Yesterday I went to Google’s Think eCommerce event at London’s Royal Opera House. An array of speakers from brands such as Lastminute, Dell and John Lewis as well as Google’s own team of product managers spoke about trends and insights in the field of ecommerce, how best to take advantage of them and what current developments tell us about the future. Here are some of the items that were discussed:

The growth of the mobile web: in terms of users numbers since launch, the iPhone is the fastest growing consumer hardware device ever. Within five years, it is projected that the number of connected users on mobile will surpass desktop users.

An Android demonstration showed the power of Google’s latest applications- converting voice to text immediately and highly accurately for search, sending text messages and even for translation into a foreign language for example. With the Google Goggles application, users can take a photo of a building or a painting for example and immediately get back all the information about it or translate a foreign language menu from just taking a photo of it. Satellite navigation can use Google Streetmaps to see super-imposed images of buildings en route with arrows showing the user where to turn, as opposed to the standard sat nav interface as well as adding all the standard Google Maps information- nearest ATM, parking spaces etc.

Advertisers can take advantage of mobile search using AdWords: an Easyjet case study showed an ROI of 11:1 and a click through rate 6x higher than normal (even though Easyjet are currently using their standard website rather than a mobile-only version). Interestingly, 38% of these bookings were for the flights in the next ten days (compared to 13% for desktop bookings).

For retailers with a physical presence, the website should be seen as complimentary to that experience and not as a separate channel- John Lewis sales targets for shop staff include online sales in that area for example and in the case of Best Buy (the US electrical goods retailer), the use of product codes in store means that people can scan these to easily check product information online (according to Tracy Benson of Best Buy, 70% of people in their shops are searching their products on mobile whilst in store- a seemingly very high number). This idea was echoed by the digital marketing representative from Dell- “all roads lead to Dell.com”.

The web is becoming increasingly a social platform- with over 400 million active users, Facebook would be the third largest country. People are asking their Facebook or Twitter friends for advice about particular products and the brands present are experimenting with ways to enter in these conversations. For Best Buy for example, this means displaying reviews of products from Facebook or having all their “blue shirt” sales staff on Twitter available to answer specific questions. With the average buying process for Best Buy averaging over 30 searches, their challenge is how to get involved earlier in the research phase of buying.

The highlight was a speech from Lauren Luke, the make-up artist who has become a YouTube sensation with over 76 million views and 360,000 subscribers for her tips and tricks videos. This was an example of someone who has used social media to build a brand and connect very directly with her customers (Lauren now sells her own brand of make-up and even has a Nintendo game about to be launched). Her advice – keep it real, treat her customers as friends answering their comments and questions and “be yourself and be happy about it.”

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eCommerce, Google, Social Media Marketing