Promotions & the changing face of ecommerce white paper

The eCommerce sector has seen some huge changes over the past year. More and more businesses are selling online, and the ways they sell are changing.

These businesses have had to adapt the way they interact with customers, and an increasing number are looking towards promotions to boost their online operations.

Given the interesting changes taking place, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at what’s happened recently in the world of ecommerce.

Our latest white paper explores the topic in more detail.

The pandemic’s effect on ecommerce

The most obvious factor that influenced ecommerce throughout 2020 was the pandemic. It forced businesses to adapt and customers to change how they shop.

Lockdowns and movement restrictions had the most noticeable effect, pushing consumers online in greater numbers than ever before.

This drove a big wave of activity across the ecommerce sector, as businesses struggled to cope with huge online demand. Interestingly, COVID-19's impact on ecommerce in early 2020 is reminiscent of the effect of the 2002-2004 SARS epidemic in China, only on a much larger scale.

Forced quarantines back in 2003 have been attributed to a big increase in new ecommerce customers in China, which helped Jack Ma get Alibaba off the ground.

New technological trends

There are also some notable technological trends driving change in ecommerce at the moment. Many egrocery businesses are taking an interest in the dark store model because of its benefits for logistical efficiency.

With a higher number of people shopping online than ever, online order fulfilment from normal supermarkets isn’t enough. Supermarket chains need to be able to keep pace with their online orders, and dark stores have emerged as an effective solution.

Then there’s the ongoing shift towards smartphone use in all types of online activity. This is pushing businesses to adopt omnichannel strategies to ensure they can cater to their customers, regardless of how they choose to shop online.

How promotions are changing ecommerce

Given all of these wider changes, we’re seeing that promotions are having to evolve too. To stand out from the crowd businesses are having to use more creative promotional techniques. With higher volumes of online shoppers, they're also going to have to find a substitute for in-store promotions.

Download Promotions & the Changing Face of eCommerce for more of our analysis on the topic.