Why Your Business Should Lean Into E-commerce
In the current environment, with stay-at-home orders and the uncertainty that COVID-19 has brought, businesses large and small are being impacted, and that’s why putting a focus on e-commerce at this moment in time is absolutely essential.
Currently, the e-commerce cat has catapulted out of the bag. I’ve been in the e-commerce world for some time so I just can’t imagine anybody not recognizing the need for an e-commerce presence in 2020. And while this pandemic has been devastating on so many levels, I hope more businesses have finally figured out how e-commerce is literally essential if you want to sell something in today’s world.
So how exactly is the current pandemic affecting the e-commerce landscape, and what do businesses and retailers need to consider as they transition?
IMPACT
SHORT TERM VS. LONG TERM
In the short term, numbers have exploded for most companies that sell essentials. Not all e-commerce businesses are the same obviously, but most people who are in any type of consumption-type business (i.e. grocery stores, super markets, food etc.) have seen their numbers jump dramatically.
The long-term impact of this will centre on people changing their buying behaviours, which could potentially create a massive shift. For example, a majority of people who wouldn’t have otherwise bought their groceries online are now starting to have them delivered along with people exploring options around basic household items and cleaning supplies being delivered to them.
According to Absolunet’s COVID-19 x eCommerce Report, Canadian eCommerce is at the tipping point as online sales have doubled since March 11th, the day where the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Of course, there will be e-commerce companies that sadly won’t survive this time for a many reasons (i.e. the industry they are in, the types of products they sell, or a plethora of other factors), it’s not a one-size-fits-all scenario.
Every Canadian business’ eCommerce is being put to the test and pushed to its limits right now and that will be amplified even more as we are seeing online purchase behaviour accelerate. Companies like Amazon and Walmart are, of course, going to be the big winners here — data shows that Walmart is winning over 50 per cent of the new online grocery shoppers. But, when you have big winners, like Amazon and Walmart, there are inevitably going to be other winners, too. For instance, StockX has burst into the scene making some serious waves in the online auction space.
We will likely see more brands selling all their products on their own site as opposed to Amazon because the current landscape allows them to do so.
The other shift that could happen is the realization that diversifying supply is going to be vitally important. Depending on where a company’s product supply is coming from and where it is sourced, there could be more issues at play when it comes to fulfilling these orders during this time. One of the other long-term insights that businesses are able to take away from this is to not be one-dimensional when it comes to that source.
BUILD YOUR E-COMMERCE BUSINESS BY LEVERAGING CONTENT
The heading above is how companies need to start thinking in order to grow a business online at this time.
It’s a shift in mindset — a lawyer distributing content around golf or the tire shop starting the Michelin guide. It’s about creating and pushing out content not necessarily about your specific industry but content that would interest, entertain and bring value to the people that you’re trying to sell to.
It could be content focused on reviewing the best products in your industry that gets released across social media in audio, video, pictures and written format. It could be a content series documenting how you make your products or how you started out.
The best way to compete with other businesses, especially massive organizations who have a ton of cash they can throw at things like Google ads, is by becoming a content powerhouse in your space, at some level.
The ideas and strategies around this might depend on what industry you’re in, what your brand is and what you’re comfortable with. But, starting the process of building content pillars in your world is a key strategy for any business building out an ecommerce presence.
So as you read this, try and picture what it will be like six months from now. If you’re shopping for a new car, apparel, jewelry, furniture, electronics, or whatever, will you choose to shop for it in person? Without readily available treatments or a vaccine, waves of contagion are highly probable. Shopping for discretionary products could look like today’s surreal grocery store experiences. Only a fraction of customers allowed at any one time, everyone wearing masks and gloves, individuals asked to stand six feet apart, sanitizer and wipes everywhere. It’s hard to imagine that Ecommerce and the digital customer journey are going to continue to skyrocket — is your business ready?
This article was originally written for and published in Business London Magazine