With the online performance measuring company comScore reporting a 10% jump in the e-retail sales of the United States in 2010 when compared with 2009 that accounts for $142.491 billion worth of merchandise, it is a good time to examine the latest trends that emerged in the banner year for e-commerce with sustained double-digit growth rates being speculated in 2011.

Gone are the days of customers visiting a company’s website to buy what they need. With mobile and Facebook applications being supported by the newest and the latest technology on smartphones and with the rapid increase in the popularity of social media platforms, people can shop whenever they what, wherever they are. Mygofer.com enables people to shop directly from their Facebook page without having to leave the page at all.

Online shopping through certain e-commerce portals is gradually becoming a social event with companies integrating friend preferences to help customers make well informed and better purchasing decisions. The e-commerce bigwig Amazon has integrated online shopping with social networking, which helps people find books, authors, artists, and music records based on the friends who are listed on their profile on Facebook. Now, there is an Amazon application on the iPhone that enables people to scan the bar code or take a photo of a product that they spotted while window shopping and this can be purchased through their platform with a single click. Amazon is driving their e-commerce transactions by harnessing the power and potential of intelligent technology.

With the rapid increase in the growth of Twitter and Facebook that are real-time social media platforms, static product directories are gradually being replaced with interfaces that display price changes, user actions, and live information on purchasing patterns and trends. Debit and credit cards that were needed till now for all financial transactions and payments are now passé with the soon-to-be-launched range of NFC (near field communication) devices that integrate payment gateways with smartphones. This technology is also going to be incorporated in the all-new and sophisticated iPhone 5.

It is clearly evident that the evergreen and exhaustive realm of e-commerce always has something in store for everyone despite the ongoing economic and financial uncertainty and instability.