eCommerce Leaders Share Trends To Look Out For In 2022

As the global economy continues to recover post-pandemic, retailers are faced with the continuing obstacles of supply chain issues, labor shortages, and cybersecurity threats. Since 56% of consumers have stated that delivery delays will negatively impact future purchases, vendors will need to take a proactive approach or risk negative ramifications on their brand in the long run. Several eCommerce experts share their insights on what to be aware of entering the new year:

Lex Boost, CEO, Leaseweb USA

“Organizations of all sizes continue to grapple with ongoing shortages spurred by COVID-19. Nearly 40% of U.S. small businesses experienced delays due to the various waves of the pandemic. Correcting the supply chain issue is going to be the number one problem to solve in 2022. Business leaders will need to partner together to discover flexible and creative solutions to ensure there is enough stock of the essentials across all industries.

To help the ongoing issue, organizations need to rely on the power of the cloud to track products throughout their life cycle. Having a combination of public and private cloud solutions allows eCommerce businesses to easily connect to and manage their supplies. This sense of control is crucial to have as we move into the New Year because it will provide the insight needed to pivot when necessary.”

Agnes Schliebitz-Ponthus, senior vice president of product at Fluent Commerce

Increase In Low Code, No Code Approach

“The global pandemic has increased the rate of digital transformation in most organizations, with development and security teams under increasing pressure to adopt new technologies quickly and roll out applications faster. This is much easier to do if the technologies require little coding expertise. In-house teams can adapt applications themselves, quickly, rather than have to hire experienced coders or use resources outside of the organization.

Indeed, the global tech talent shortage will only increase the number of companies adopting a ‘low code, no code’ approach to software development. Low and no-code platforms will help to fill the gap, shifting the responsibility for app development from expensive programmers and engineers to business subject matter experts.

Gartner says that as many as 75% of large enterprises will be using four or more low-code toolsets by 2024. With budgets under extreme pressure, we’re going to see more companies adopting a ‘low code, no code’ approach in 2022. At Fluent, we launched Fluent Order Management Experience (OMX) earlier this year, our new low-code platform for order management.”

Companies Will Build More Robust Supply Chains 

“Companies already started to do this in 2020, when the global pandemic hit, but this trend will continue in 2022. COVID-19 has highlighted just how much companies have relied on being able to source parts and goods from overseas. With planes grounded around the world, customers can’t get furniture or buy cars and are having to wait weeks and months for goods to arrive. This will inevitably mean more companies will focus on making their supply chains more resilient and adaptable to unpredictable events and changes globally.

They will start to use data much more to inform decisions around where to build their supply chains both today and into the future, so there is less opportunity for their supply chains to be disrupted.”

More Pressure On Retailers To Measure Carbon Footprint

“Retailers and consumers now are much more aware of their carbon footprint, when goods from overseas have either been unavailable or are taking much longer to arrive during the global pandemic.

Just like companies have to report data breaches, following the GDPR legislation, there will be more of a push in 2022 for retailers to report their carbon emissions. Many will be thinking about where to start, but technology can help gather that data so that companies can have visibility into their supply chain and decide where they can make changes to reduce their environmental impact.

The shift toward more sustainable shopping together with the growing emissions emitted by the e-commerce sector requires greener solutions. You can only manage what you can measure, so gaining carbon transparency and understanding your carbon footprint is going to be key for retailers in 2022.”

Jamie Cairns, SVP channel & alliances, Fluent Commerce

Supply Chain Disruption Will Continue

“The global pandemic has meant huge disruption to retailers’ supply chains and this will continue into 2022. Many retailers have worked hard to generate demand for products and have then found they haven’t been able to fulfil orders because they just can’t get hold of the stock. This means brand loyalty is challenged, because consumers may switch to other companies who can promise to supply that product.

Retailers and brands need to mitigate issues by being very clear with promises and educating the consumer about when the product is expected to arrive. Retailers should not be promising products to consumers unless they know exactly what they have and where it is. Real-time inventory visibility can help here.”

