What’s Ahead for Ecommerce

Across every industry, 2022 was quite an interesting year. Since 2020, we’ve all listened to constant conversations about the impacts of the pandemic and returns to normal and questions of whether normal will ever exist again.

It’s no wonder that ecommerce saw such fluctuation. First, an astronomical rise, then what seemed to be sustained growth, followed by a downturn that has brought us to this current period — uncertainty for what’s next.

In my view, though, there’s very little to be uncertain about. The acceleration of ecommerce in 2020 furthered a belief that businesses have held about online shopping for years: that to succeed, it’s enough to simply stand up a store. And they were right about that in 2020, when consumers came online en masse. Shoppers were content with any online experience at the time because, frankly, they had no other choice. 

Now, that’s changed. 

Bloomreach has believed for some time that while the first 20 years of digital commerce were about standing up a store, the next 20 years are about standing out from the crowd. 2022 in particular has proven just how true that is. We of course have to account for the year’s macroeconomic challenges and the stabilization that was inevitable after 2020’s growth. But we also can’t ignore the fact that many customers slowed their online shopping because they were simply unimpressed with what they found. When consumers have limitless choice available to them, when every company has the ability to become a direct-to-consumer brand, everything starts to look the same. So how do companies stand out?

It comes down to the experience. Building an ecommerce experience that is personalized, relevant, and enjoyable becomes paramount in allowing businesses to engage — and retain — customers.

Increasingly, businesses are finding that their existing legacy platforms are failing to help them build that kind of experience. With clunky platforms and poor time to value, these “solutions” have become the problem, keeping businesses from growing and adapting their ecommerce experience to better meet the evolving needs of their customers. This has led to a new generation of technology solutions (Bloomreach among them) that are allowing businesses to tap into an ecommerce market that still has a tremendous amount of untapped potential. 

This year, we watched so many of our customers realize some of that potential with the power of a personalized ecommerce experience. That’s what makes me so certain about what’s to come in 2023. As more businesses recognize what personalization can help them achieve, we can expect to see ecommerce strength return. When you put the right product in front of the right customer at the right time, customers will buy. It’s as simple as that.

2022 is an interesting year to reflect upon, but Bloomreach has always been more interested in looking ahead. We know 2023 has great things in store for ecommerce, and we can’t wait to see what that means for the hundreds of businesses we serve.