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The unprecedented growth of e-commerce as shopping began to shift from brick-and-mortar businesses to online has created a fundamental change in the way consumers and marketers think about retail.

In the US, a whopping 17 million transactions occurred on Amazon in just two days during the annual Prime Day event. In China, Singles Day shopping in 2018 shattered the previous year's record, making $30.8 billion in one day—a 27% increase year over year.

Business leaders are quickly realizing that traditional experience models won't be enough to serve and delight today's consumers.

At the Digital Marketing World Forum (DMWF), Francesca Pedrazzi admitted, "In the past, it used to be enough to benchmark growth against ourselves, to make sure we are improving. Not true anymore—today we must benchmark against the competition, consumer, and market growth, to make sure we don't fall behind."

Even though e-commerce has been associated with retail industries, the increased frequency with which consumers shop and interact with brands online is forcing change across multiple verticals. Consumers now have high expectations when booking travel, managing finances, and conducting their daily online lives.

Today, consumers have become accustomed to the type of familiar, easy, and frictionless engagements that e-commerce has come to stand for. Marketers can do well to learn from e-commerce to find ways to provide better service experiences.

1. Great e-commerce-like experiences are now mainstream

Once limited to a few key shopping sites, e-commerce—slated to grow to $4.5 trillion in 2021—is now a heavily invested-in initiative for many top brands and retailers, and Millennials now make over 54% of their purchases online. With e-commerce growing so quickly, businesses large and small are finally making online shopping a key component of their overall business strategy.

The always-on, instant availability of e-commerce makes it an ideal model to learn from. Those lessons can be applied to every brand interaction online. The key lies in the billions of feedback data points that e-commerce provides on a daily basis. The move to online shopping allows brands to see and measure consumers' digital footprint, and so make educated assertions as to what consumers want and what they will do next.

Such visibility into the customer journey can be translated to more than just retail. For example, the way consumers shop for clothing can be adapted to improve the way brands merchandise travel options, insurance plans, health coverage, and more.

2. Improve bounce rate by looking at the entire customer journey

Marketing professionals can become obsessed with individual metrics, such as bounce rate and cart abandonment, and focus much of their effort on improving those numbers. Veterans to the e-commerce game know that buyers can drop out of the sales cycle at numerous points in the purchasing process, and it is critical to examine each part of the customer journey in detail.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Inga Romanoff

Inga Romanoff is a martech practitioner and CEO of marketing automation consultant firm Romanoff Consultants. A Marketo Premier Partner, she is a five-time Marketo Champion and a REVVIE winner for Most Dramatic Business Impact.

Linkedin: Inga Romanoff

Twitter handle: @ingaroma