The company questioned about 100 e-commerce decision-makers across Europe and North America
2020 wasn’t that bad for e-commerce companies: survey. Source: flickr.com
SearchNode published a report revealing that 90% of companies saw their online sales increase at least a bit, according to Ecommerce News. Meanwhile, 50% of respondents claimed it grew by over 100%. But still, 6% say their e-commerce revenue decreased during the lockdown.
After the lockdown was over, many consumers started shopping at brick-and-mortar retailers again. Still, 86% of respondents say their online revenues increased and only 4% say it decreased.
Generating online sales is one thing, the whole COVID-19 situation has also led to things like disrupted supply chains, poorly staffed customer service, and more. This directly affects the online profit margin. It seems that for 38% of e-commerce decision-makers their online profit margin grew during the global lockdown. At the same time, for 40% the situation stated about the same. Only 15% claimed that it dropped.
The pandemic has led to some changes in companies’ workforce as well. For instance, about 44% said they had to relocate staff, while 3 in 10 hired more people. The other side of the coin is that 26% had to fire some people and 15% say they had to reduce their employees’ salaries. Unexpectedly, but 5 managed to increase salaries. And even more surprising: 21% of companies didn’t adjust their workforce at all.
Many brick-and-mortar retailers had to drastically change their business if they wanted to avoid going out of business. So, many new practices were introduced last year. Among the respondents, 31% introduced in-store pickup, while 26% chose to introduce home delivery. Unfortunately, about 1 in 5 had to shut down some physical stores for good.
All in all, the coronavirus has heavily impacted online retailers on different levels. But limited operations due to the lockdown, managing inventory, and overall lack of employees were also some key challenges for online retailers. And 17% said it was challenging because they need to close their physical stores.
We’ve reported that the number of online purchases reached an all-time record in Poland last year.
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