Three important ecommerce trends in 2017 (and one easy way to capitalize)

To put it mildly, the ecommerce market is blowing up like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon with no helium shut-off switch. The amount of money being spent online in the United States alone is growing by tens of billions every year and an ever-increasing number of ecommerce sites are all clamoring for a piece of the pie.

So how exactly can ecommerce site owners ensure their online stores are snagging their fair share (or more than their fair share) of the money pie? There are three big trends dominating the ecommerce market in 2017 and while being aware of them is a good first step, a good second step is knowing how to take advantage of them. One simple investment, a content delivery network, can pay big dividends and help commerce sites benefit.

Growing markets

According to the eMarketer Worldwide Retail Ecommerce Sales: the eMarketer Forecast for 2016 report, in 2016 global retail ecommerce sales were set to reach $1.915 trillion and by the year 2020 that number is set to explode to $4.058 trillion, more than doubling in just four years to comprise almost 15% of all retail spending that year.

There’s another market set to more than double in nearly the same time span: the global CDN market, which is projected to go from $5.396 billion in 2016 to $18.815 billion in 2021. Considering that a CDN significantly improves website performance and page load speeds and is especially beneficial for an ecommerce site, the growth of these two markets is likely related.

2017 ecommerce trend #1: going global

Many reports on the ecommerce market cite US statistics and sales, but if an ecommerce site wants to truly cash in in 2017, it needs to look beyond the US borders. The Asia-Pacific ecommerce market is the biggest in the world and it will only be getting bigger in the very near future, with sales thought to have topped $1 trillion in 2016 and that number expected to more than double to $2.725 trillion by 2020.

Online shoppers are fickle, however. The experts at CDN provider Incapsula have found that a mere one-second delay in page load time results in a 16% drop in customer satisfaction, an 11% decrease in page views and a 7% reduction in conversions. Breaking into new markets while up against the clock like this can be challenging. It doesn’t have to be, though.

How a CDN helps: A CDN is a global network of data centers designed to improve website performance, and the main way a CDN cuts down on latency is by reducing the physical distance requested data has to travel in order to reach the user requesting it. It does this by redirecting users to the data center closest to them, so with the global presence provided by a leading CDN, ecommerce sites will be able to efficiently serve customers in the all-important Asian markets as well as the rest of the world.

2017 ecommerce trend #2: upward mobility

According to a Google study on the behavior of mobile website users, 53% of mobile users will abandon a webpage that takes longer than three seconds to load. The average page load time over 3G and 4G internet? Nineteen and 14 seconds, respectively. That’s a lot of abandoned webpages, and it might partially explain why ecommerce conversions on mobile lag behind desktop.

However, it’s been discovered that though more purchases may be made on desktop computers, the all-important exploration stage takes place on mobile before the user switches to desktop to complete the purchase. So whether an ecommerce site is trying to smooth the transaction process to gain mobile conversions or just wants to provide a good research experience to gain that eventual desktop revenue, the mobile ecommerce experience has to be top-notch.

How a CDN helps: CDNs provide an improved website experience for mobile users through one of its core functions: content caching. Each of a CDN’s data centers has a proxy cache server that stores cacheable content for quick delivery since it eliminates trips to the origin server for requested content. This alone improves site performance for mobile users, as it does for all users, but leading CDNs incorporate device detection into its caching strategy to deliver lighter, more easily loaded content scaled for mobile devices to enable faster page load times.

2017 ecommerce trend #3: security, security, security

Perhaps this isn’t strictly a 2017 trend, but data breaches and DDoS attacks have reached all-time highs and the potential consequences for ecommerce sites are stark since they store so much sensitive data including the financial information, emails, passwords, home addresses and even phone numbers of customers. Any kind of successful attack will understandably erode customer loyalty, even if no data is actually stolen.

How a CDN helps: Firstly, a CDN makes it easier for an ecommerce site owner to use SSL for secure connections because a CDN greatly reduces the latency associated with establishing those secure connections, so there’s no sacrificing speed for security. Secondly, leading CDNs have integrated security features including DDoS protection, web application firewall, two-factor authentication and customizable security rules for improved overall site security as well as availability. Lastly, leading CDNs also make it possible for websites to automatically enable current internet protocols including HTTP/2 and IPv6 without requiring any upgrade of the origin infrastructure, eliminating vulnerabilities associated with outdated protocols.

One-stop-shop for one-stop-shops

Ecommerce sites have always had to battle to stay up to date with trends and stay ahead of the competition. For site owners that are fatigued from constantly upgrading and updating, a CDN provides a refreshing one-stop shop for improving site performance overall and keeping up with three of the most essential trends of 2017, helping to take a site global, capture conversions from mobile users (even if they’re not on a mobile device when they make the purchase), and provide the uncompromising security ecommerce users require. It’s one way to get your slice of the pie and eat it, too.