Know The Trends: How Social Distancing Is Transforming Ecommerce

COVID-19 has driven offline businesses online — and driven consumers indoors. We know that a pandemic like this is having a profound impact on commerce. Lockdowns, social distancing and other public health measures are all impacting our ability to physically go to brick and mortar stores to shop. It’s changing consumer behavior in a way that experts predict will leave a deep effect that far supersedes the crisis.

While we can’t predict the future, some trends have become clearly visible over the past two months.

Ecommerce Is Experiencing Turbocharged Growth

Even before the lockdowns, the year-on-year growth of ecommerce when compared to traditional retail was staggering. Ecommerce has been growing 14.1% per annum, compared to just 4% for retail in general. With these new circumstances, however, that growth has been turbocharged.

In 2020, online sales have grown an immense 52% if you compare them to the same period one year ago, and the number of online shoppers has increased 8.8% since this crisis began. It is not predictable, furthermore, that this growth will abate once the crisis recedes. Social distancing will be the norm for the foreseeable future and customers will turn to companies that can deliver online. This is not something that should be ignored.

Commerce Isn’t Just “Local” Anymore — It’s Global

While e-commerce has been growing worldwide, the growth has been particularly remarkable away from the West. Even before this crisis, growth in Asia and the Pacific reached 25%, and over 21% in Latin America. Companies that have made a point to ship worldwide and companies that have embraced solutions that allow them to work across borders are reaping the benefits of this strategy.

While costs associated with shipping can be influential in deciding if a business is ready to go worldwide, expanding this means expanding your consumer base. While business owners may be operating in the most saturated markets (of the West), there’s a ton of opportunity to pivot and appeal to markets where your product may have less competition and more opportunity.

Mobile Is King

Mobile apps, mobile payments and social commerce are the three aspects that surveys indicate will make a difference for ecommerce in 2020 and going forward. Analysts estimate that over half of all online sales will happen on mobile in 2021. And yet, mobile conversion rates are under half of those on desktop. This is an area with massive untapped potential. Getting mobile right will be the difference between the winners and the losers of the post-crisis world.

PWAs Will Be the New Normal

PWAs, or Progressive Web Apps, are the next step in ecommerce, especially on mobile. They provide you with a seamless integrated experience that accompanies your whole progress from the moment you enter the webstore to the moment you leave. The idea is for your webstore to feel like an app, instead of just another browser page. It’s becoming clearer that forcing users to download and install an app for every purchase they want to make is driving customers away. Traditional webstores, however, are impractical on mobile. PWAs are the solution, and they will become the new normal. Alibaba, OLX or Pinterest have already made the switch.

B2B Commerce Will Catch Up

Most B2B commerce is, as of today, product-centric. The adoption of a customer-centric mindset will give businesses access to the kind of data that can lead to an improved customer experience, especially as focus shifts to digital.

B2B digital transformation is coming, and with it will come a veritable revolution for B2B businesses that just haven’t focused on customer experience at all in the past. The opportunities for those who lead the pack can hardly be overstated.

Ecommerce Can’t Afford to Be Ruthless

Ethical ecommerce is an expression that you will hear more and more. 68% of shoppers deem sustainability an important factor when making a purchase. Climate awareness and political sensibilities are becoming more enmeshed in the way people buy. CO2 production, plastic packaging, farming practices, etc. will need sustainable solutions. With box retailers and brands alike starting to set environmental and cruelty-free goals and practices, online can’t afford to be made to look either outdated or ruthless.

Hello, Ecommerce. Get Ready to Sell Through Voice

Vocal commands are gearing up to be one of the big trends of the this year, at the very least in searching for products. Research indicates that 20% of people with devices capable of smart voice recognition are already using them to shop. That’s a very sizable number for a technology that’s still largely untapped by retailers. As companies catch on, it’s sure to go through the roof.

Online Shoppers Won’t Go Back

More than three quarters of consumers say their shopping habits will be permanently altered even after lockdown measures are scaled back. As we said in the beginning, ecommerce was growing anyway, crisis or no. This injection of momentum accelerated a trend, it didn’t create one. There is every reason to believe we are before a new normal. It’s very important to plan accordingly.

Digital Currencies Are the Money of Ecommerce

Digital currencies are expected to have a compound growth rate of ~35% per annum for the next five years. In an ecommerce market that is growing at such an intense rate, the inherent advantages of blockchain based payment solutions will solve several of the problems the industry will face, especially as mainstream adoption is boosted by shopping habits shifting online. Digital currencies are built for a digital age. They offer specific conditions that traditional payment infrastructures just cannot match.

Market leaders like S.L. Benfica, Phone House, Alternative Airlines or Arms &McGregor are already building their ecommerce strategy using Utrust’s payment gateway, which allows them to access payments using Bitcoin, Ethereum or Tether. Here’s why:

• With Utrust, your transaction fees drop by 80%, due to digital currencies being decentralized and cutting out the middleman.
• A whole new market. There are over 45 million digital currencies users out there, eager for access to more merchants.
• Utrust is borderless. You can accept payments from anywhere in the world and get paid in fiat, in your usual bank account. Payments are also extremely fast.
• There are no chargebacks. All sales are final and recorded on an immutable ledger.
• Protection against fraud is foolproof. We were built for the Internet. Your customers will never have to share their private information online.
• Utrust was built for mobile. With the Utrust Wallet, payments are just a tap away. We also provide both a custom API that we can tailor to your needs and plugins for major payment platforms like Magento, Woocommerce or Payrexx.
• Commerce is becoming digital, and it will wait for no one. Now is the time to make sure your company is not left behind.

At Utrust, we want to help every business achieve their full potential. If you want to start accepting digital currencies now, you can go here and for the first three months you will pay no fees at all.