How COVID-19 is Helping E-Commerce Evolve

With a majority of consumers unable to physically shop in stores due to shelter in place orders and the COVID-19 crisis, it’s no surprise that online retail is seeing a spike. As of mid-April, U.S. retailers’ are seeing their online retail revenue growth increase by 68%, indicating that people are still spending money while stuck at home. According to Zack Bowlby, CEO of digital marketing agency ROI Amplified, this proves that e-commerce is no longer optional for businesses moving forward.

“If you don’t have e-commerce built into your business, you’re in trouble,” said Bowlby. “It used to be negotiable, but it’s not anymore.”

Bowlby notes that internet traffic is up about 50% across the board. Emails are being opened 10-times more than they were in the past, and about 25% of consumers are spending more online across all verticals. But this spike in online traffic and digital spending isn’t the only insight that businesses should learn from during this time.

One other trend that Bowlby is seeing make or break brands during this time is response time. While it’s always been important for brands to reply to customer inquiries, doing it in a timely manner is now critical. 

“Pre-COVID-19, internet users were already very impatient,” Bowlby said. “But think about it today — if you call Best Buy and they don’t answer, you’re calling someone else.”

It’s also more important than ever for brands to share data within their own systems. The data and insights that marketing teams are seeing, for example, can be valuable in making decisions outside of that one vertical. 

“The other thing that we’re focusing on right now is cleaning up processes for our clients and merging departments. Now is the time to be sharing data across the board,” Bowlby said. “Take a retail client as an example — we’re taking data from marketing and passing it along to the purchasing department for forecasting purposes. Especially if you’re in an industry where you can’t sell right now, you need to be working on something. Everything that used to be on the back burner can not be at the forefront.”

The activity that e-commerce sites are experiencing now is leading to a lot of valuable insights for brands. However, one potential pitfall that Bowlby notes is putting too much stock in behaviors occurring during COVID-19. While consumer patterns shouldn’t be overlooked during this period, things will shift as shelter in place orders are lifted and the U.S. begins to emerge on the other side of the crisis.

“Don’t overreact based on data throughout this pandemic, because we don’t know what’s going to happen in three months,” Bowlby said. “Internet traffic is certainly going to drop eventually based on the law of averages, and at some point, people will go back to work. So, we can’t make long-term decisions based on current data points.”

While internet traffic will drop off eventually, it will never go away entirely. That’s why Bowlby recommends building a strong e-commerce platform that’s not designed to be a short-term fix during COVID-19.

“The fear will pass. When you get past the scare, what will stick is the convenience factor,” Bowlby said. “Think of something like groceries — six months ago, I would have felt weird having someone else doing my grocery shopping. But coming out of this, there’s a convenience factor that’s now there. That’s why it’s important to recognize that when you’re building your e-commerce platform, you’re not just building it for today — you’re building it for tomorrow.”