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With New Year's Day almost upon us, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the past year and start making resolutions for 2017.

If you manage a business, hopefully 2016 was good to you. In general it was a kind year for many e-commerce businesses, with consumers shifting their buying habits heavily toward online retailers. The period between Black Friday and Christmas Eve saw e-commerce sales increase substantially — up 17.2 percent from the prior year. And that shift is predicted to increase again in 2017.

Along with that phenomenal e-commerce growth comes some interesting trends in consumer behavior and expectations. Let’s take a look at three of those trends, and how you can embrace them to make your 2017 more successful and profitable.

Getting your goods through that last mile of the journey to your customers is the hardest and most expensive part of the trip. And now there’s a growing customer demand that has made it even more troublesome to pull off: same-day delivery expectations.

The holiday shopping season is here, and now is the time when your customer service will show whether it deserves candy or coal in its stocking. Your reputation rides on how your company interacts with your customers, many of whom are probably under the seasonal duress that the holidays heap upon them. Those customers may be cranky, short on time, indecisive, confused — they put your customer service to the ultimate test. 

It used to be that Black Friday was the day of days for retail sales. Holiday revenue — and annual receipts for that matter — all hinged on luring huge crowds into stores on Black Friday. But the past few years haven’t been kind to Black Friday in-store sales, including this year. The number of people who went to stores to start their holiday shopping slid downward once again.