COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented event that has changed the society and will have a long term impact on the way commerce works.

With so many people trying to minimise their exposure to outside world they would shift more of their spending from in-person to online and D2C brands are likely to get a significant boost.

For decades, corporations have relied on the strength of their supply-chain to make sure they were present on the shelf of every store. With Covid-19 this advantage is lost because movement of items was curbed and many stores have empty shelves . As it is not certain when their items will be available on shelves again, and when customers will feel comfortable going into stores, selling items directly to customer will help to stay connected with them and serves as means to continue providing them with their preferred products in challenging times.

Brands need to be prepared with their D2C strategy including brand.com to drive incremental business and stay relevant . Brands should aim to begin online interactions of consumer on its own website and let consumer engage with in a broader ecosystem that might include dealer locator . A manufacturer can consider special service like subscription to distinguish it’s D2C site from marketplaces. Strategy should include interface for Institutional buyers and b2b partners.

D2C brands in India have experienced a substantial revenue surge since 2018. Unilever’s revenue contribution from e-commerce is more than 5% and established brands like Nike, PepsiCo, OnePlus and Nestlé are venturing in to D2C by setting up their own e-commerce sites.

Trends in D2C e-commerce:

AI based chat bots : Chatbots provide 24*7 support to consumers by engaging in meaningful conversations like answering product related questions, help finding the nearest store and providing order information AI powered bots can engage with customer through the shopping journey guiding them to the right product using intelligent search ,making suggestions and inspiring them to buy.
Voice : Speech recognition has reached 95% accuracy rate. Consumers are increasingly using voice to search products & services . Devices like Alexa and Google home learns from the conversations and continuously improve them. It is important that SEO strategy include voice. Voice can be recognized in more than 119 different languagues and help brands to reach customers who were previously not targeted due to literacy barriers.
Personalization : Customer expect brands to understand their needs and make relevant recommendations. Machine learning algorithms are capable of collecting various inputs like search , click behaviour , order history and dynamically generate recommendations and promotions to personalize and improve overall customer. For one of our customers we developed a recommendation framework using machine learning algorithms that would predit the most relevant product based on buying pattern of similar kind of buyers and there has been consistent increase in the cart value.
Headless architecture : e-commerce logic is being delivered as an API that can be attached to different heads/touch points including web, mobile, Kiosk and devices like Google Home or Amazon Alexa.

Brands should prefer solutions build over microservices architecture to provide consistent experience to their customers across all channels and devices.

amit

Posts : 1 Followers : 0 Following : 0

Full Name

Bio

E-Commerce Trends

Posts : 1
Followers : 0
Following : 0