Last week eBay Australia and General Assembly put on an informative evening called ‘Unlocking the eCommerce opportunity’. In this blog post, we will summarise what guest speaker Steve Brennen the Senior Director of Marketing & Retail Innovation Australia at eBay talked about including the top 4 trends impacting retail right now.

Key Points:

• With online shopping, you have to wait for customers to come looking for you so it’s important to be able to be found. This is just as true on a marketplace such as eBay. On eBay buyers are looking for a product not a brand so on eBay if you’re selling what they’re looking for you’re already half way there.
• Put your buyer hat on. Too many sellers often think of a product to sell, not what the buyer wants to buy. You need to be buyer driven – how would I look for this product if I was going to buy it?
• If you’re looking to drive traffic to your site it’s a bit different. Steve recommended google paid search, facebook and other CRM type strategies such as loyalty programs and friend get friend.
• Once buyers have landed on your site you need to make it easy for them to find the product or any alternatives.

The 4 key trends impacting retail

1. The Connected Consumer: From desktop to mobile, tablets, the internet of things and virtual reality. Mobile purchases grew from $13b in 2012 to $46b in 2015. By 2020, there will be 20 devices in the home connected for example, the coffee machine that automatically orders coffee capsules when you run out, or the washing machine that orders detergent.
2. Bri-gital: The gap where bricks and digital meet. Augmented reality – see what a couch will look like in your living room or if particular make up will look good on you e.g Sephora where you can upload a picture and put on different make up colours to see if they will suit you. Another example is the use of robots in a store instead of a sales assistant (gulp).
3. Me commerce: Everything built on data that you know about the customer; Know me online, Know me instore, know me anywhere. Only show me stuff in my size that is in stock. Making it relevant to the buyer is key.
4. The battle for the last mile: You can pretty much buy anything online now and get it delivered from all around the world. However, 75% of the products consumers buy are found within 15 miles from home. Click and collect solved this problem. 40-60 percent of sales are fulfilled via click and collect for some eBay retailers.  Now there are new delivery methods being trialed; DHL deliver to a parked car, Uber cars becoming couriers and delivering parcels, buy online and pick up from Woolworths, Drones are being trialled by Amazon and you can now pick up a 3D printer for less than $1000 which can be used to print anything from surfboards to tshirts and glasses.

Stay tuned for our next blog post which will cover off the panel discussion and get some tips from some successful online sellers.