With the current pandemic, the digitisation of business has sped up considerably. Hence, I was asking myself questions about the future of e-commerce. To find out, I interviewed Rob Van Nuenen from Holland. Rob is the CEO and founder of Channable, an automated centralised ad management system operating in the e-commerce space. He talked to us about the future of e-shopping and the new trends observed in terms of searching for information about products.
New trends in product searches and the future of e-commerce
Many recent studies have been done on e-shopping. The U.S. is far ahead in this space, and Amazon is picking up more and more of the search terms for products. So, the initial search is already done for almost 50 per cent in the US on Amazon.
The future of e-commerce: a more diverse European landscape
“This trend isn’t observed yet in Europe, but here we are witnessing a significant shift towards big marketplaces which are a bit more diverse than in the US, but Amazon still gets its fair share.”
European diversity here refers to some big local marketplaces like Rakuten, but the question is “how much do they weigh against Amazon?”
There are several others besides Amazon. In France, there’s Cdiscount or Otto in Germany. I think it really depends on the country. In France, Germany and the UK, Amazon is way bigger than in Benelux or Nordics, for example, where it has just begun taking root.
Growing market share for Amazon and the direct access to products through their search engine may bother Google, and as a result, we might expect a few changes with the current dominance of Google ads.
“I reckon that players like Google are in a bit of a pickle with this because they are missing out on all this traffic at the moment, and Amazon is proving to be a real competitor” Van Nuenen added.
I reckon players like Google are in a bit of a pickle with this situation
At least for product searches, there is a change in dominance, but besides that, Google doesn’t have a real competitor. “For product searches, I believe more people will go directly to marketplaces as they can find any product there for the right price,” Nuenen stated.
Marketplaces are stealing Google’s thunder, what future for e-commerce?
Earlier on, people were afraid that Google would actually steal all the clicks for them, but now these clicks are going directly to marketplaces, including Amazon, and replacing one dominance with another.
Yet, is it the end of e-commerce as we know it and what does that mean for small players and small businesses that want to sell things online?
“As a small online retailer, you need to be visible somehow, and these are of course easy access points for you to get known to a large audience,” said Van Nuenen.
There is a love-hate relationship between small businesses and marketplaces
“But I hope it’s not the end of e-commerce as we know it. That would be terrible for our business, and I also don’t think that it will happen,” he added.
“It’s a love-hate relationship that small businesses have with these big corporations because the latter can actually help the former grow. So, they need the smaller ones to actually have products to advertise, and they’ll just make sure that they have the audience to show those products to.
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