eCommerce – a digital fairytale…

Once upon a time… 

 …there was a devastating pandemic. All the shops across the land had to lock their doors, except for the lucky supermarkets and petrol stations. The fairy godmother looked around at all the sad business owners and customers, and wondered what she could do to help them. She knew the poor people just wanted to sell and buy some nice things to make some money and cheer themselves up. They also found their drains still got blocked, so they needed useful stuff like plungers. She thought and thought and suddenly jumped in the air with joy. “eCommerce!” she cried. And so it came to pass that eCommerce boomed. The end.

Well, not quite. 

There’s absolutely no question that ecommerce did boom big-time during the pandemic. We all had to change our shopping habits, whether that was just to put on a mask and socially  distance in the cheese aisle, or if we refused to give up our love of retail therapy by shifting our whole endorphin rush into the digital world. And now we’ve found that these new habits have become hard-wired in our brains.  

Although online sales were increasing pre-2020, our lockdown lives brought it to a  crescendo of £3.349 billion, in the UK alone, by the November of that first pandemic year. And although there was a natural fall in takings that coincided with the increasing return of our freedoms, eCommerce sales have most definitely not returned to the 2019 levels – pre-Christmas purchases saw it rocket by an extra half a billion pounds again in ‘21. With global developers flirting in an embarrassingly obvious way with the metaverse, savvy businesses have already got their foot in the door.   

eCommerce personalisation is in sharp focus, and everyone in the know is talking about their own bespoke strategy and implementation. It’s even caused Amazon and Shopify to go to war, the market is so lucrative. 

The latter probably isn’t a battle worth getting involved in, but studying the latest eCommerce trends should be the number one priority on all of our task lists. These trends are already using such sci-fi descriptions as “voice-shopping”, and “Artificial Intelligence and machine learning”, that are crying out to be understood. And from the ones we’re familiar with, who isn’t interested in “faster payment options”? 

As well as this being a hot focus for global big-hitters right now, it’s also something that the most niche artisan can benefit from. With the right platform, local businesses can grow their own client bases worldwide. And from small acorns… 

This isn’t our attempt at another retail fairytale either. Forbes keeps updating the news on the growth of eCommerce, with an obvious increase in all areas of the US consumer markets.  

Interestingly, “food and beverage” is second only to the group of “furniture, building materials and electronics” – so all of those traditional and obvious in-person purchases have not only bucked the trend, but become the trend.  

So the message is coming through loud and clear, and it’s coming from the consumer – whether your business is big or small, your focus on eCommerce should be huge.