E-Commerce Trends 2018: How To Follow Them With Magento 2

Many reliable media sources have already posted their vision of 2018 e-commerce trends. Here at Firebear, we’ve analyzed many such articles to create the following digest. Below, you will find a list of top e-commerce trends 2018 and various Magento 2 extensions developed to follow them. Don’t know how to be suitable for high modern e-commerce requirements of 2018 with your Magento 2 website? You’ve come to the right place!

E-Commerce Trends 2018: M-Commerce

We’ve started writing about m-commerce several years ago. It is still a significant factor and a reason for many improvements, so we are not surprised that mobile commerce is among top e-commerce trends 2018. It is not a surprise that your e-commerce storefront must be responsive and mobile-friendly. To achieve this goal, you need an appropriate mobile template to be utilized. Check this list of Magento 2 themes to find a solution that satisfies your particular e-commerce needs. There are some universal options, but we recommend you to use a template designed to cover a specific market. For instance, if you want to sell various electronic devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and anything similar, we recommend you to purchase something like the iShop Magento 2 theme. It is not a problem to find a design solution that suits your particular e-commerce needs. Just check one of the following platforms:

TemplateMonster Magento 2 Themes

ThemeForest Magento 2 Templates

UberTheme Magento 2 Themes

Besides, to get more mobile-oriented traffic and convert your visitors into buyers, you have to perform several essential optimizations with your Magento 2 website. Use the following Magento 2 extensions:

Accelerated Mobile Pages by Plumrocket

If you still don’t know what does AMP mean, here is the explanation: it is an open source project developed by Google and Twitter to make mobile pages as fast as possible. In order to leverage the technology, you need to perform tons of manual work, but there is a better solution – the Magento 2 Accelerated Mobile Pages Extension by Plumrocket, which provides the ability to fully integrate your Magento 2 store with the project, generating Google AMP-optimized pages for Home, Product, Category, and CMS pages.

The module allows you to edit the appearance of your AMP-optimized pages right in the backend. Besides, the Magento 2 Accelerated Mobile Pages module applies some critical SEO features, including rich snippets, out-of-the-box Google Analytics integration, and more rooted SERP integration with the “lightning bolt” badge. And the extension is compatible with all possible Magento 2 themes! For further information, follow this link:

Download/Buy Plumrocket Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Magento 2 Module

M2Native by MageDelight

With the MageDelight M2Native Magento 2 solution, you get a complete mobile application for your e-commerce website. While Magento mobile app development is a complicated process, but very very important for m-commerce, you can streamline with the help of a single extension.

The Magento 2 M2Native module by MageDelight provides 100% native applications for both Android and iOS that offer a convenient mobile PayPal payment method, push notifications, a scanner for barcodes, QR codes, and NFC, support for multiple languages and currencies, integration with various payment gateways, support for reviews and ratings, etc. For further information, follow this link:

Download/Buy MageDelight M2Native Magento 2 Extension

There are other Magento 2 extensions designed to comply with this e-commerce trend 2018, but we have to cover many more areas so that you can share your favorite m-commerce extensions in comments.

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Zero-Step Checkout

All of you heard about one step checkout extensions, and many of you use them. If not, quickly choose a solution that suits your business needs here: Magento 2 One Step Checkout Extensions. But OSC modules are no longer a new e-commerce trend for 2018. Instead, we’d like to introduce something more revolutionary. Meet the zero-step checkout!
It is a solution oriented towards second-time buyers who already have their data stored on your website. They get the ability to purchase an item right from a product or a category page within just one click. The appropriate button is added to the store interface radically increasing the current conversion rate. Only imagine that you no longer have to pass all the complicated checkout steps! The feature will be even introduced as a part of the Magento 2.2.2 update, but we’d like to tell you about a more robust alternative.

Firebear Stripe Express Checkout for Magento 2

The core difference between the default solution and our extension is the availability of more places to run the zero-step checkout. In case of the Firebear Stripe Express Checkout, you can complete the order not only on a product page for an individual item, but also in a cart for multiple products. Besides, the Magento 2 Stripe Express Checkout extension by Firebear allows supports not only card but also Apple Pay and Bitcoin payments. For any further information, follow this link:

Firebear Stripe Express Checkout for Magento 2

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Review Marketing and User-Generated Content

Providing customers with the ability to post reviews is always a good idea. You get lots of user-generated content that characterizes products you sell better than any short/full description. Store visitors often trust your buyers more than your brand, especially if you are new to the market; therefore, review marketing has a prominent place among top e-commerce trends 2018. Luckily, several useful Magento 2 extensions create a better user-experience and engage store visitors in generating more content.

aheadWorks Review Reminder Magento 2 Extension

The mechanism behind this module is quite simple. Being a kind of a follow-up extension, the aheadWorks Review Reminder Magento 2 extension sends email messages to customers who have purchased products from your Magento 2 store asking them to leave a review. As a result, your shop starts collecting user-generated content. The reviews help to win trust with your brand or a particular product.

