2020 is a year that many want to forget as soon as possible. This is completely normal since we are affected by a global pandemic that literally changed the way we live. While nobody can deny this, we have to do all that we can given the situation and look for positives. One clear positive in the world of business is that eCommerce is growing at a rate nobody could have predicted.
According to SEO Expert Witness – Peter Kent, the current growth of the eCommerce market is what we expected to see years from now. This is not a bad thing though since it can jumpstart the natural evolution of online businesses.
Huge Quarter To Quarter Increase
Clients spent $212 billion between April 2020 and June 2020 on eCommerce. This data was released by the US Department of Commerce. Basically, we have a 32% increase that shows us exactly how much eCommerce grew during pandemic months. During the first 3 months of 2020, we only saw a growth of 2.4%. Right now, in the US, eCommerce makes up 16.1% of all the sales made. This is up from the 11.8% we saw in Q1.
At the same time, we see retail sales going down. The categories that showed the highest growth in sales during the coronavirus pandemic were essential goods, electronics, office supplies, and groceries.
BOPIS Increases
BOPIS stands for buy online and pick up in-store. The practice drastically grew in popularity during August 2020, because of the COVID-19 risk. The growth on a year to year basis was an incredible 259%. As a result, we saw a month to month increase from July to August of 59%.
The huge advantage of BOPIS and the reason why so many eCommerce sites now offer it is that the consumer gains the satisfaction of getting the item that they bought in a really short time frame. When you buy from an eCommerce website without this policy, you have to wait for the delivery to happen. With BOPIS, you buy and you go to the store to get your items.
Huge Shift To eCommerce Acceleration
The last thing that we should highlight is that the coronavirus pandemic accelerated the move to eCommerce shopping by a completely unexpected 5 years. In 2020, we see a projected year to year growth of close to 20%. What happened when the pandemic started was that the US retail eCommerce sector actually went up by 44.5% during Q1 as a year to year comparison. Some stores saw even higher growth, with Walmart reporting 97% YoY for eCommerce sales. Target had a 273% growth in the same-day delivery service offered.
Final Thoughts
We can say that the growth of eCommerce in 2020 is unquestionable given the current sales stats. While the coronavirus pandemic shows no signs of going away, we expect these statistics to keep growing. At the same time, the consumer will understand how convenient buying online is and there is a high possibility that the growth will be sustained even past coronavirus.
