Recent reports show that UK shopping habits are changing and we are now making more and more purchases not on the high street at the weekend but sitting in our lounge.

With the increase in internet enabled TV’s, the television is entering an entirely new era, with additional opportunities for advertising, marketing, revenue generation, and viewer participation.

A recent report from Conlumino suggests that up to ¼ of UK consumers will make online purchases from interactive TVs before the end of 2014, this is known as T-commerce.

T-commerce allows TV-viewers to respond directly to offers delivered on their TV screens, and instantly purchase products by using their existing remote controls and set-top boxes. But T-commerce goes further than just selling products via the television. With the additional customer interaction that you would not get from any other channel, you can get instant feedback from the viewer meaning an immediate response for the merchant. You can also deliver additional information on products, services or events directly from the content they are watching on the television.

The television is becoming a powerful commerce channel enabling merchants to sell over television and a lower cost than before.

To help stay ahead of the curve and develop an e-commerce platform ready for T-commerce, we recommend:

1. TV apps

Many of the Smart TV manufactures now offer software development kits (SDKs) enabling developers to create application designed for the TV. With this ability to develop applications merchants could create extensions of an online catalogue, greater social sharing experience, video-content marketing, or even games that introduce users to a their products.

2. Responsive design

Responsive design is a website philosophy and technique focused on giving users the best possible experience relative to their device – be it a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer. With much of the focus for responsive design to work on small device screens, merchant websites should now also focus on the larger HD TV screens to optimize a website for television viewing.

3. Piggyback on existing marketplace

Many of the large marketplaces, like eBay or Amazon, have already started to enter the t-commerce space, therefore to get you started place some of your products on their marketplaces and piggyback on their system like the “Watch with eBay” application.

So is the future of shopping, T-commerce, I believe that it the natural progression of e-commerce and will change broadcasting and app development to create a seamless experience for the customer.