How E-Commerce Fits into Retail’s Post-Pandemic Future

The world stood still, shocked by the blitzkrieg of the COVID-19 pandemic.

14:35 06 July 2021

The life that we lived was just like a dream while we were waking up to a new reality of social distancing norms. The situation pushed us closer to a new lifestyle, reducing the time we had to prepare for this newborn life. Organizations had to prepare for the new behaviours that we were shaping into.

 

The EY Future Consumer Index surveyed its customers since the early stages of the pandemic in early 2021 and realized that around 80% of the US customers are changing the way they shop. It was also found that 60% of the consumers were still purchasing from the brick-and-mortar stores less than what was before the pandemic and around 43% were shopping online which was more than what they used to do before the pandemic. The pandemic eliminated the distance factor among us as the whole world was connected through the internet due to the social distancing norms.

 

According to the EY Embryonic platform, retailers made around $10 billion in eCommerce investments, acquisitions and partnerships from the starting of May to July 2020. These investments facilitated various capabilities such as last-mile delivery, cloud/ghost kitchens (where there is no dining space but customers can take away), dark stores (where retail distribution facilities only cater to online shopping) and product portfolio investments catering to enhancing digital capabilities such as AI and blockchain.

 

The pandemic for many retailers acted as a platform to bring about digital transformation to their businesses, for others it acted as a platform to experiment and understand the new buying behaviours of the customers.

 

Customer Experience

 

With the fragile nature of shopping today, where retailers face an unmountable amount of competition and shoppers limited attention span, to retain a customer, the business must offer a top-class shopping experience to the shopper. The pressing matter for retailers today is not what investment they need to make, but what kind of customer experience they must provide. Focus on eCommerce application development to enhance the customer experience.

 

The change in customer experience was indeed a culture change for many retailers who have been focusing on brick-and-mortar for so long. The customer experience is evolving rapidly as earlier it was based upon the transactional process offered at a store to now depends on enriching the retailer-shopper relationship. If you are a retailer then, you have to focus on the complete shopping journey that you are offering to the shopper, right from the channel of acquisition to selection of product and eventually the purchase of the said product.

 

The post-pandemic scenario will play a different role in the purchasing behaviour of the shopper. Since the customer's entire shopping journey is important but we cannot neglect the fact that we humans have a sense of belonging, a sense of community and this will impact the buying habits. Customers will still feel the need to go and buy stuff from the brick-and-mortar store because of the sense of touch and feel of the product. However, the pandemic has taught us to be comfortable at our homes and shop online without any hassle. The index also specified that 38% of consumers would want to shop online and visit physical stores that provide awesome shopping experiences.

 

To provide the best shopping experience the retailer must understand the future of experience guided capabilities. eCommerce software development is a part of the puzzle but not the complete picture. It is not about who's online but about doing what's right and continuously considering how a customer's shopping fits into the overall shopping journey.

 

I know most of you must be thinking about the how's. How would one integrate customer journey and how would eCommerce be well suited for it. Below mentioned are a few questions that can help you justify the investment and operating model decisions.

 

• Retailers should ask themselves whether they have an agile, adaptive technology platform that would be capable of understanding that every customer journey is different?
  
  
• Is my business compartmentalized? This means that eCommerce, store operations, merchandising, supply chain and marketing efforts are compartments and not interwoven. If these were to be compartmentalized then the customer would have an interruption in a steady flow of experience.
  
  
• Have I sorted my products properly? What products have I have exclusively kept online and for the store and what's the logic behind the channel?
  
  
• How can I be competitive in pricing and can still maintain my margins? For example, how can I trigger impulse marketing for my online store? What is the importance of the store layout and merchandising and what is the role that they play?
  
  
• How would I be able to transfer a customers' journey from digital to physical and back again?
  
  
• How do I give a uniform experience to the customer right up to the customers' doorstep?

 

Delivery

 

The crux of eCommerce is doorstep delivery.

 

Last-Mile Delivery

 

Nowadays customers do not entertain excused from eCommerce businesses when it comes to convenience, accessibility and affordability. The Index also indicated that around 21% of US customers did not forgive their retailers for issues with services during the COVID-19. This means that the pandemic was not considered as an excuse when products were not delivered on time. Today retailers are opting for limited shipping capacity in the last mile delivery services due to the increased influx of online shopping. Most of the best eCommerce companies understand the importance of timely delivery as it has not become the cornerstone of a customer's experience.

 

Stores as Fulfilment Centers.

 

The Index revealed that around 37% of US customers will purchase online and pick up from the stores more often post-pandemic. In-store and curbside buyers can lose interest due to the long waiting times in a jammed parking lot, or if the store does not the product. This is where the fulfilment centre can become an effective strategy. But that depends on the effective communication between the business unit and the system to deliver as promised. As services increase, so must the retailer's capability to consistently deliver proper experience.

 

In the end, it doesn't matter how customers' behaviour changes in the future, the retailers must be prepared and device effective strategies to develop stronger and deeper relationships with their customers, be it in person or online.

 

Nora Winkens -

 

Author Bio- Nora is a copywriter and content writer for Daffodil Software. She specializes in ghost blogging, email marketing campaigns and content for sales pages. She works closely with B2C and B2B businesses providing digital marketing content that gains social media attention and increases your search engine visibility.