The Amazon online store was launched 26 years ago. He only sold books, and two years later, music CDs were added to the range. Today, almost everything can be bought at Amazon, and most Americans start searching for goods on the Amazon platform, not on Google.
A year ago, it was believed that there are categories that are not sold over the Internet for a number of reasons. But in 2020, the number of online transactions has grown significantly around the world, even doubling in some countries. And it became obvious that the 21st year will be marked by the release of atypical categories online. There are no longer any products of python development services by DjangoStars that cannot be bought on the Internet.
Direct to Consumer
This trend only enhances the digitalization of trade. In addition to traditional sales through distributors and retailers, large FMCG manufacturers are launching their own online storefronts to sell products directly to consumers. As an example, the recent launch of the Sfera online store by the Biosphere corporation.
There will be many new startups focused solely on taking advantage of the D2C model: such as customization based on customer tastes and preferences; price optimization by reducing the chain of intermediaries; payment by subscription or by installments.
Dark Stores
And again about digital trading. In big cities, the Dark Store format will begin to take root ー the delivery of groceries and everyday goods within 15-30 minutes. The process is ensured by a large number of mini-warehouses in each district of the city, and these warehouses are called the dark store.
Working from Home + Coworking Office = Happy
There will be no more massive transitions to remote work or a global return of everyone to the offices. The business adapts and learns to take advantage of both models at the same time. Each company will be able to find its own balance, in which part of the time employees work from home offices, and part ー is devoted to teamwork in offices.
Go cloud
Forced telecommuting accelerated the pace of business transition to the cloud infrastructure, which favorably influenced the growth of the SaaS market. The main beneficiaries are IT companies and banking application development, offering a variety of solutions for digitizing communications and business processes. Online teamwork tools have grown significantly. At the same time, the business is becoming more dependent on the availability of servers and the Internet.
In 2020, we have already seen several large-scale drops in the cloud infrastructure of Google, Amazon and Telegram, which led to several hours of business downtime. We saw how the blocking of the Internet in provoked the migration of IT companies.
Cyber Security issue
The new wave of digitalization is happening at the expense of the most conservative users and businesses. Consequently, the least information security-savvy users go online. They do not understand the specifics of the security of payment cards, the importance of two-factor authentication, and have no experience of interacting with phishing sites.
“Internet novices” are increasingly becoming victims of digital fraudsters, losing access to social media accounts and money on bank cards. Real hackers, on the other hand, hunt bigger fish.
Digital Marketing Era
Total E-commerce is the main driver for the development of digital marketing tools, and at the same time, the main factor in increasing the price of traffic. The industry is developing simultaneously in two directions. Also, there is real estate software development.
For small businesses, the entry threshold is lowered, the interfaces of advertising cabinets from Google and Facebook are simplified. Big business budgets provide more effective targeting and advertising. This gives the big players an unfair competitive advantage.
The main threat to the industry is the future changes to the privacy policy of iOS applications that Apple is preparing. These rules should limit the ability of applications to collect user data.
