The Takeaways from eTail West: eCommerce Trends

Now that all the dust has settled from an informative and fun eTail West 2016, we’d like to recap some of the biggest eCommerce trends and themes from the two-day event.

1. Equipping high-growth online retailers with the ability to ship diverse goods. In order to scale their business, many eCommerce stores are offering a more diverse range of products. Alongside the diversification of inventory comes the necessity of a shipping solution that gives access to parcel, home delivery, blanket wrap and other types of shipping, at an affordable price.
2. Coming up with creative ways for brick-and-mortar stores to fulfill online orders. Retailers are taking back the control of their fulfillment process and part of that is building a business model that accommodates the distribution of goods from the point-of-purchase online to in-store pickup. This model gives customers the speed and convenience they desire and the opportunity for retailers to come up with better and faster ways to get products into their customer's’ hands.
3. Finding a solution that fixes the disparate nature of fulfillment platforms and integrates all management systems. Often distribution can be a nightmare for retailers, since they’re using so many different management systems. This challenge has resulted in many retailers looking for a solution that integrates the various management platforms and gives a smooth fulfillment experience for both the retailer and the customer.

In addition to the three biggest eCommerce trends mentioned above, there was an prevailing feeling that small, medium, and large retailers alike need the ability to meet the challenge of Amazon head on. Since Amazon has moved towards becoming a self-owned logistics company, one of the ways for an independent online retailer to do this is having access to a transportation management system that doesn’t make them reliant on Amazon for fulfillment and gives them full control from cart-to-customer.