The ecommerce brands reinventing for resilience

Ecom­merce could eas­i­ly join “unprece­dent­ed”, “new nor­mal” and “uncer­tain­ty” in the ranks of 2020’s most overused busi­ness par­lance.

How­ev­er, the rapid accel­er­a­tion of online shop­ping, and the abil­i­ty it’s afford­ing com­pa­nies to adapt quick­ly to the needs of a gen­er­a­tion of con­sumers in flux, ensures its buzz car­ry­ing through to 2021.

At the height of the ini­tial coro­n­avirus lock­down, online sales accel­er­at­ed around the world as phys­i­cal stores closed. In the sec­ond quar­ter of 2020, glob­al rev­enue from online sales sky­rock­et­ed 71 per cent year on year as peo­ple rushed to buy essen­tials, accord­ing to data from the Sales­force Shop­ping Index.

Even as bricks-and-mor­tar stores have reopened, the shift to online has remained pro­nounced, espe­cial­ly across cat­e­gories such as fast-mov­ing con­sumer goods and gro­ceries. In the UK alone, the Office for Nation­al Sta­tis­tics reports that sales of online goods increased 51.6 per cent in the year to August.

With the all-impor­tant fes­tive peri­od loom­ing, research from pay­ment firm Klar­na reveals that 71 per cent of British con­sumers are reluc­tant to shop in-store in the lead up to Christ­mas. Some 56 per cent say they expect to do more online shop­ping this year than pre­vi­ous­ly.

As con­sumer habits shift, brands have been retun­ing their offer­ings to take advan­tage, whether that’s bring­ing shopfronts online, using data to improve the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, launch­ing sub­scrip­tion ser­vices or using tools such as aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR) to sell their prod­ucts.

From Beaver­town Brew­ery to Fend­er, Ama­zon to Aldi, com­pa­nies have been invest­ing heav­i­ly in tech and tal­ent to pow­er the ongo­ing shift away from hard-to-reach shelves into direct to con­sumer (DTC) and third-par­ty dig­i­tal sales. It’s boost­ing their bot­tom line too, with Beaver­town report­ing a 1,000 per cent sales boost in lock­down, show­ing the poten­tial ecom­merce has to under­pin busi­ness growth.

Retooling tech to power online sales 

But the inno­va­tion can’t stop now. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, brands have sought to bridge the gap between the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal, build­ing expe­ri­ences that cater for cus­tomers who now expect in-app sales, deliv­ery and pick-up as stan­dard.

For Deb­bie Elli­son, chief dig­i­tal offi­cer at ecom­merce mar­ket­ing agency Geom­e­try Glob­al, how­ev­er, com­pa­nies must look beyond omnichan­nel strate­gies and to con­nect­ed com­merce expe­ri­ences if they want to unlock oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth.

She argues that tech which goes beyond the oper­a­tional require­ments of retail and sup­ports the aggre­ga­tion and under­stand­ing of shop­ping behav­iour across var­i­ous dig­i­tal and phys­i­cal touch­points is what’s going to give brands the com­pet­i­tive edge.

Point­ing to L’Oréal, Rev­o­lu­tion Make­up and Guc­ci, which all recent­ly used AR to enable shop­pers to try on prod­ucts at home, Elli­son says she expects expo­nen­tial growth in brands and retail­ers using AR in the move to cre­ate more engag­ing online shop­ping expe­ri­ences.

Along with com­pelling “try before you buy” tech, social com­merce is also under­go­ing a shift. Through­out the pan­dem­ic, Insta­gram and Face­book have been aggres­sive­ly chas­ing on-plat­form sales, expand­ing Face­book Shops and the abil­i­ty to check out on the plat­form, and IGTV (Insta­gram TV) shop­ping.

“Shop­per­tain­ment” and live stream ecom­merce have been tak­ing social sell­ing up a notch too. As Ama­zon’s Twitch cre­ates shop­pable expe­ri­ences in the West, in Chi­na, Aliba­ba is see­ing suc­cess by turn­ing ecom­merce into enter­tain­ment on a grand scale. In South­east Asia, ecom­merce com­pa­nies, includ­ing Laza­da and Shopee, are among those using live stream­ing to help sell­ers con­nect with audi­ences.

Zhou Jun­jie, chief com­mer­cial offi­cer of Shopee and head of Shopee Sin­ga­pore, says the feed­back from sell­ers is pos­i­tive, with par­tic­i­pants see­ing sales increase by up to 75 per cent attest­ing to the appeal of the new fea­ture.

Ecommerce opportunities await those ready to innovate

One brand invest­ing in con­nect­ed com­merce is Tata Group, the sprawl­ing $111-bil­lion Mum­bai-based busi­ness which sells every­thing from jew­ellery and steel to tea and salt. “There is no bet­ter time than dur­ing a cri­sis to inno­vate,” says Lil­iana Caimacan, head of inno­va­tion at Tata Con­sumer Goods.

When COVID-19 thwart­ed Tata’s plans for the UK launch of herbal tea and kom­bucha brand Good Earth, the obvi­ous solu­tion was to delay intro­duc­tion. How­ev­er, Caimacan saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to lean into the brand’s posi­tion­ing around exper­i­men­ta­tion. She struck up a part­ner­ship with Sainsbury’s online and piv­ot­ed to social com­merce and dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences on plat­forms like Insta­gram to build aware­ness, quick­ly mov­ing media bud­gets away from out of home.

Its hand may have been forced, but in rein­vent­ing the rules of a very main­stream cat­e­go­ry, Caimacan says Good Earth has already had great suc­cess in engag­ing con­sumers.

Mov­ing into 2021, Caimacan says the lessons gleaned from this exper­i­ment will see its ecom­merce offer­ing focus on DTC and stream­lined cus­tomer expe­ri­ences “based on a deep under­stand­ing of behav­iour”. The busi­ness will use behav­iour­al sci­ence to engage with peo­ple bet­ter online and invest in razor-sharp tar­get­ing tech­niques to dri­ve dig­i­tal sales and busi­ness growth.

Driving business growth through content

Aside from the glitzy tech, con­nect­ed com­merce under­pinned by data and invest­ment in direct sell­ing, there are oth­er, more prac­ti­cal solu­tions com­pa­nies could employ to stand them­selves in good stead for the year ahead. This includes sharp­en­ing their focus on con­tent to close the gap between those seek­ing inspi­ra­tion online and those click­ing the buy but­ton.

Marks & Spencer recent­ly inked a two-year part­ner­ship with mul­ti-lan­guage ecom­merce con­tent pro­duc­er Quill, which will see it deliv­er more than 50,000 pieces of high-per­form­ing con­tent for the brand’s web­site. This includes prod­uct and cat­e­go­ry descrip­tions, as well as online cus­tomer buy­ing guides.

This is expect­ed to pro­pel a high­er pro­por­tion of M&S web­site vis­i­tors through their pur­chase jour­ney, not only increas­ing online rev­enue, but also improv­ing the return on invest­ment on all M&S mar­ket­ing activ­i­ty that dri­ves traf­fic to its web­site. Stu­art Stiles, head of prod­uct con­tent for M&S.com, says the British retail­er has already seen “fan­tas­tic results” and has big­ger plans to dou­ble down on its dig­i­tal offer­ing. “Cus­tomer shop­ping habits have changed, the trend towards dig­i­tal has been accel­er­at­ed and in response it is crit­i­cal we tur­bocharge M&S.com,” he says.