Over the last decade, ecommerce businesses are showing exponential growth in the market. The arrival of COVID-19 marked the decline in the sales graph of all the businesses across the world. Ecommerce was also not left unarrested, but it’s the technology that helped a lot in delivering essentials along with keeping people safe at their places.
The arrival of CoronaVirus left no other choice but to lock yourselves at home and manage things from home with the adaption of all the safety measures. Earlier, when people were shopping online for their comfort, now it’s turning need of time. To maintain social distancing, in-store crowds, and on-time delivery, people prefer online shopping more. Technomic claims that 52% of customers are avoiding crowds in the present scenario.
As per the survey by SalesForce conducted on 3558 customers, 36% of people prefer to shop online, unless the vaccine is discovered. The community spread in India, USA, and several other countries is another reason that offline businesses are facing a long-term impact. It is tough to frame the surge of ecommerce business simply in few sections as it journey of the last few months.
As per our market analysis, we are drafting the reason for ecommerce business growth in this way.
Geo-location oriented growth
At present, the US is facing a crisis with the highest corona infected people as well as the death rate. When the recovery rate is very slow, 68% of US businesses are expecting that people will continue buying the essentials and non-essentials through online mode only. The graph of the trending product categories will keep changing with time. In the initial days of lockdown, people were craving all on the essentials and electronics only. Gradually there happened a shift in the preferences, and people started investing more in digital books, audiobooks, albums, hobby, and leisure activities.
The above chart of SEMrush tells you about the change in the consumer interest due to COVID with acceptance to “new normal.” This ensures the growth of ecommerce, especially if you are opting for the model that has nothing to do with physical delivery. This shows the global growth of product categories between Jan-March 2020. The restriction on business conduction and timely delivery due to lockdown suffered in a few countries, but the essentials were served well in the meantime.
Changing customer behavior
Those customers who were not ready to take the plunge and walk with the digital mode of business are compelled to try it for once and all. The best thing is that you will be getting sanitized products delivered at your doorstep without traveling between the places. This automatically develops liking towards ecommerce business. It’s not the situation of a day, even the countries that recovered from pandemic are adapting all preventive measures of wearing masks, using sanitizers, maintaining social distancing.
Time being customers will get adapted to the online mode of business conduction in contrast to offline shopping, as that’s what they tried for more than 3-4 months. The change in customer behavior opens the gateway of opportunities for e-commerce businesses and will increase users’ dependency on the same.
Community-based negative impacts
Irrespective of the country you are living in, Coronavirus has shown community-based attacks in several locations. In India, Muslim communities were typically are typically diagnosed as positive confirmed cases. Whereas, in Chicago, Black Americans have higher mortality than those of other races.
Though it has nothing to do with the social status, caste, creed, and color, as suffering is the same for all, but, the minority communities will be facing long-term negative impacts of the same. In the past few months, there have been several processions where the black families and black-owned businesses, had to face negatives on the business front. While facing these tough times, several black-owned businesses had to shut their offline stores. This fight is not only that of black-Americans, and several other community-owned businesses are facing hard times.
Ecommerce allows all such businesses to continue their business without any protest or at least by avoiding the path of the same.
An act of welfare
The arrival of pandemic and a period of nothingness in lockdown gave us enough time for various realizations in our lives. In this situation of crisis, everyone came up with distinct ideas to hep masses and connected for the larger good. E-commerce businesses, as well as offline stores widely adapted to this idea, do donations are giving off masks as freebies to help everyone around and stay safe.
Marketplaces like Uncommon Goods donated 100% of their profits in giving the rainbow masks to kids and toddlers with the greater aim of contributing to the community. This is easily possible with the help of online fundraising campaigns, which will grow your brand as well as adds your contribution to the community.
Amazon’s local business program- Supporting the growth of ecommerce
Which one is better: a retail store or ecommerce store? This has been an all-time fight between offline and online businesses. In the lockdown period, even the shops serving essentials were left with no choice than adapting technology to take orders and connect online to deliver offline. Several businesses took this time to learn about the utility of technology to conduct business. In this meantime, many of them understood that be it offline business or online; it’s the technology helping you grow and discover new opportunities.
Amazon’s ‘Local Shop on Amazon’ program allows the local shop owners to register their physical retail stores on Amazon to reach local and global buyers. With the prime badge, you will be able to deliver your products faster. Also, this will help you improve the reach of your business and allows leveraging the value of the brand.
The touch of digital business mode for your retail shop will surely support this down-side time for businesses. This will aid in the growth of the ecommerce business.
If you are still thinking about creating your ecommerce store, you can register yourself at Builderfly and start designing your store for free. When you have the tools in your hand, you better know what you can do with them. It’s time to explore more and give your dreams a shot!
