2024 in e-commerce: Reflections and learnings

Written by Max Riis Christensen

Access to tools that make you faster at what you do is a joy. You can do even more at the same time, but the question to ask ourselves at the brink of 2025 should be: is that the best way to use the new technology?

Do we need more e-mails, more social media posts and more AI-generated videos?

Probably not.

To get ahead of the competition might require going in another direction.

When everyone shouts, no one is heard

In 2023, 67.000 new webshops were created in the UK, which is increasing yearly, and it is probably the same across Europe. So, the day you open your new shop in the UK, Germany, or France, 200 other webshops will launch on the same day and start fighting for the same consumers you want to do business with.

These new players (one of them being Temu) lead to increased costs of traffic and make profitable growth a challenge. Below is an illustration showing that marketing costs have doubled since 2019.

So, how to win in 2025?

If we only use all the new AI tools, we will launch the same buying experience as all the other 200 webshops launching the same day. Why should a visitor trust you over the alternatives?

We ask ourselves three questions when considering a new shop for the first time:

• Is the product what I need and is the price fair enough for me to buy?
• Will they deliver on time?
• Will they handle returns, complaints, and, if needed, refunds reasonably and efficiently?
  
  

An important part of getting the “yes” on these questions is to win their trust. Trust comes from several sources:

• Localised communication: Meet the customer in their culture when you communicate. This often means rewriting parts of your communication on your website. 
• A language they understand: AI translates well, but remember to localise text and processes before translation
• Accessible: can they pick up the phone and call or reach you through a live chat?
• Be transparent: Who am I doing business with? Pictures, a great “About us” page etc.
• The payment and delivery options they expect: Customers are never looking for new ways to pay or to get stuff delivered

The bottom line is that if the product, price, and timing are right for the customer, you don’t want to lose them because they don't trust you.

Are the first impression you give at the level a new customer would need to trust you? If in doubt, reach out and let one of our native e-commerce specialists verify.

A new way of losing clients is on the rise!

2025 might also be the year to consider adding a fourth question to the list above. 

• Does the webshop live up to my customers' expectations on sustainability?

On this topic, we are all different, but more and more consumers see it as a show stopper if your products travel across the world in a polluting aeroplane, if the production facility doesn’t have the right certifications or if you as a company don’t provide solid documentation for your ESG ambitions and results. A new group of consumers will only choose among products delivered by companies aligned with their values on ESG.

An exciting year ahead!

We look into another exciting year with a long list of new challenges. Technology is evolving, and things will change, but many things will still be the same. At least I still spend most weekdays at my desk. I do pretty much the same, and I am exactly as busy as I was two years ago… despite AI being what everyone is talking about these days.

Happy New Year,

Max

Read Max's reflections on e-commerce in 2023 here.