The digital landscape in 2020 experienced several years worth of accelerated change in only a matter of months as ecommerce companies were forced to innovate to meet increased demand from customers sheltering at home.
According to Salesforce, the share of customer engagements that take place online has grown from 42% in 2019 to 60% in 2020. Online shoppers spent $270 billion during Cyber Week alone in 2020, setting a new record that even the most optimistic of projections couldn't have predicted. According to McKinsey & Company, the pace of digital adoption accelerated so dramatically in 2020 that 10 years worth of growth took place in just 3 months.
Online Shopping Is Now The First Choice For Customers
According to McKinsey, 75% of shoppers changed their behavior in 2020, and shoppers placed a huge emphasis on convenience when searching for new ways to shop. People have gotten used to fulfilling their needs with the simple click of a button and this change in behavior isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Fifty-eight percent of customers feel confident they will do more of their shopping online than they did before the pandemic, and 80% of business buyers have shifted their plans to conduct more of their business online following the pandemic.
This means that companies that have not placed an emphasis on digital in the past need to catch up quickly.
Social Marketplaces Are The Next Big Thing
Everyone knows about social media marketing. But now the marketplaces supported by those networks are seeing growth as well, and it could herald a frictionless future for omnichannel engagement.
Online retailers will likely themselves partner more with social influencers in order to drive up engagement. Social media and messenger platforms like WhatsApp grew significantly this past year, an inevitability considering that 60% of interactions took place online in 2020. And because of this increased engagement with social platforms, more and more people are realizing that interaction and online shopping can take place within the seamless framework of social media.
Innovative companies that are able to take advantage of this growing trend will likely see their investment pay off.
Virtual Reality is Booming
People process images 60 times faster than words, and 83% of customers say that product images are the biggest factor in their shopping decisions. The use of 3D images has been shown to increase purchases by 40% and decrease the number of products returned by 35%.
With these numbers in mind, it's a shock that companies haven't already been taking more advantage of Virtual and Augmented Reality to draw in customers. But restrictions on people's movement have given VR and AR a chance to prove their usefulness and the companies that did use them in 2020 had great successes by allowing customers to have a visual experience approximate to shopping in a brick and mortar store without ever having to leave the comfort of their own home.
Ecommerce was one of the few industries to not only survive 2020, but thrive beyond our wildest predictions. Consumers were forced to change the way they research and make purchases, and the conveniences they enjoyed will result in lasting behavioral changes. Smart businesses will adapt their distribution and marketing processes to meet consumers where they are.