For any further information, follow this link:

DOWNLOAD/BUY AHEADWORKS REVIEW REMINDER MAGENTO 2 EXTENSION

Alternatively, you can try the Magento 2 Review Reminder extension by Swissuplabs.

Mageworx Product Reviews & Ratings Magento 2 Extension

While reminding customers to leave a review is a crucial factor in following this e-commerce trend 2018, there is another vital improvements – a system of reviews and ratings. Unfortunately, the default Magento 2 solution doesn’t let you create a stunning user experience, but the Mageworx Product Reviews & Ratings extension does.

The Magento 2 extension allows adding advanced product reviews and ratings, which include three review types: verified, helpful, and top-rated; review filters; the ability to specify pros and cons of each product; as well as automatic email notifications (thus, you need neither of the follow-up tools mentioned above).

Also note that with this Magento 2 review extension, a ratio of all review types is visualized on a Star Rating Graph. Displaying rating percentages is not a problem at all. From the customer perspective, you let visitors vote reviews as helpful/unhelpful, filter them by rating, as well as report spammy or offensive reviews. Follow this link for any further information:

DOWNLOAD/BUY MAGEWORX PRODUCT REVIEWS & RATINGS MAGENTO 2 EXTENSION

Alternatively, you can install the Magento 2 Google Customer Reviews extension by Wyomind.

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Personalization

Personal user experience was always essential, and Magento did a lot to make e-commerce oriented towards each buyer as much as possible, but there is still room for improvement. For instance, you can reward your loyal clients with individual prices. To achieve this goal, we recommend you to install the Magento 2 Price per Customer extension by Mageworx.

Mageworx Price per Customer

With the help of this Magento 2 module, you will follow one of the key e-commerce trends 2018 with ease. The extension not only enables individual product pricing but also offers six pricing schemes, allows hiding prices from guests customers (as a result, you motivate store visitors to register and purchase more), as well as supports tier pricing per customer.

For the full extension description, follow this link:

DOWNLOAD/BUY MAGEWORX PRICES PER CUSTOMER MAGENTO 2 EXTENSION

There is another Magento 2 extension that offers similar features – Price Per Customer by MageDelight. If you know a tool that provides an even more extensive range of personalization related to prices, please, let us know in comments. Besides, you can write about your favorite tools that improve the default level of personalization in other areas.

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Cryptocurrency Payments

More and more people worldwide start using altcoins; therefore, it’s a good idea to provide the corresponding payment options on your Magento 2 website. Do you know the price of Bitcoin? And what about Ethereum, Lightcoin, and Ripple? Of course, you aware of what’s happening, so cryptocurrencies in top e-commerce trends of 2018 don’t look much surprising, do they? And we know how to integrate them with Magento 2. Use one of the following modules:

Magento 2 CoinPayments Extension by Firebear

With this Magento 2 extension, we introduce integration with CoinPayments – a cryptocurrency payment gateway that provides customers with the ability to use BitCoin, Ethereum, and 75+ altcoins to pay for goods and services on your e-commerce store. More than 300k merchants worldwide already use the CoinPayments gateway, so join the future with our module.

The extension allows accepting 70+ altcoins, provides a cryptocurrency wallet, offers PayPal integration, enables fiat and direct bank deposit withdrawals, displays transaction history, and offers easy integration with CoinPayments. Besides, your customers get unobtrusive user experience and fast checkout. For further information, follow this link:

Buy Firebear CoinPayments Magento 2 Extension

Magento 2 ShapeShift Extension by Firebear

Alternatively, you can use the ShapeShift module that is completely open source and free, but it requires a third-party cryptocurrency wallet to be used. The extension allows you to accept all possible altcoins on the Magento 2 websites. No login or registration is necessary. Besides, no transaction fees are charges, except the native miner fee. You can find more interesting facts about the module here:

Download Firebear ShapeShift Magento 2 Extension

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Customer Behavior Exploration

It is no longer possible to avoid the exploration of how your customers interact with your store, and there are tons of useful tools that allow leveraging this e-commerce trend 2018. First of all, we should draw your attention to various reporting solutions.