Lower Discounting, But Certainty Around Delivery Will Improve

“There won’t be the level of discounting of stock in 2022. Big sales days will remain huge but won't outperform the rest by quite so much as regular daily online volumes have grown significantly with more people buying online.

Few retailers have large supplies of stock. This means they don’t need to ‘offload’ it at the same discount levels as in prior years. This will be balanced out by a well-trained consumer who expects bargains.

On the positive side, as flights resume and borders open, capacity will ramp up and deliveries will be quicker. Many consumers have switched to the certainty of Click & Collect, Curb-side pick up and BOPIS (Buy Online Pick Up In Store) during the global pandemic and these will continue in 2022.”

Marketplaces Will Grow And Headless Commerce Will Become Mainstream

“Marketplaces continue to appear and to grow in importance. As access to fit-for-purpose technology improves, the barrier to entry is increasingly being reduced, so you can expect to see more curated, niche marketplaces emerge.

Many retailers have switched their eCommerce approach this year to ‘headless commerce’, which essentially separates the front-end presentation layer (website, app, kiosk, social, etc.), the ‘head’ from the back-end services, enabling them to personalize the experience on the front end, whilst benefiting from the economies of scale on the back end.

This trend toward ‘headless commerce’ will only continue into 2022, as retailers look for flexibility to adapt to future changes, making market adoption easier and benefits better understood.”

Retailers Will Offer Sustainable Delivery Options

“Much has been written about the need to reduce packaging with online deliveries and use recyclable materials, but what about the most complex and expensive part of the eCommerce supply chain: the last mile? Getting the product out of a warehouse or storage facility and shipped out to the customer’s home.

The technology is available to group products together, for fewer deliveries. It is also available for customers to choose a delivery option according to their suburb, so the retailer can deliver multiple goods to customers who live in the same place, rather than having to do individual trips on different days, back and forth to the same suburb. But, to date, these ‘sustainable delivery options’ haven’t been adopted, en masse, by retailers.

As consumer concerns grow around the environment and wanting to reduce their carbon footprint, retailers will start to offer more sustainable delivery options in 2022.”

Matthew Meehan, chief operating officer at TokenEx

“For payments technology, the future is all about improving the customer experience. We have witnessed a shifting of transactions to mobile and web, but these checkout methods create more fraud risk. Businesses know they can’t create friction in the checkout process, lest they put conversion rates, customer acquisition, and retention at risk.

As such, a lot of technologies ranging from card brand-initiated technologies like network tokenization to 3DS to independent fraud decision engines have to be integrated and added to existing payment flows. Adding these capabilities allows more control and orchestration of the transaction than ever before. There is also the need to use multiple processors to address downtime concerns and to route payments to the processor where transactions can be most successful (because a declined transaction equals an unhappy customer).

These multiple channels, multiple tools, and multiple processor solutions are necessary to maximize revenue, but they require a more sophisticated approach to payment than ever before. In 2022, we will see more and more brands adopt these sophisticated payments backends, not for tech adoption, but so they can control the customer experience which is all about increasing revenue and the lifetime value of their customer relationships.”

Alex Pezold, founder and CEO at TokenEx

“In 2022, organizations will be looking to make sure that they have the breadth of services available to achieve goals for revenue generation. Everybody is trying to make money, and consolidation of capabilities, like commoditized offerings for simple payment processing, is going to be very important for 2022. Additionally, it will be important to make sure that organizations don't develop vendor fatigue and are unable to maximize revenue management.”

Liron Damri, president, Forter

“Cryptocurrencies will further accelerate eCommerce fraud. Crypto makes bad actors more comfortable buying and selling information—it has created a rapidly expanding marketplace for consumer credentials. And wannabe fraudsters also can buy sophisticated tools to help them cheat and steal. As the pandemic has brought older shoppers online, who are less savvy about protecting passwords, it is now introducing a wave of new fraudsters into the fray. Consequently, businesses must more actively protect their customers at every critical interaction along the eCommerce funnel, from sign-up to login to checkout and more.”