If you Google – ‘2014 E-commerce Trends’, you’re bound to find numerous articles and posts featuring Three/ Five /Seven / Ten E-commerce Trends for 2014.  Reading through all those lists one trend stood out – The Ability to Offer Personalized Customer Experience.

“The holy grail for marketers in the Age of Context is “pinpoint marketing” — the ability to deliver hyper-personalized and contextual messaging and offers to the individual” (GetElastic – 3 Ecommerce Trends to Watch in 2014)

“No matter the transaction channel, the central principle guiding most emerging retail technologies is personalized customer engagement.” (Zdnet- 7 trends that will transform SMB e-commerce in 2014)

Another very popular trend for 2014 is ‘Big Data and Analytics’ but  this trend is an enabler to the personalization trend as collecting and analyzing data is a means to an end which is personalizing the customer experience, “Big Data and analytic will evolve beyond segmentation for email lists. E-commerce merchants will collect and analyze data to discern shopping patterns that have predictive value and to understand consumer experiences in digital and physical contexts. … Data will be the driver for capturing more customers, up selling to existing customers and retaining them for the long term. …. Big Data analytics should emerge in 2014 as not just a buzzy trend, but a core business practice that e-commerce firms use to understand their business and their customers in fundamentally new way’   (Innovation Insights E-Commerce in 2014: Seven Key Trends)

According to a recent Forrester research published in Forbes:  A great-digital experience is no longer a nice-to-have, It’s a make-or-break point for you business”   Forrester also notes that “it is important to design predictive apps able to sense their environment and respond in real-time,” “…..the upper half of your customer base will spend up to 50 percent more with you if they receive a personalized offer.” (Forbes.com – Forrester: Top Technology Trends for 2014 and beyond)

We are happy to see that the vision we’ve been working towards since 2008, is finally getting the traction it deserves. Our prediction for 2014 and beyond is that for the first time ever, e-commerce marketers will be able to detect the real time purchase intent of shoppers and  uncover the reasons they abandon an e-commerce site. We call this prediction “Intent Based Marketing”. Well, it’s not really a prediction; We are hard at work making it a reality.

Contact us if you want to learn more about Intent Based Marketing