Four eCommerce Trends that are here to Stay After Pandemic?

During the lockdowns of last year, 96% of consumers in Europe shopped online. That is 60% up compared to the year before. Moreover, according to a report from Forrester, 74% of consumers say they have no intention to significantly reduce their online shopping time now that they can reaccess the main street shops. So it looks like the shift to e-commerce is here to stay when the pandemic is over. But, which e-commerce trends are implied?

1. Mobile commerce is popular

Mobile commerce, the big trend of 2020, generated a whopping 169% sales increase, driven by the pandemic and the continuing shift from computer commerce to mobile. Mobile apps specifically, had a 157% higher conversion rate than mobile web browsers, and 8 out of 10 consumers prefer to use an app over a website.

2. Social commerce

Social commerce is already an $89.4 billion market right now. But, it is growing to $604.5 billion in the next seven years. Some social apps that support social commerce are, for example, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Pinterest. During the pandemic, these social media giants saw booming traffic, and they will build further on that by improving their social commerce capabilities. 

3. Local community support

Local business support has been a slow-growth trend before the COVID-19 pandemic. But the massive growth of “buy local” throughout 2020 created a bond between local stores and customers. One that will be hard to break by (local) online retailers.

4. New e-commerce payments

One of the key findings in the Forrester report is that 43% of retailers say they were not prepared for last year’s surge in cross-border payments across Europe. Retailers did not have the necessary payment methods in place to capture the demand from new markets. This resulted in missed revenue. Furthermore, with the new EU rules on cross-border e-commerce from the 1st of July coming up retailers can expect more challenges.

Soon, 80% of consumers expect to use new payment methods such as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), crypto, or digital wallets. Consumers are open to trying new payment methods based on their digital payment experiences last year.

Wouter Maatman

Digital Marketing Manager at Icecat N.V.