-house data protection, namely through:

• BackupHero Database: Automated 24-hour data snapshotting, daily backups
• SecureGuard Database: Role-based access and IP-based access

Lyrid Object Storage also provides a single interface for security, keeping your backup files, database dumps, logs ,and data sets behind lock and key while being accessible to those with permission. Store your ever growing transactional data with a peace of mind! 

Finding Global Lead Success

A problem that many new businesses in the ecommerce space face is turning online shoppers and consumers into customers and leads. Having the right GTM strategy when initially introducing your product or service is key in a highly competitive industry, especially if the possibility of global scaling is prevalent in your strategy. 

Through the Lyrid Constellation Partners program, participants were able to find success within their product strategies, development, and marketing and selling. Partners in this program receive assistance through comarketing and sales opportunities as a result of entering our global network and Solution Marketplace. Participants looking to evolve their applications also saw significant strides in progress through Lyrid’s development assistance, migration to microservices, and broadening of cloud provider scope. One of our partners, P3iD Technologies, was able to significantly evolve their ScanBot system while developing complementary solutions for a supportive environment. Our partners have also enjoyed the prospects of opening new revenue streams, as well as the around-the-clock global support.

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Participation in our Constellation Partner program also provides entry into our global network and solution marketplace. Our global network allows you to access our global partners and identify leads you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise, with our solution marketplace giving your solutions the global limelight as we handle distribution! Increase your brand awareness and boost your sales potential through the Lyrid Constellation Partners program! 

Web / App Customer Experience

Having an online shopping experience that’s personalized, seamless, and enjoyable is a top priority for online shoppers. Outside of great website design, consumers want websites that can handle traffic and stay up, websites that are worth coming back to.

The Lyrid Launchpad, our custom app solutions arm, allows you to save 75% on development costs while decreasing your time to market. Through this solution, we aid in the development of your project, providing infrastructure automation tools, managed services, and sales and marketing assistance on top of engineering support. 

In order to provide customers with a smooth web experience, ecommerce owners can also use Lyrid Managed Kubernetes. Hosting the capabilities of Kubernetes without the headache, Lyrid Managed Kubernetes provides automated features such as cluster scaling, resource usage, and health monitoring to ensure that your project is running as efficiently as possible, while providing high availability. Coupled with the infrastructure generation capabilities of Lyrid itself, Lyrid Managed Kubernetes is able to provide a strong web experience to bring your customers from A to Z without roadblocks. The best part is, this solution is cost effective because of our weaving of bare metal tech, giving you an automated container management system at a fraction of the market cost. 

If you’re interested in learning more about what Lyrid can do for your business, book a call with one of our product specialists!