The intelligent future of ecommerce: Key trends reshaping the retail experience
Driven by advances in AI, hyper-personalisation and immersive shopping experiences, e-commerce is entering a new era. Rokt’s Stuart Fitzroy explains the key trends shaping this transformation, and what this means for Australian retailers.
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In a dynamic e-commerce marketplace where retailers have less than 200 milliseconds to decide what to show an individual customer, the pressure is truly on to make each transaction both profitable and personal for shoppers.
As AI shortens the journey to checkout, global retailers are increasingly relying on intelligent e-commerce to drive growth and customer loyalty. Rokt’s APAC managing director, Stuart Fitzroy says intelligent e-commerce treats each customer individually at The Transaction Moment™. “We want this moment to be seamless and the offers personally relevant, rather than presenting everyone with the same crowded experience, which is frustrating as a consumer,” he says.
In order for this to happen, first-party data and agentic AI are used to identify each customer and their past purchasing patterns, then Rokt’s machine learning models select the best way to entice that “click to buy” purchase while also adding value for its clients – all faster than the blink of an eye.
Fitzroy says value per transaction is Rokt’s core metric when partnering with retail clients. “Ultimately, it comes down to how engaged the consumer is with what you’re offering, and how valuable the particular offer is.”
That same focus on the value created by AI is reflected in a recent global survey, in which 77% of respondents are shifting their AI strategies from cost savings to growth and innovation. Among large enterprises, the shift rises to 92%.
Key global trends
As agentic AI and machine learning redefine how retailers and advertisers target customers, three trends have emerged.
- The transaction moment™
Fitzroy says The Transaction Moment™ is pivotal to unlocking new revenue streams, driving loyalty and increasing customer engagement as people spend less time on retail sites. “They’re typically coming onto a site with more intent and looking to transact. Retailers need to make that transaction moment as valuable as possible for their business, and at the same time create a rewarding experience for their customer, so they keep coming back.” At this point, additional revenue opportunities can also be unlocked through post-purchase offers (up to 30% more per customer) and dynamic upselling at checkout (25%).
- Hyper personalisation
AI-driven hyper personalisation uses machine learning to make large volumes of information relevant at a one-to-one level. Individual personalisation is replacing previous targets such as audience segments, shifting from a broad database to a narrow focus, or as Fitzroy puts it: “We’re deciding what to show, whom to show it, and when to show it.”
- From third party to first party data
Aside from browsers blocking third-party cookies and the risks associated with aggregated third-party data, regulatory changes worldwide demand that global enterprises in the tech ecosystem place a greater emphasis on privacy. First-party data collected directly from e-commerce users provides retailers with a privacy-compliant way to engage with customers as individuals.
Partnering for success
A global e-commerce technology company since 2012, Rokt’s network powers more than 10 billion transactions annually in partnership with more than 33,000 clients.
Its platform, Rokt Brain, combines e-commerce partners, transactions, and first-party data with advertiser offers that target each individual customer.
“Our products are built around that core of intelligent e-commerce experiences, helping our clients surface data in real time; making decisions using highly sophisticated machine learning; and then executing that to create the front-end experience that customers expect,” Fitzroy says.
Last year Rokt acquired mParticle, a leading global real-time customer data platform (CDP), a move that’s accelerated its ability to use first-party data to identify, understand, build and target audiences.
Its suite of products includes Rokt Thanks and Aftersell, both of which uplift revenue at The Transaction Moment™. Rokt Catalog connects many of the world’s top brands with premium e-commerce partners by onboarding third-party sellers onto retailers’ websites.
Some of its largest clients, including US retail giants Walmart and Target, use it to extend their range. Although it is not yet available in Australia, local clients are certainly interested in what Catalog can deliver.
The Australian experience
Australia’s retail sector is slower to adopt global intelligent e-commerce trends and less optimistic about AI’s ability to drive top-line performance. Only 20% of Australia’s C-suite expect AI to deliver 10% revenue growth in the year ahead, compared with 27% of their global peers.
And that’s not simply because they’re risk-averse. Fitzroy says local retailers lack the scale of the US market, but clients including David Jones, The Iconic, Commbank and Baby Bunting are already working with Rokt. “Large retailers have the capacity to invest and build expertise. Many retailers in Australia and APAC aren’t large enough to build capability in-house. So, the question for them becomes: what’s the right way to acquire capability, and is that through partnerships, through using a CDP, or a company like Rokt to leverage AI technologies to drive successful businesses?” he says.
As APAC lead, Fitzroy, who joined Rokt in 2015, is responsible for relevancy, machine learning and intelligent decisioning powering Rokt Brain, and his team in Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Although this region’s intelligent e-commerce is fragmented, he says interest in Rokt’s capabilities is rising in Japan. “I’m excited about what we’re seeing in Japan. Australia’s always been the home and birthplace of Rokt, but the growth we’re seeing in Japan is incredible.”
Key steps for retailers to stay ahead of e-commerce trends:
- Know your value proposition and communicate it clearly.
- Fully understand your customers end-to-end.
- Move from third party to first party data.
- Provide dynamic content at your checkout experience.
- Unlock strategic real estate to create relevance for customers.
- Measure outcomes for what you’re doing and offering customers.
- Iterate and learn.
Learn more at rokt.com
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