E-commerce is moving fast.  So, online traders should be constantly engaged in the newest and most effective innovations to get ahead of the competition.

That is a challenge for both e-store owners and developers to move with the times. And Magento, being a popular framework for e-commerce website development, every year bring in new features.

To be in the know, here are the 10 e-commerce trends for 2019 that are topping the list of various resources.

1. Mobile Continues Growing

In recent years, the mobile industry has made an immense step forward. Our phones are better, smarter and even more useful for everyday purposes. Starting from scrolling the news feed and chatting with friends up to looking for something to buy in the online shop.

The revealed data indicates that buyers feel more comfortable with shopping via their phones. That’s easier pulling out your phone and browse for purchases at any place rather than commuting to home and sitting in front of a computer. For this reason, mobile shopping will grow and be one of the most prominent retail trends in 2019.

Ensure the user experience on your mobile versions are smooth.

Make sure your design is fully mobile responsive. Optimize images and dynamic elements for mobile not to impede customer experience.

It’s also possible to use Progressive Web Apps (PWA) that can speed up the page loading and improve the buyers’ navigation through the website.

Besides this, you can ensure integration with mobile wallets and simplify the checkout way.

Improve your SEO with mobile optimization.

Google began launching mobile-first indexing which will only increase its influence in 2019. Don’t skip out on this as a poor mobile experience could hamper your site rankings for desktop search, too.

2. Advanced Product Filtering

You may think that this is a feature of the past, but still, a lot of e-commerce websites provide users with poor search results. Yes, Magento version 2.3 has improved the layered navigation. Anyway, you’ll benefit from adding some extra fields like filter by discount or any other custom filters.

As well, placing popular filters at the top of the list will bring more attractiveness and user-friendliness to your store. Help your customers to quickly find the product they need so that they come back to purchase from you.

3. Omnichannel Experiences will be on Increase

Create a more integrated buying experience as most users use more than one device to research before making their purchases. Follow the ‘anywhere’ principle: buy, deliver, and return via any channel.

For example, they can:

• Buy an item via social media posts and have it delivered to home or a local delivery locker where they complete the process.
• Start searching on a desktop at home and add to online cart via phone.
• Scan an item via mobile app, as well as order and track its order status and purchase later at home after trying on.

Consequently, ensuring seamless transitions from mobile to desktop or to a physical store will simplify the life of the client.

4. Checkout in One Step

To prevent the payment process from turning into cart abandonment, simplify this a little bit irritating process. The poor checkout service can be improved by:

• implementing a one-page checkout to increase conversion
• enabling the autofill of your form fields to save users time
• implementing the image recognition for scanning users credit cards
• making the registration process smoother or removing it at all.

By using this, you give your customers a good experience and thus increase your sales revenue. Yet, the Magento 2 framework still lacks one-step checkout, which can be solved by setting up an extension.

5. Automating Store Management

Why is automation indispensable for e-commerce development in the future? Any process can be accelerated such as marketing, order management, receiving notifications, or adding SEO information for your store content.

Moreover, you can improve the buying experience and increase the conversion rate by setting the feature for loading of new or out-of-stock products for future sales.

With a big number of tasks being made by technical means, you’ll save your time and effort.

6. Artificial Intelligence is a Step Forward

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming an inalienable part of many industries, including e-commerce. Many experts predict AI will re-shape the online shopping habits of Magento users. Let’s see some simple application of that.

Context-based search is for giving relevant results if there is no absolute keyword matching. As well, visual search enables a customer to take a picture of the product and look for similar items in your store.

Smart algorithms are used for understanding customer behavior and preferences. It helps acquire customer-centric shopping experience. As well, this can help to produce reports and analytics.

To gather your customer base without harmful email addresses, applying a real-time ZeroBounce Email Validator is a good practice.

These and many other technologies allow enhancing every aspect of your business. And we expect that there will be an increase in the utilization and improvement of AI in 2019.

7. Increasing Demand of Chatbots

For e-commerce stores, it’s essential to provide the customers with information as fast as possible. Not to make them wait for so long, chatbots are a solution. You can pre-set at least the start of a conversation with your website visitor, like with the help of Zendesk Chat automated trigger. In general, they can guide shoppers through a typical buying process, using the info based on the knowledge database.

Customer service chatbots should strive to a human-like level of service. Since they still fail to answer in a natural language like a real staff in non-typical situations, which can potentially damage the businesses. We’ll see how far the technology can move forward in 2019.

8. Personalization in Everything

Each customer has specific needs. So, various enhanced features and a personalized experience are still in strong demand. To keep the competition, your e-commerce service should be up to the expectations of the buyers. For this, a Magento store must be able to create customer special discounts and coupons, along with providing product recommendation based on the customers' preferences.

9. Augmented Reality

To engage more customers in online shopping, the augmented reality could come in handy. Today most of the buyers use store websites to get products description and reviews, yet many of them still prefer making final purchases in physical stores.

The decisive factor is that you can’t see and touch the actual product when you make shopping online. All is left to the imagination. So, with augmented reality, an e-commerce site can help their visitors to get a real-life experience of the product.

Such big players as IKEA and Amazon already utilize these technologies. But we can expect it will be quite accessible for medium and small owners throughout 2019 and 2020. There are already tools to build your own AR app like Google’s ARCore or Apple’s ARKit.

10. Video Content is Powerful

People are becoming more prone to watch video content rather than to read the text. It was revealed that a user spends at least 45 minutes a day watching mobile videos and it is not a limit in 2019. By the way, 76% of marketers reported that video has helped to increase their company sales.

Videos help your content to resonate your customers and them to be more receptive to your calls-to-action. Especially, live videos are popular with users now. Live streaming videos help to make connections in real time. You can take note of this for the future, and for example, demonstrate your customers’ testimonials of the latest products and services.

The bottom line

Almost all e-commerce trends and predictions for 2019 are connected to technology and development. With the internet powering online trade, it is not only convenient but easier to be prosperous. E-commerce is making great steps for convenience, seamlessness and time-saving. And Magento does not fall short of advancement, following the current and future trends.