Genie Yuan, Solutions Engineer APAC Japan, Couchbase says that with the right approach to data, companies serving Singapore’s booming e-commerce sector can sidestep the challenges of surging consumer demand.
While Singapore’s e-commerce sector is projected to be worth USD 14 billion by 2027, there are storm clouds on the horizon. According to Bain, 12% of Singapore’s e-commerce consumers switched to an offline channel last year. One of the top three reasons cited? Poor user experience.
Today’s consumers expect seamless and highly personalized experiences across all engagement channels and user experience on a brand’s mobile app performance cannot be a downgrade on shopping at a brick-and-mortar location or through its website. The same Bain study found that many e-commerce users go online for product discovery and evaluation, but still prefer doing the actual purchases face-to-face.
An e-commerce mobile app, if designed right, can bridge the gaps that create friction in the entire customer journey.
Delivering a highly personalized, omnichannel experience demands a lot of data: Customer data, online behaviour and product specifications to name a few.
E-commerce platforms have to access that data in real time. But traditional databases aren’t just a suboptimal choice for handling a variety of unstructured and semi-structured data, they also have scalability difficulties for surges in customer demand and activity.
NoSQL cloud databases are scalable, allowing e-commerce platforms to function smoothly even when online shopping activity is at its peak. Supplementing it with Edge Computing capabilities improves latency by decreasing the distance data has to travel with each customer interaction.
Mobile apps and customer loyalty
Securely storing user profile data isn’t just useful for providing brands with a 360-degree view of the customer, it can also be tapped to generate a smoother online shopping experience.
For example, it can be leveraged into a quicker authentication process by doing away with the need to accomplish lengthy forms.
Shopping cart management is another feature that can optimize the user experience for e-commerce mobile apps. Enabling customers to view and modify their online shopping cart’s contents as well as giving them the ability to check-out their purchases securely and easily, minimizes shopping cart abandonment.
Meanwhile, loyalty programs are a key aspect of long-term customer retention. By integrating the e-commerce platform loyalty program into their mobile app, brands can encourage customers to make purchases on the app. This, then, allows customers to view their rewards activity and make redemptions – which goes a long way to reducing process friction.
Last but not least, the mobile app can be the linchpin of a highly personalized omnichannel experience by tracking user behaviour and statistics. The e-commerce platform can then use that data to generate real-time suggestions for upsells, cross-sells and product recommendations for the customer through the app, other online channels – and even in-store interactions.
At the heart of efforts to foster lasting customer loyalty, organizations must augment their cloud strategies with mobile and edge capabilities in mind.
This is evidenced by a PwC report, which found that nearly three out of five consumers will not return to apps after several bad shopping experiences and 17% will avoid apps after just one unsatisfactory interaction.
This, in no uncertain terms, underscores that without prioritising mobile as part of the customer experience, organizations risk potentially pushing customers into the hands of the competition.
The importance of edge capabilities in e-commerce
All of this highlights the fact that businesses need to improve their approach to data to ensure mobile experiences are delight instead of a chore for customers.
By leveraging NoSQL edge-ready cloud platforms, organizations enable their developers to handle unstructured and semi-structured data faster.
Ultimately, empowering developers to meet this critical requirement ensures they are given the tools to create new and dynamic mobile applications that give organizations a competitive advantage – especially during periods of high shopping demand.
For instance, it will embed a mobile database with built-in sync capabilities that enables organizations to store, process, synchronise and analyse data directly at the point of interaction – powering modern applications that are always fast and always reliable.
Meanwhile, locating data as close as possible to where it is produced and consumed, Edge Computing speeds up applications and enables the real-time interactions needed for a seamless, omnichannel user experience.
In addition, synchronising data across edge devices, edge data centers and the cloud ensures that the data is always available. This ensures the app is always-on, even during spikes in user activity.
In addition, a NoSQL, edge-ready mobile database will provide offline-first capabilities for apps. That enables users to have the first-class experiences they crave, even in locations where Internet connectivity may be limited, unstable or interrupted for prolonged periods. This further ensures a seamless and positive customer journey at every possible touchpoint.
Business is indeed booming for Singapore’s e-commerce sector but there are no guarantees that this will last without continually improving user experience.
With the right approach to their data, companies can nimbly sidestep the challenges of surging consumer demand and expectations for increasing personalisation and seamless services.
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