The retail industry is constantly evolving to meet the needs of consumers, and the coming year will see some interesting shifts in business trends.
Here are just a few of the most impactful retail trends to look out for in 2023:
1. Influencer Marketing
This is the process of connecting with influencers in your industry to get more exposure for your brand. It can be done through social media, tagging them on Instagram or Twitter, or having them post about your business online. As consumers become more aware of the power of influencers, they’ll continue to seek out these relationships with brands they trust and like.
2. Improve User Experience Across Devices
The way consumers interact with their phones and other devices has changed dramatically over the past few years, as well as how they conduct online research before making purchases. For example, voice search is becoming increasingly popular because it’s easier than typing on a smartphone or tablet keyboard. The challenge for retailers will be to provide an easy user experience across all platforms so customers aren’t left frustrated when they can’t find what they’re looking for easily on any device they use daily (e.g., desktop computer search engine results pages).
3. Innovative SEO and Analytics Solutions for Voice Search
As voice search becomes increasingly popular by consumers, SEO and analytics solutions will need to become more innovative. For example, retailers can create a dedicated page on their website for people who use Siri or Google Assistant to find products. In this way, they’ll be able to collect data about what people are searching for and how they use voice search.
4. A Move Towards Privacy Centric Data Usage
Data is the lifeblood of businesses today. It’s how you keep up with your competition, how you understand your customers and make them happy, and how you grow.
Data is also a huge security risk. We know that data breaches are becoming more common, and we know that when companies suffer from a breach, they’re often hit with expensive lawsuits from consumers who have suffered financial harm or lost their trust in the company.
Additionally, data regulation laws are on the rise.
So what can we do to protect our data? How can we use our data to benefit our business without leaving ourselves vulnerable to attack? How can we make sure our customers trust us and continue to give us their valuable personal information?
It starts with taking a close look at what types of data we’re collecting and where it’s coming from. There are three main categories of data: First-party data (data collected directly from customers), second-party data (data collected by other companies), and third-party data (data collected by third parties). The first two categories can contain data that is considered “personally identifiable” because they can be linked back to an individual person; third-party data is not personally identifiable because it doesn’t contain any information about individual people.
It starts with complete, compliant, and efficient data collection:
- Making sure that all necessary data is available in a standard format and structure
- Data is collected in a way that respects the privacy expectations of users
- Adhering to local regulations
- Ensuring that data is collected and processed in a way which maximizes the speed of value realization while ensuring minimal impact on surrounding systems
Final Thoughts
To conclude, the retail space will continue to move towards an omnichannel, privacy-centric world with areas like voice search and user experience entering a new golden age. And while some data privacy concerns will continue to create headaches, there’s a way to keep customer data safe without running afoul of local regulations or alienating customers.
