How will "Uberfication" change the future of commerce?

On Wednesday the 23th of May 2018 Youwe’s Digital Excellence Dinner took place in the extraordinary building the Euromast in the city of Rotterdam The Netherlands. This luxurious evening was filled with networking and sharing success stories of companies like Sanoma, Nestlé, The Heiniken Company, Royal Auping and Rumag

But the main event of the evening was the presentation of Peter Sheldon, a former researcher at Forrester and now VP Strategy at Magento Commerce, about “Uberfication”. And the main question being answered was: What is the impact of companies like Uber and Amazon in the e-commerce world? Peter revealed how the ride-hailing service is affecting everyone’s business.
 

Here are four important takeaways from his presentation
   

Effortless Buying

The first thing to do is to make your service as accessible as possible. For example, Uber made the ride-hailing mechanism effortless. Now you can summon a ride with just a few taps on your smartphone. Amazon also applied effortless buying to the world of digital commerce, by offering a ‘Buy with 1-Click’ button. With the Amazon Echo or Wand, you can now order your groceries using just your voice.

Frictionless Checkout

Another lesson we can learn from Uber is that customers pay for things subconsciously. When you exit the car, the transaction happens invisibly. The payment is so natural that sometimes it’s easy to forget you’re paying. In commerce, we are moving towards quicker, easier ways to check out. Apple Pay already uses one-touch syncing and fingerprint recognition. PayPal One Touch allows you to breeze from site to site without logging in and Amazon is now piloting a completely frictionless retail program in Seattle called Amazon Go. In this store, you can just pick up what you need and walk out—without getting arrested. There’s no physical checkout, it’s like paying for your Uber.

Mobile Web Revolution

While everyone was aiming for mobile-first, Uber went straight to mobile-only. Mary Meeker’s  ‘2017 State of the Internet’ report revealed the average American spends 3.1 hours a day using their mobile phone. One of the biggest challenges for retailers is to deliver exceptional mobile experiences and increase mobile conversion rates. Many companies can learn something from Uber and their mobile-only strategy, because as the report mentioned people spent a lot of time on their mobile phones.

Consumerization of Delivery

Uber riders expect their car to arrive in minutes and can track the driver’s arrival on their smartphone. With Prime, Amazon’s customers expect two-day delivery. We are living in a consumer’s world, and these mega-companies are driving aggressive expectations for delivery and transparency.

 

How can other businesses disrupt delivery? There is talk about drones, but FAA and aviation regulations can provide hurdles. However, autonomous vehicles driven by GPS are already being trialled by brands including Domino’s Pizza. In Australia, Krispy Kreme is using Magento Shipping to provide doughnuts on-demand–schedule a delivery up to three months in advance. Walmart is even asking its employees to deliver packages on their commute home with the help of efficient order management systems. It’s clear that businesses big and small are thinking outside of the box.

As you can see Uber changed the world and especially the e-commerce world if companies don’t try to follow the example of Uber they can lose a lot of customers. That’s because the customers are getting used to a super fast and easy way of online shopping and services like payment en delivery and if your company isn’t doing the same and makes the shopping process quite difficult for the customers they will choose for another company that doesn’t make it difficult.

Do you want to know more about Uberfication, Magento or another e-commerce subject?

You can always contact our experts and keep an eye open for our next events.

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