Advanced Reports by Mirasvit

Perhaps, this is the most robust options on the market. It offers 12 reports with very informative diagrams and grids that cover all key aspects of the Magento 2 website. You can find more information about the extension here:

DOWNLOAD/BUY MIRASVIT ADVANCED REPORTS MAGENTO 2 EXTENSION

Other powerful solutions for analyzing Magento stores are:

• Advanced Reports by aheadWorks
• Advanced Reports by Amasty  

Besides, you can always use good old Google Analytics to discover more information about store visitors. And to leverage the behavioral trend, you may also use one of the following Magento 2 customer segmentation extensions. Both are designed to divide customers into segments that offer a more precise approach to targeting than customer groups.

• Customer Segmentation by Amasty
• Customer Segmentation Suite by Mirasvit

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Push Notifications

While email marketing is considered to be the essential e-commerce trend in 2018, we completely disagree with that statement. It will be an inevitable part of the online trade for ages, but there is something that pretends to become a new e-commerce trend – push notifications.

While your customers are leery of endless emails that overcrowd their mailboxes, introduce a more gentle way to contact potential buyers and inform them about some important updates or special offers.

Magento 2 Push Notifications Extension by Mirasvit

To follow the trend, install the Magento 2 Push Notifications extension by Mirasvit. The module supports both desktop and mobile push notifications, works with all major browsers, and offers simple customer subscription. From the admin-side, it provides a user-friendly backend section and allows sending notifications manually or automatically according to custom rules. For further information, follow this link:

DOWNLOAD/BUY MIRASVIT PUSH NOTIFICATIONS MAGENTO 2 EXTENSION

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Chatbots

Artificial intelligence is already a part of the Magento 2 ecosystem, and it will be among key e-commerce trends of 2018. In case of our favorite e-commerce platform, AI is introduced as various Magento 2 chatbot extensions, and our preferred solution is Woxy.

Woxy the Chatbot by Mageworx

Woxy the Chatbot allows Magento 2 integration with popular messengers, combining a Magento 2 extension with a chatbot to create a unique shopping experience. Due to the Magento 2 Facebook Messenger integration, your customers can save and configure products right in the app. Besides, Woxy notifies customers about back-in-stock/coming soon items. As a store administrator, you can even provide customer support via Messenger. Highly customizable auto-replies are also a part of the revolutionary tool. Furthermore, the ability to purchase products right in Messenger has been announced. And you can freely send order status update alerts and tracking info via the application. More info here:

DOWNLOAD/BUY MAGEWORX WOXY THE CHATBOT MAGENTO 2 EXTENSION

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Voice Search

Voice search is considered to be among top e-commerce trends of 2018, but is it possible to implement it without any headaches? We don’t think so since the ecosystem doesn’t provide any modules with the desired functionality. While there are lots of Magento 2 search extensions that dramatically improve the default functionality of the platform, none of them supports voice recognition. Perhaps, this post will be helpful, if you want to be among voice search pioneers of Magento 2: How to add Google Voice Search in Magento?

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Same Day Delivery

Same day delivery will be even more popular in 2018. While it depends only on your carrier, there are some extensions designed to leverage the feature in a better way.

Amasty Delivery Date For Magento 2

The extension allows you to indicate by which time an order should be placed for the same day delivery. Thus, your customers will always know whether they can get the desired items today or the next day. Besides, the Magento 2 Delivery Date extension by Amasty supports delivery comments. Allows you to specify what dates should be excluded from the delivery plan and set minimum and maximum delivery intervals. For further information, follow this link:

DOWNLOAD/BUY AMASTY DELIVERY DATE MAGENTO 2 EXTENSION

Alternatively, you can check the MageDelight Delivery Date Magento 2 extension.

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Video Content

You might have already noticed that most of your Facebook feed consists of video content. The Internet gets people used to the new type of communication via ‘stories,’ so everyone understands and accepts videos much better than any content type. Therefore, don’t hesitate to follow this e-commerce trend 2018 and create as many stunning videos that describe your goods as you can. To leverage the trend, you can use the following Magento 2 banner-slider extension:

UberTheme UB Content Slider Magento 2 Extension

The Magento 2 ecosystem offers lots of reliable slider extensions, but only a few of them allows adding videos to the store frontend. Our favorite tool is UB Content Slider. In addition to videos, it also supports images, and products. Thus, it is a fully-featured solution with a user-friendly backend interface. You can find more information about the extension here:

Download/Buy UberTheme UB Content Slider Magento 2 Extension

E-Commerce Trends 2018: Final Words

These were top e-commerce trends of 2018 by Firebear and our recommendations on how to leverage them with Magento 2. Of course, there are lots of other aspects that will be important in 2018 (and always), but we’ve decided that the points above are worth mentioning more than others. Have an alternative point of view? Feel free to share it in comments.