PayPal has been at the forefront of digital payments innovation for more than 20 years by leveraging technology and strategic partnerships to make financial services and commerce more convenient, affordable, and secure.
To better understand the ecommerce trends shaping the dynamic fashion industry, PayPal surveyed fashion merchants from BigCommerce - an ecommerce platform that provides software such as online store creation and marketing-as-a-service to retailers. This research was combined with PayPal’s proprietary data to develop the PayPal and Big Commerce’s 2023 Report: From Catwalk to Cart, providing proven strategies and actionable recommendations.
The findings identify the rising consumer interest in sustainability, and how this has influenced purchasing decisions – particularly among Gen Z shoppers. The research also identifies the need to offer alternative payment methods and give potential buyers more options which increases conversion and yields positive results for retailers’ ecommerce sales.
The research dives into the innovative developments that are transforming shopping behaviour, including:
- Optimising the user experience – Pablo Gallaga, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at BigCommerce, says the fashion industry stands to benefit most from adopting emerging technologies, and responsiveness to the way customers are interacting with fashion retailers is key to growing and remaining competitive.
- The flexibility of headless commerce - Mark Howes, Vice President of Sales for EMEA at BigCommerce speaks about the flexibility and opportunities of headless commerce, which refers to the decoupling of a website’s front-end presentation layer from the backend ecommerce functionality, because of the evolving tech and the customer landscape.
- Augmenting the shopping experience - The augmented reality market is estimated to reach $78 billion by 2028. A large driver of this predicted growth is the adoption of AR by both online and brick-and-mortar retailers to improve upon the shopping experience.
- Enter the Metaverse - From the BigCommerce consumer survey, PayPal found that consumers were about evenly split between willing (46%) and not willing (52%) to shop in the Metaverse. It also identified that consumers in Australia (52%) are the most willing globally to shop in the Metaverse.
- Solving customer pain points with artificial intelligence – This has been a trend for some time, but there are several ways AI can impact ecommerce, for example allowing online retailers to curb returns. This causes increased costs for the business and by implementing AI solutions, they can minimise the impact on their bottom line.
The report includes several globally-recognised fashion brands including La Perla, Natori, and The Upside, who have all been successful in using BigCommerce and other techniques to innovate and achieve success.
To learn more about how retailers can thrive in the current fashion landscape, based on extensive analysis of consumer buying behaviour and trends, read the full report here.
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