Digital Commerce Trends 2023

COVID-19 created a dramatic shift in customer expectations compelling businesses to be responsive and responsible. Digital commerce has evolved from being a mere convenience to becoming a necessity. After an era of omnichannel expansion, mobile-first adoption, and proliferation of AI-powered solutions, 2023 will bring the following trends:

Digitally Ubiquitous and Contact-Free Commerce: Companies will be targeting zero human intervention without compromising the in-store experience. Touch-free checkouts and checkout-free shopping powered by computer vision and machine learning technologies will gain prominence in the retail sector.  

Immersive Commerce: An increasing trend of enhanced visual navigation and configuration using 3D models and VR technologies will amplify the product discovery experience and influence conversion rates significantly. This applies to scenarios such as configure-to-order (CTO) in the automotive sector, nuanced B2B orders in the manufacturing industry, and customer-facing apps for consumer goods and fashion sectors.

Increase in Total Addressable Market and the Rising Cost of Digital Advertising: It will influence marketers to revisit customer engagement and campaigning strategies. Real-time customer data platforms will play a significant role in the age of cookie-less marketing. Hyper-personalization will continue to prevail with targeted campaigns based on first-party (data collected directly from customers) and zero-party data (data shared voluntarily by a customer). Commerce will intersperse with marketing in the form of shoppable content.

Green Commerce: Focusing on sustainability will bring a competitive advantage. Ignoring environmentally-aware customers who demand eco-friendly practices will not be advisable. Green practices will cut across sustainable products, ingredients, production, packaging, and delivery. 

Growing Prominence of Digital Wallets, Cross-Border Payments, and Supply Chains, and Localized Last-Mile Delivery Ecosystems: It will necessitate the digital real estate to adopt digital commerce architectures that are composable by nature and follow MACH (microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native, and headless) principle.