The mobile ecommerce market is expected to make up approximately 75% of all ecommerce sales in 2025, and 73% of shoppers prefer to shop online from their mobile devices, according to the stats by Cropink. This shift to mobile brings not only new revenue channels but also new opportunities that retailers can use to attract customers and gain a competitive edge.
Considering the specifics of mobile (always at hand, convenient, small screens), retailers can use technologies such as AI, AR, or voice recognition to enhance built-in mobile functionality and use it for their benefit. Ready to learn more about the future of Mobile Ecommerce Trends? Then scroll down!
An Overview of Mobile Commerce
Mobile commerce, also known as m-commerce, implies online shopping performed via mobile devices (smartphones or tablets). And while many stores started with their websites simply being responsive, today, more and more brands are developing their own mobile apps to facilitate the shopping process and bring a more enjoyable experience to their customers. Examples include such industry giants like Zara, H&M, Nike, and IKEA, with smaller brands gradually tagging alone.
What sets mobile retailing apart is a very high convenience of use, incredible personalization, and the use of advanced technology like AI (we’ll discuss it a bit later). And while mobile commerce trends can greatly boost your revenue, it’s critical to approach app design with a well-planned strategy in mind. Since ecommerce app development is quite complex due to high requirements for its performance and design, it’s better to delegate it to a reliable IT vendor like this one. In this way, you will secure the app’s performance and the overall design, minimizing the chances for unexpected bugs or sluggish code while leveraging the full potential of ecommerce mobile trends.
Top Mobile Ecommerce Trends to Incorporate in Your App Today
When we talk about trends in mobile commerce, it’s not only about setting your brand apart from the competition. It’s also about bringing the ultimate convenience and enjoyment to your shoppers since they are the ones who directly impact your sales and brand reputation. And since modern users are quite demanding, the use of advanced technology in your mobile app development is no longer a fancy add-on but rather a commodity.
Here are the most popular mobile ecommerce trends to consider for your product:
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The growing use of AI
Artificial intelligence in e-commerce is nothing new – yet, it keeps evolving and becoming more and more popular with retailers. It’s safe to say that the biggest AI use cases in m-commerce include smart chatbots and personalization – let’s look at each in more detail.
Smart chatbots serve as virtual assistants and can not only answer the most common questions (i.e., about product availability or shipping conditions) but also provide useful and, most importantly, personalized recommendations. By analyzing users’ past purchases and preferences, such bots can suggest relevant products, thus enhancing the shopping experience. Moreover, the bots can provide relevant information beyond the product list. Sephora’s bot, for example, helps users with their beauty routine, thus extending its help beyond product suggestions.
Personalization driven by AI is also highly important. Amazon’s recommendation algorithms, for instance, drive about 35% of the total sales. These numbers clearly show that users are ready to buy more – but it’s important that the suggestions are relevant and in alignment with one’s interests and preferences. To implement such capabilities in your mobile app, businesses often rely on a robust ecommerce product recommendation engine that personalizes user journeys using real-time behavior, preferences, and purchase history. By analyzing vast amounts of user data, AI algorithms can precisely identify different user groups, anticipate future demand for specific products, and pinpoint areas of interest for different shoppers. By using these insights, retailers, in turn, can greatly improve their marketing efforts and increase customer loyalty.
Voice Shopping
If you have ever asked Siri or Alexa to help you with shopping, congratulations – you’ve got first-hand experience with voice shopping. And judging by reports, people love it, and it will keep gaining traction. Statista reports that the voice commerce market is projected to reach $55 billion by 2026, and in the US alone, over 33 million shoppers might have shopped via voice in 2023. Hence, it’s safe to name voice shopping as another big trend that you need to incorporate in your app.
Voice shopping offers a convenient, hands-free experience and is 3X faster than traditional search. It is therefore important to optimize your mobile application for this function and to invest in high-quality NLP or AI models that can handle complex, multilingual queries.
AR / VR Integrations
Augmented and virtual reality is another big trend in mobile shopping apps and it’s only getting bigger. These technologies allow shoppers to virtually try on clothes or makeup (Sephora’s Virtual Artist), see how an item would fit in the environment (IKEA Place) or get an interactive product demo, which is especially popular among automotive brands.
AR and VR greatly contribute to increased user engagement, higher conversion rates due to more informed decisions, and reduced returns. In addition, these technologies serve as strong differentiation between the brand and the competition by showing a high level of personalization and care about the customers.
The implementation of AR and VR in a mobile app is quite complex though and requires a thought-out strategy. You will need to select a suitable tech stack, work with 3D modelling, and ensure the intended mobile devices support AR and VR.
Extended Mobile Payments
Since many stores have their own mobile apps, it’s only natural that shoppers are able to make instant in-app purchases. But where exactly are mobile payments heading, and what can we expect in the future?
While the common options like credit card payment gateways are here to stay, several other options are equally secure and effective:
- Mobile wallets: Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, which offer a one-tap, easy checkout
- Integrated payment gateways: include PayPal, Amazon Pay, Alipay, and offer saving payment details, thus speeding up the process
- Cryptocurrency: some apps offer payments with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
Among these, cryptocurrencies are becoming especially popular since they offer a very high level of security and fraud detection. One more interesting trend is BNPL – Buy Now, Pay Later. The service allows users to split their purchase into several payments, with the first one being made during checkout. This approach adds flexibility to the payment process and contributes greatly to higher conversion rates.
Final word
As you can see from these trends, mobile commerce keeps gravitating towards a more personalized and convenient user experience where shoppers have more control over all stages of a customer journey. On the other hand, this personalization requires more effort from retailers as they need to level-up the tech stack of their apps and ensure they correspond not only to modern performance standards but also to all needed regulations. In this way in the field of app development, ecommerce sets quite high standards for retailers. That being said, m-commerce has a lot to offer in terms of technical innovation but it should be balanced with secure and reliable technologies.
