Online Retail Trends From IRX16

I attended Internet Retailing Expo in Birmingham at the end of April. After having conversations with new and old acquaintances, I made a couple of observations about what is trending among UK’s online retailers.

Hot topics in online retail

Digital marketing and SEO agencies are entering conversion optimization space. I had conversations with multiple agency representatives throughout the expo. All of these companies were already doing (some) CRO for their e-commerce clients or actively working towards entering that space. Their interest is to optimise whole customer journey from online ads to “Thank you for your order” -page.

A considerable part of the expo’s keynotes were focused on three topics: mobile, analytics and user experience. Or a combination of those three. I didn’t have a chance to listen to as many keynotes I was hoping for, but the interest in finding and sharing best practices within the industry was tangible. Creating a single customer view seems to be a challenge shared by speakers and the audience alike.

Online retailers have declared war against shopping cart abandonment! The retailers are arming themselves with on-site and off-site tools for fighting this 4 trillion monster. We got a first-hand experience of their fighting spirit as our workshop had about 80 attendees. In a space reserved for 40! Check out the content of our workshop here!

Bubbling under

Chatbots were nowhere to been seen. Since Facebook’s announcements at F8 conference, every media has been blasting news and visions related to chatbots. The topic might be hot in media but, the practice hadn’t reached IRX. It was also noticeable that there was just one company (plus us from giosg) whose offering included a live chat software.

The expo was less about payments than RBTE. When after attending RBTE in March I had a feeling about UK’s retail sector is all about payments this year. However, the difference to IRX was stunning. Payment related vendors (even under expo’s multichannel theme) were mostly not there.

Did you attend IRX? What were the hot topics in your opinion? What’s your guess for next year’s hot topics?

What's hot in #ecommerce in the UK?
I summarized my observations from #IRX16 in a blog post:https://t.co/RTrqnJziW4

— Ilkka Vertanen (@IlkkaVertanen) May 11, 2016

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Note: This blog has been published May 11 2016 in LinkedIn Pulse. See the original here.