8 Excellent Extended Insights Into E-commerce Trends: E-commerce Link Digest

Hope you’re having a wonderful winter weekend, Big Thinkers. Rather than bore you with a ton of setup, I thought you’d rather we get right to the links. So, with that, take a few moments to review these 8 excellent extended insights into e-commerce trends. Enjoy:

1. Leading off, Mobile Commerce Daily suggests the top 8 complaints about mobile shopping reveal persistent issues. That’s not surprising. What is surprising is that despite these issues, new research from eMarketer shows most digital buyers will make purchases via a smartphone by 2017. It might be easy to assume that because they’re buying, everything’s OK. Clearly, it’s not. And it’s time for marketers to focus more on driving seamless experiences for their customers. To help, you also might want to review these 8 killer entries about improving e-commerce experience.
2. While we’re on that topic, it’s clear that seamless experiences represent a big part of what drives growth in 2016, made all the more important because mobile is so much bigger than you think. In fact, as Sarah Davison tweeted the other day:
   

   users reach for their mobile devices 150x a day via @google

   — Sarah Davison (@sarahdavison58) February 17, 2016

   Yep. That’s pretty big.

3. An excellent post from Mobile Marketer looks at how the New York Times is expanding mobile wallet opportunities for a podcast series, which is really fascinating twist on the mobile payments space and one more example why mobile payments will rule. It seems likely that these sorts of innovations will eventually lead to mobile wallets taking a primary position in your customers’ day-to-day lives, so it’s interesting to see how others innovate with the technology.
4. Business Insider reports that Amazon is quietly expanding its delivery on-demand program. Seems like a perfect time to ask yet again, how safe is your industry from Amazon?
5. More new research from eMarketer shows that for the first time, more than half of Americans will watch streaming TV, at least in part due to the rise of mobile and the rise of Millennials. Per the report,
   

   “…by 2017, more than two-thirds of Americans will watch digital video at least once a month. Millennials (those born between 1981 and 2000) are the biggest consumers of digital video. This year, 93.7% of millennial internet users will watch streaming video…”

   So, um, yeah. That’s a lot. Which is why it’s undoubtedly time to make room for mobile video in your marketing efforts.

6. While we’re talking about Millennials, Ad Age tells marketers it’s time to rethink the Millennial mom. Excellent insights, and well worth your time to learn why.
7. Speaking of learning, according to The New York Times, gearing up for the cloud, AT&T tells its workers: adapt, or else. While it’s far too soon to tell if this represents a trends, it seems the smart money for anyone interested in keeping their job is to keep improving their skills—whether your company funds that improvement or not.
8. Finally, how about we close out this week’s E-commerce Link Digest by pointing you to some additional resources to help you learn, including these 9 new posts exploring digital trends in 2016 and a fantastic collection of 7 posts explaining how to execute digital effectively (both from our ongoing E-commerce Link Digest series), as well as a group of 8 excellent digital delights: the top posts of January, 2016 (including bonus insights!).

And if you want learn even more about how your customers’ changing behavior shapes e-commerce and marketing, be sure and register to receive a special report I’ve produced in conjunction with hotel marketing firm Vizergy, “Digital Hotel Marketing in a Multiscreen World.” While it’s targeted specifically at hotel and resort marketers, the lessons apply to just about any business. You can get your free copy of the report here.

You can also check out these slides and video from my recent webinar, “Digital Marketing Directions: Three Key Trends Driving Your Marketing Next Year”: