Summary 2016 and trends 2017: e-commerce market strengthens its position

The e-commerce market is growing all the time, the position of SaaS is strengthening, Poland is recognized as a significant market, and buyers appreciate fast payments - this is how the passing year can be summarized. What lies ahead for e-commerce in 2017? The entry of more big players, the development of foreign sales, and the automation and personalization of the service.

Big moves in e-commerce

2016 was full of events important for the Polish and global e-commerce market: the sale of Allegro, the launch of Amazon.de in Polish, the new Facebook Marketplace service. At the very beginning of the year, the Polish version of the service was also introduced by Aliexpress, and Alibaba is expected to come to Poland next year. The moves by the big players show that the Polish ecommerce market counts on the international stage. IKEA has also announced the launch of an online store for 2017, and the company is already testing an online Furniture service in the Wroclaw area.

Good SaaS

Store owners are increasingly turning to SaaS. An online business model that allows you to start selling much faster, while at the same time does not require the seller to make updates and integrations on his own. Scalability and ease of use are becoming more important than a dedicated system. - SaaS solutions are now mature and suitable for most players in the market, not only the smaller ones, but also the high-end ones. This can be seen from the development of platforms globally and in Poland. Over the past three years, the number of stores set up on the Shoper platform, the most popular in our market, has tripled, notes Tomasz Tybon director of marketing and sales at Dreamcommerce S.A., a Shoper software provider. Many sellers still benefit from the popularity of auction sites and marketplaces, selling in several channels simultaneously, but this may change next year. As of February 2017, Allegro's rules and regulations introduce, among other things, the mandatory professionalization of photos of items offered. These decisions may cause even more sellers to turn to their own online stores.

Secure payments

In the past year, PayPal scored a major crisis - with the change of the intermediary responsible for account top-ups from the Polish company Blue Media to the little-known Trusty.com, which demanded users' account login and password. Despite the turmoil, the popularity of instant payments in our country has not diminished, but increased. Among stores using the Shoper platform, it is the most popular payment method - in November it was used for 38 percent of transactions. Transactions paid for in cash accounted for 30 percent, and by traditional transfer - 32 percent. More and more stores are introducing convenient payments - only during this year the number of stores using the electronic payment system Shoper Payments doubled. The platform's data also shows that the number of consumers choosing payment on delivery has declined. However, in the pre-Christmas period, the number of transactions for which buyers pay in cash at the pickup point is growing - such orders do not have to wait for the payment to be credited and are delivered faster.

Foreign countries closer

By small steps, but nevertheless, Polish stores and Polish consumers are turning to foreign transactions. This is favored by the legislation being introduced. - After several years of preparation, Europe has begun the process of implementing unified regulations for distance selling. Standards are being introduced in the area of online payments, such as through the PSD2 directive, and in delivery logistics, including setting fixed shipping costs and affordable return policies, notes Tomasz Tybon of Dreamcommerce. - Another trend supporting cross-border trade is the consolidation of Asian sites on the European market. With their help, Poles can not only buy more and more easily from China, but also sell to Asian markets, he adds.

Automation and personalization

More and more Poles are shopping online, leaving data on their interests and preferences in stores. Their analysis and the resulting tailoring of messages and offers to customers' preferences is a mandatory task for e-store owners in 2017. Automation, crucial to scaling business and increasing orders, should also be applied to customer service. This year, Shoper was the first e-commerce platform to introduce store integration with Facebook Messenger, allowing shoppers to chat about products with a bot. A similar integration was also introduced by global e-commerce leader Shopify. Customer service is still an element of running e-commerce stores that needs to be fine-tuned - a positive experience after interacting with a store's employees (even if they are a bot) can drive a buyer to return to the same address in the future.