Over the years, I have spoken to hundreds of teams that build and run high-stakes ecommerce sites, and a couple of consistent themes continually arise and should be top of mind for all ecommerce leaders in 2023 – providing increased security and sub-second speeds.
A consistent theme that continually arises and should be top of mind for all ecommerce leaders in 2023 is to provide increased security and sub-second speeds to consumers.
Ajay Kapur, Chief Technology Officer, Edgio
Ajay Kapur is CTO of Edgio and joined via the acquisition of Layer0 where he was Co-Founder and CEO. Layer0 is a leading developer-focused platform-as-a-service for application acceleration and deployment. Prior to Layer0, Kapur published mobile apps downloaded by tens of millions in the early days of the App Store. His first job was investing in technology companies for Goldman Sachs' private equity arm. Kapur earned an MBA from Stanford and bachelor’s degrees in physics and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
Advanced Security with AI and Machine-Learning
eCommerce fraud continues to rise, and according to Aberdeen Strategy & Research, 75-80% of ecommerce operational costs — e.g.,the cost of website infrastructure, website marketing and the total cost of checkout fraud — are negatively impacted by malicious bots, which equates to between 18-23% of net revenue. Ecommerce businesses are dealing with these attacks on a seemingly daily basis, and the cost can be catastrophic – in both reputation and revenue.
It’s estimated that 39 percent of all data breaches start with web app or public APIs. In 2023, leaders should invest in cloud and edge-based holistic security solutions or risk customers leaving you forever. The reality is your business must stay ahead of costly attacks on logins, payments, and APIs used to deliver safe and reliable ecommerce. Look for partners with advanced machine learning to mitigate attacks, as this provides the ability to analyze billions of interactions to spot any anomalies before they become an issue.
Top Site Speeds, No Excuses
Despite the investment companies make in edge platforms and CDNs, more than 70 percent of websites are considered “slow” according to the speed metrics that Google uses to rank websites. Slow sites hurt customer retention and ultimately impact revenue. A recent study reported that people experience MORE stress waiting for a page to load than they do watching a horror movie. As a starting point, your site must deliver rich imagery, reviews and filtered, personalized results in milliseconds. By ensuring sub-second page loads, companies will experience game-changing growth and revenue wins. Investigate and adopt a unified infrastructure platform – from browser to edge to serverless stack – to enable development teams to control and optimize speed on every layer.
Optimize for Mobile
Improving page loads should not stop at the desktop. With 71% of all eCommerce traffic and more than 50% of orders coming from smartphones, mobile shopping has become the standard. So, it’s important to design experiences fully optimized for this audience. Mobile performance not only affects ecommerce, it will also impact in-store purchases. In the recent holiday shopping season, ecommerce sales were down slightly from the previous year, which can be attributed to pandemic restrictions being lifted and more people shopping in-store. However, whether shopping online or in-store, consumers are using mobile sites to supplement their purchase. It is estimated that 80% of shoppers used a mobile phone inside a physical store to either look up reviews, compare prices, or research store locations. Shoppers view apps and mobile sites as a way to improve their overall shopping experience. Slow page loads and low performance on mobile devices and apps can result in lost revenue for brick and mortar, as well as online. It’s important to look for a platform that extends all the way to the edge and offers features such as prefetching and API acceleration to deliver the best possible performance.
As the ecommerce space continues to become more and more competitive, speed and security are not only the foundation for an ecommerce site, but they are also truly non-negotiable.
THE STATE OF ECOMMERCE 2023
JAN 2023
2023: The Year Video Commerce Market will take off in the US
By Gautam Goswami
Chief Executive Officer, CommentSold
Gautam Gowsami is a seasoned consumer-technology executive with extensive experience on product and go-to-market. Prior to taking on Chief Executive Officer at CommentSold, he was Chief Marketing and Product Officer at TeamViewer, the leading remote connectivity software platform, which was the largest software IPO in Europe in 2019 when the business went public. He has also held executive roles at large silicon valley technology companies including OpenText and Informatica. Goswami brings 5+ years of board level advisory experience for more than 10 VC and PE funded tech and consumer-tech companies, driving product and GTM excellence initiatives.
