Covid-19 is Accelerating Digital Transformation
‘Growth in e-commerce has accelerated to forecasted levels 5 years ahead (or more)’ according to CCInsights.org, created by Emarsys, from eCommerce and retail data of more than one billion consumers and 2500 brands worldwide.
The current crisis’s effect on customer behaviour has advanced and stimulated the digital expectations of users that were already in progress before the pandemic arrived. Global eCommerce sales had been growing at 10-20% for the last number of years but over the last few months this rate of growth has doubled (statista.com).
Monsoon Consulting has been taking proactive steps to help organisations respond to the current crisis so that their businesses can re-distribute their efforts and operations to service customers and companies online.
Our commercial director Alastair Brodie shares his 5 key takeaways for companies who are embarking on adjusting the way they engage and sell to their customers:
Think Long Term
The current climate is giving merchants a real need to appraise their online strategy. Whilst there is an urgent need to act now, the decisions should consider and incorporate the anticipated future trends for eCommerce, including customer demand for contactless home delivery and click & collect. With remote selling and self-service channels becoming the norm and showing signs of being just as effective, the future of the sales process is changing.
Ownership
Make sure someone in your organization takes ownership of any new eCommerce venture. Much like a new store or branch, the eCommerce site will be best run when someone owns it internally and works to agreed KPIs.
Simplicity
It’s easy to be overwhelmed with the technology and terminology. However, keep things simple initially and take comfort in the fact that you can scale and grow the technology in line with your business and objectives. Having a clear picture of what your customer needs (now and into the future) at all times will allow for effective prioritisation.
Transformation
A website isn’t just about online sales. It’s a new way of transforming your business and communicating with your clients, customers, suppliers and employees. eCommerce platforms, such as Magento Commerce, provide a full suite of services for business intelligence, CRM, product information, sales and marketing performance and content management.
Scalability
If your site is being overwhelmed by new and sustained demand, there are a number of solutions that can help from virtual queuing software to mitigate web traffic peaks, to proven resilient infrastructure & hosting solutions.
The team at Monsoon have worked tirelessly to ensure the surge in online traffic and online activity has required additional provisions and support from the Monsoon Support and Infrastructure team.
The outlook post Covid-19
This unprecedented acceleration in digital trends and buying behaviours raises lots of questions about what the future expectations will be for eCommerce. Yet, behavioural changes of both B2C and B2B customers are already in full flight, and completely changing the digital landscape for the future. The growth of eCommerce will inevitably stablise once the world returns to some sort of normality but the shift to digital has taken massive steps in a short space of time and there will be no going back.
If you are looking to get trading online fast and efficiently talk to us today about our Apex Magento 2 Accelerator Solution, which gives businesses a full end-to-end solution, both in deployment and on-going support and customer success.
