Over the last few years, e-Commerce has gained substantial traction (source). A lot of brands these days are turning to e-Commerce to serve their customers better. The business settings hitherto have evolved since the occurrence of the recent pandemic. Even when the physical doors of businesses were forced to shut, most companies could proceed with sales. It was enabled by e-commerce.
Having e-Commerce website for your business can enable you to survive during any time of uncertainty. In this article, we have highlighted the importance of e-commerce integration during pandemics. We have also discussed why you should consider implementing e-commerce in your business.
Importance of e-Commerce during Pandemics
Recent decades have recorded the incidence of global pandemics. The COVID-19 in 2019, H1N1 in 2009, H5N1 in 2006, and SARS in 2003 all affected business and economic growth. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers mostly turned towards e-commerce purchases. This online marketing has proven to be a blessing for both customers and online businesses.
Below are the importance of e-commerce during pandemics:
1. Cognizance of Customer’s Behavior
One of the benefits of e-commerce during pandemics is its trackability. Businesses can understand their customers a lot better. It happens when customers visit your e-commerce website and leave their data. From this data, you get their information, which would enable you to understand and serve them better.
Knowing how your customers navigate your website helps you create new and improved strategies. Strategies that would enable you to offer a better shopping experience for them.
When it comes to understanding customer’s behaviors, there are some things to pay attention to. Below are some of them:
- How customers reach your website
- How they interact with your website
- The device which they use to access your website
- Important factors that help you segment your customers
- The area of your website they are visiting the most. (You can know this by adding heat maps to your website)
- Based on their behaviors, you’ll be able to learn where and what to tweak to improve. In the long run, place your e-commerce website to suit your customers’ needs better.
2. E-Commerce Offers Convenient Shopping Experience during Pandemics
Your customers experience convenient shopping when they buy your products online. Buy products offline entail customers to take a drive or a walk to the store, which did not seem so inconvenient. However, with e-Commerce, when you sell your products using e-Commerce, it offers your customers a lot more convenient shopping experience. With just a click of a button, products can be purchased from the comfort of your customer’s houses.
E-Commerce is essential for your business and the comfort of your customers. Your customers will be able to gain easy access to all of your products via your website. Your e-commerce store is always open to your customers 24/7. It means that they can purchase your products even while you’re asleep. Neither you nor your customers need to leave the house.
For this reason, among others, e-commerce is vital during pandemics. It is because, during pandemics, people will need to avoid physical contact with others. And this includes going out to the store to purchase products. Via e-commerce, however, products are shipped to customers’ doorsteps without having physical contact with people.
3. Expands Market Size/Continuous Revenue
Except your products are highly specialized, people might buy the same product you sell in their environments. They might not see why they should leave their environments and patronize you. This is one of the reasons why you need an e-commerce platform. With minimum effort, your market size will increase. As per stats from Don’t Disappoint Me, 87% of UK consumers make purchases online.
People you’ve never seen and live far away can buy your products without leaving their environments.
When people search for the products you sell, it gives your website a chance to be seen. It breaks geographical limitations and allows you to sell your products globally. You can make your e-commerce website rank so high on Google by optimizing it.
During pandemics, you will continue to get revenues, especially if your website ranks well. You will be able to convert visitors to customers just by visiting your website. Your market size would expand from a few hundred to thousands and millions. E-commerce is essential.
It means that the offline market limits sales and revenues.
4. Lower Expenses
Running traditional businesses comes with expenses that are not experienced by e-commerce business owners. Costs related to maintenance, staffing, rent, and utility can add up quickly. These costs are not present in e-commerce businesses.
Amidst pandemics, e-commerce integrations will help business owners to cut costs to some extent. Those ecommerce integration must be connected to a robust POS system. For example, hardware store POS systems make frequent use of such ecommerce integrations.
They will not need to bother about maintaining a block store, pay staff who work for them, and other expenses. It is one of the importance of e-commerce during pandemics.
The Role of e-commerce During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Demand increased for mobile data and internet services. Both the governments and operators have adopted the network’s ability to handle the shift to online activities. Demands for some online services with a substantial online component, however, has fallen. An example of such a service is the tourism services.
- Government and private sectors adopted new methods to ensure that e-commerce can help to curb some of the problems encountered while trying to combat the virus. It includes offering increased data services at little cost, enlarged network capacity, and improving logistics and delivery costs.
- The enforcement of social distancing during the pandemic led to increased online consumers, internet teleconferencing, and social media use.
- There was a significant increase in Business-to-Consumers sales and an increase in Business-to-Business e-commerce.
Customers will Continue to Embrace e-commerce
From the occurrence of C0VID-19, customers treasure the convenience that comes with online shopping more than ever. During pandemics, mostly, although the world of e-commerce will expand, it will continue to do so post-pandemic. COVID-19 proved this to be true.
While physical contact restrictions came with COVID-19, and online companies thrived, it became a long-term trend. Customers continued to embrace the comfort of shopping from their houses.
For this reason, we recommend online marketers look for ways to improve their online stores frequently. For e-commerce to thrive, customers must be made and kept happy.
As an Online Marketer, this is How You Should Increase your online presence.
An online presence is how easy it is to find a company or brand on the internet. Studies show that 97% of customers find businesses via the Internet.
Having an outstanding online presence is essential. It enables your potential customers to gain access to your brand even before they know you exist. It also helps them understand what you stand for before making a purchase. If building an excellent online presence is this important, find out some ways to increase your brand’s chances of being easily found online.
- Personify Your Brand
This is one medium many macro companies use to build their brands; they personify it. Personifying your brand helps you bid on your target demographic while upholding your brand’s values and mission. Having an evident business brand helps your customers relate with you either by signing for your Newsletter or actively liking your content.
2. Develop Relationships
To build our online presence, you want to develop good relationships with those in your industry. For instance, if you have a good relationship with a TV presenter, they might ask you to feature in their show one day. By so doing, you’re increasing your online presence.
3. Create Content
You don’t want your audience to wait on you or get bored with not seeing frequent content from you. You want to engage them by putting up good content often. Show up by creating content on sites where your customers are most active. If you notice that they are more active on Instagram, you want to put your business there and link it to your website.
- Adapt New Forums
Whenever new social media is launched, be the first to adopt it. It is beneficial. Customers will be glad that you are always in-the-know. You can research upcoming sites and consider putting your business on there.
5. Be Where Your Audience is
You have to be sure of where your audience is. If your audience is mostly on Twitter, you don’t want to put up all your content on Instagram and Facebook. You swant to be where they can find you. If you are always on their faces, they can’t ignore you, and by so doing, you’ll be a more substantial online presence.
Conclusion
During pandemics, a lot of activities get shut down, and it includes physical stores. The importance of e-commerce integrations during pandemics includes cognizance of customers, convenient shopping experiences, and the expansion of market size. Don’t leave your convenience store pos system without such integration. It is vital to allow them to thrive even amid trying times.