In 2022, livestream shopping – an e-commerce staple in Asia, with a $322 billion market in China alone – exploded in the U.S. like never before, reaching a remarkable fervor during the holiday season. Major retailers such as Nordstrom, Levi Strauss and Bloomingdales are among the countless brands that hosted livestream shopping events this year, ushering in a new era of live video commerce in the States.
But if 2022 was the initial explosion, then 2023 will be the year live shopping goes fully mainstream. Below are three predictions for how that will manifest.
Fast forward to where we are today, the adults of Gen Z, the third largest generational segment in the U.S., are settling into the market. Digital natives, at their core, Gen Zers, are open to exploring new platforms and immersive experiences. A third will actually begin the shopper journey on social media and prefer brands with that personalized touch.
The behaviors that link all generations today stem from being connected consumers: navigates seamlessly through all channels, constantly present in an everywhere commerce environment, where all moments are shoppable–from where we scroll, browse, see, watch, read, essentially anywhere we interact with a brand. So for 2023, let's focus on three areas centered around delivering experiences to the connected consumer.
Finding that balance between product knowledge and an entertaining presentation and yet capturing the shopper's attention span will be the driving force behind the livestream strategies we’ll see in 2023.
Prediction 1: Boring e-commerce is out. Entertainment is in.
In 2023, live commerce won't compete with your audience’s daily scroll through Amazon, but with their favorite streaming service(s). Live commerce is fundamentally a content strategy, and when you’re trying to get someone to buy a product, that content must be engaging enough to pique viewers’ interest in your offerings.
Right now, the biggest barrier to retailers adopting live selling is actually knowing how to do it. The execution is difficult; it’s hard to strike a balance between product knowledge and an entertaining presentation that can overcome our increasingly short attention spans.
Finding that balance will be the driving force behind the livestream strategies we’ll see in 2023. Everyone will engineer their own brand-specific recipe for entertainment – in a sense, marketers are going to become showrunners.
Prediction 2: Authenticity, not celebrity, will be the key to engagement
Over the past decade, we’ve seen the rise of a new class of celebrity: the influencer. Like any celebrity, influencers have become the face of millions of marketing and advertising campaigns, valuable not only for their talent and fanbase, but their unprecedented proximity to the end consumer.
Consumers want to buy products from people who look and live like them, who model a lifestyle that’s attainable. Live selling is unique because it empowers business owners to become influencers themselves, creating a more personalized relationship between buyer and seller. Additionally, live selling pushes consumers through the conversion funnel faster, and in real-time. In 2023, we’ll see video commerce strategies focus more on engagement through authenticity, resulting in a more inclusive experience for audiences.
Prediction 3: Live selling strategies will be short-form and long-form
Live selling is just one act in the larger story of video commerce. Beyond live selling, brands have found success with explainers and “how-to”s, inspirational videos, short-form content, and the peer-to-peer recommendations that made the influencer an institution.
That said, many brands may believe they have to choose between long-form and short-form content strategies. This isn’t exactly unfounded, as Meta gutted its livestream shopping features earlier this year to focus on Reels, a sign that short-form will continue to be a focus for many retailers. But the same people who watch TikToks on their lunch break will also binge watch an entire Netflix series in a single weekend, or spend hours watching their favorite Twitch creator. At the end of the day, it’s not so much about the format of video commerce, but the content itself.
In 2023, more brands will discover that a good video commerce strategy isn’t about choosing between long-form and short-form, but finding the balance that allows them to best connect with their consumers. Live selling platforms enable sellers to utilize multiple channels of shopping; through reels, static images, stories, and replays, consumers have a unique opportunity to shop conveniently within a trusted community. After all, that’s the crux of why live commerce works in the first place: it fosters personal connection, and that’s what keeps people coming back.
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THE STATE OF ECOMMERCE 2023
JAN 2023