The Internet of Things, or the IoT has transformed our living with a connected reality at homes, workplaces, transport systems, shopping malls and retail stores, manufacturing units and public places. Modern life is getting smarter thanks to these Internet of Things apps.
Amog all the ways IoT is influencing and shaping our lives, the IoT push for smarter e-commerce stores and shopping experience deserves a special mention. Thanks to the IoT ecosystem and the connected reality of gadgets, e-commerce shopping has become smarter than ever before. For an e-commerce development company India or for an aspiring business just finding its first step in the e-commerce industry, understanding this huge impact of IoT on the sector is extremely important.
How IoT defines the e-commerce future?
As per the latest estimates, eCommerce revenue is likely to cross 300 billion dollars in this year itself. There can be hardly any doubt that the connected ecosystem of gadgets is playing a crucial role in pushing the sales and revenue growth for the e-commerce industry. The growth story of the e-commerce industry could only be materialized by linking the processes, things and the customers.
From allowing customers to make an order with a voice command to the smart speaker to helping retail businesses to connect their brick and mortar stores with the e-commerce apps through remote sensing and location sending technologies to deliver an omnichannel streamlined shopping experience, the digital footprints are multifaceted enough now. This connected shopping experience across devices, platforms and real life contexts is what is pushing the growth vector for the e-commerce sector.
Amazon Alexa and the likes: interactive shopping platforms
The smart home assistants or the smart speaker systems that are now capable to sense, communicate and help users across multiple contexts throughout the day are also making it more convenient to shop and inquire about products just by using voice commands.
You can just ask Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant about the price of a quality raincoat in different stores along with specifications and brand information. You not only get straightforward answers to your questions, but you also get intelligent recommendations based on comparison of prices, features and other factors. Amazon Alexa now just can place orders at Amazon for your needs.
Connecting the next door grocery shop
The so called brick and mortar stores are also coming to the buzzing e-commerce space and are getting ready to jump on the new e-commerce opportunities. Often the e-commerce ambition of these small-lane shops are being materialized by the connected ecosystem of gadgets.
Amazon has revolutionized many e-commerce technologies and their latest offering is the Dash button that can just send alerts before the required products gets fully used and finished. Users can set their favorite products on the device and just with a tap on the Dash button, the order gets automatically placed to an affiliate store or to Amazon. This is how the connected shopping experience is creating milestones.
Key benefits of IoT for the e-commerce businesses
Now that you have a fair idea of the innovations happening with smart connected gadgets and the way they are influencing the e-commerce industries, we need to take a look at the key benefits conferred by IoT on the e-commerce businesses.
A never-before shopping experience
eCommerce stores now offer highly personalized shopping experiences based on data-driven insights. They use big data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to learn about customer preferences, browsing behavior and shopping habits and are shaping the e-commerce stores accordingly.
The Internet of Things devices and the connected ecosystem are allowing customers to leave digital footprints across multiple apps and gadgets and the data is helping the e-commerce stores to understand customer preferences better. At a time when understanding customer contexts is important to win sales, IoT is helping e-commerce businesses to assess customer contexts better.
More efficient inventory management
When it comes to inventory management the IoT ready barcode mapping and QR code mapping technologies are helping the e-commerce stores to track goods and inventories remotely. The IoT sensors and RFID tags together have revolutionised the way products and inventories in warehouses and retail stores are tracked and monitored. Thanks to IoT based infrastructure, ecommerce and retail inventory management has become smarter than ever before.
Smarter Logistics
The smarter logistics and supply chain is paving the way for another level of advantages for the e-commerce stores. Thanks to modern fleet management solutions powered by in-vehicle sensors and gadgets keeping track of the deliveries became a lot easier requiring less paperwork and concerns for on-road mishaps.
The GPS map based vehicle tracking the RFID or Radio-Frequency Identification technologies have now become persistent tools for tracking logistics and supply chain movements and the transport vehicles. As IoT has paved the way for remote sensing and remote monitoring of the vehicles carrying supplies and goods, the entire logistics and supply chain process became streamlined.
Smart shopping and informed marketing
As we have already mentioned IoT and the connected reality of gadgets ranging from the wearables to the smart speakers or smart home assistants to the smart TV systems, shopping commands can now be given by the consumers across multitude of device interfaces creating wider digital footprint for the customers.
Apart from boosting sales opportunities through multiple sales interactions, these digital footprints are also helping the e-commerce businesses to know customer preferences and contexts more precisely. This is why IoT is paving the way for more informed and precisely personalised marketing campaigns. IoT and the connected ecosystem of devices in a multitude of ways are helping marketers to access more customer information that can be used for marketing decisions.
Conclusion
This is just the beginning of the Internet of Things impact on the e-commerce industry and it is expected that the impact is going to be louder and bigger as the connected reality continues to penetrate every nook and corner of our lives. Smart connected shopping without the constraints of one single device and platform is going to be the mainstay of e-commerce businesses in the years to come.
