The Covid-19 pandemic has added greater impetus to e-commerce as more and more people are making online purchases just to minimise the risk associated with going out. But such changing dynamics have caused e-commerce biggies like Walmart, Amazon and Alibaba to adopt latest technologies which have been listed down below:

• There has been a massive rise in programmatic advertising where target audience are decided using datasets. Selected audiences are shown these ads on the basis of consumption following which they are retargeted for garnering higher ROI. Programmatic advertising is coming to the aid of ecommerce store owners for targeting a larger audience as the AI powered context advertisements are blending in with the natural content. Online retailers can often be seen giving away blizzard gift card so that the target customers can play their favourite games. Video ads are shown by Google (News - Alert) Admob unobtrusively between mobile games after each level ends.
• Marketing automation is another eruptive technology in the field of ecommerce which covers scheduling social media posts, automating email marketing and offering easy access to shopping carts. Proper usage will allow the ecommerce retailers to customize store offerings against each customer for better conversions.
• Intelligent algorithms are put to use by ecommerce sellers for segmentation and identification of customer patterns based on their browsing history. However, the accuracy of data is determined greatly by the quality of data.
• Massive advancements are rolling out in the fields of shipping and logistics which was considered to be a stagnated zone previously. Same-day delivery became a mainstream concept from 2013. Very recently, Amazon has started testing drone deliveries in and around USA through Google Maps integration. Although this trend is still in the beta testing phase, it is bound to grow with improvement in technology for becoming a viable business component.
• Smartphones are slowly turning into a basic necessity and this has been boosting up mobile transactions especially during holiday seasons. Be it groceries, apparels, medicines or even food, everything can be ordered with a single click using the mobile phone. This has added greater impetus towards the requirement of a mobile responsive website for catering to a bigger category of users.
• AR code was launched by Google for Android (News - Alert) smartphones in response to AR kit launched by Apple for its iOS 11 operating system. This is increasingly being used by furniture, jewellery and even cloth manufacturers so that the end users can visualize how something will look like before actually placing the purchase. Just holding your mobile camera in a certain portion of your house can help you view a virtual sofa or any other furniture on the screen.
• Google has recently published a guideline stating that voice search content needs to include more textual content. Ecommerce stores also need to start optimizing content for making them compatible with voice search. Adding voice enabled buttons to a website interface will tap in greater number of conversations from smart speakers.
• The trend of image shopping is expected to grow bigger in coming years. Buyers can simply place orders by pointing their camera towards a product they like. This is also going to boost up the sale of affiliate products via photo shopping. Pinterest has launched its exclusive photo camera and has partnered with a variety of ecommerce stores for offering relevant data which can help with the classification and interpretation of images.
• Ecommerce stores are slowly opening up to digital and crypto payment methods. Digital wallets offered by smartphone manufacturers are streamlining the payment process which is slowly emerging as a viable alternative for mobile-based payments.

Conclusion

Technology serves as the backbone of e-commerce as it helps in establishing connectivity between the buyers and sellers on both web and mobile platforms. The growing role of technology in different fields ranging from marketing to payment needs to be recognised by the ecommerce stores for luring in more customers while offering differentiated online experiences.