How eCommerce is Set to Change in the Future

Knowing what’s coming is always a great way to stay ahead of the curve. As these tech advancements come into mainstream play, you can be the first to try them out, and stay innovative in the process. Take a look at our guide to tech that will change eCommerce in the future.

Image recognition

Image recognition is already common enough in our phones. All the latest iPhone models allow for face recognition to open your phone, quick as a flash. This is also where you get your crazy Snapchat and Instagram filters from.

But lately, the potential for image recognition has expanded. Point your camera at a QR code, for example, and you will be taken to a site as directed. You can already point your camera at certain objects with an app and gain a lot of information on the item, such as pointing your camera at a plant and gaining information on what it is suffering from, a lack of water or sun, etc. and all the details of the plant.

This will become very handy in the future of eCommerce. If you can point your camera at an item, or even better, a barcode, you can be taken to the site where you can buy one for yourself. Users are already finding and buying their items on social media, so it makes sense if they come across something with no link to buy they can run a screenshot of it through image recognition and find where they can get it.

[Read More: 10 Things to Consider While Choosing a Theme For Your Shopify Store]

Cryptocurrency

As it stands right now, there aren’t a lot of practical uses for cryptocurrency beyond investing and trading in for the national equivalent. If you were to ask what you can buy with cryptocurrency alone, you’d be met with a Tesla, a flight from certain airlines and iGaming sites.

Online casinos are the main ones who have taken that plunge into crypto and stuck to it. Their customers have enjoyed much faster transfers of their deposits and winnings, and the companies have enjoyed less disputes since it’s clear that every payment is final.

And this is set to continue. There is a hesitancy from smaller businesses to venture into cryptocurrency, mainly due to a lack of education around the subject. But cryptocurrency is set to become more mainstream, as obvious by the fact that the US congress is looking at regulating cryptocurrency. Maybe they intend to replace the national currency with a digital one, much like China and India are in the process of doing.

With regulation, smaller businesses and more consumers will feel more comfortable trading in cryptocurrency, and soon it will be commonplace to see a DeFi symbol next to your MasterCard and PayPal options when you check out from an eCommerce store.

Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is a lot of things to a lot of different people. It might be considered the newest platform to access the internet, rather than just a piece of hardware.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants you to conduct meetings and hang out on it, developers want you to play games on it, flight companies want you to explore the world on it, but there is also a loud corner of the internet, run by a certain Bezos character that wants you to shop on it.

And it makes sense. There is a growing trend of users no longer going looking for what items they want, but semi-organically finding what they want to buy on the internet. We say “semi” because it’s often shown to them through an algorithm and AI.

Regardless, the natural next step, if Zuckerberg is to be believed, from marketing on social media is to market on virtual reality. Customers can wander virtual shops, seeing items they could enjoy zip past.

There are already hints of this starting, with Meta releasing marketing guidelines for the future on the Metaverse, so that marketers can go in knowing what they’re doing, and there is a phenomenon of CGI influencers on social media already. It only makes sense that there is bound to be more in the virtual world.

Drones

The military is using drones. That should be enough to convince you that they will be a common occurrence, beyond the toy rack, for the average Joe. History has a habit of taking tech built for either the military or NASA and incorporating it into everyday life.

The proposed idea is that drones will soon be the carrier pigeons of the tech-age: they will have packages strapped to them to drop to your door without the need to hire a delivery man. They can either be manually operated or programmed to fly of their own accord so there won’t be too many jobs lost.

This is supposed to bring down delivery time significantly, since your package won’t need to go on a tour of your entire town before it reaches your door. Same-day delivery may soon be a thing of the past, opening up for the idea of same-hour delivery.

This advancement is set to bring costs down and efficiency up, so that more items can get to customers faster.