How to Respond to the Ever-Changing Landscape of E-Commerce Retail

With the holiday shopping season already ramping up, retailers are vying for their piece of the multi-billion-dollar pie! This is especially true for e-commerce business owners as consumers continue to shift their holiday spending, online.

In 2018, holiday season mobile e-commerce sales totaled 51.4 billion USD and in 2019, exceeded 64.2 billion USD.  In 2020, holiday retail sales in the United States were forecast to amount to about 755.3 billion U.S. dollars. Many believe this figure was given as a conservative value as some projections were as high as 766.7 billion U.S. dollars in 2020. And the upward holiday sales trend shows no sign of slowing down.”

“The convenience of shopping online during the pandemic fueled enormous e-commerce growth, which will continue to climb through 2021 and 2022. According to eMarketer, U.S. e-commerce sales are expected to reach double-digit growth, expanding by 17.9 percent in 2021 to more than $933 billion. The analyst firm projects e-commerce sales will surpass $1 trillion in 2022, accounting for over 20 percent of total retail sales by 2024.” (Source)

Total Retail Report recently surveyed 1,500 U.S. and U.K. consumers and shared their key findings, which aligned with eMarketer’s projections. They provided some fascinating insights into evolving shopper behavior due to the fallout from the pandemic and substantiate the claims of there being tremendous room for e-commerce growth in the years ahead. According to their findings, 54.5 percent of consumers plan on shopping online as much as they did during the last holiday peak, with more than 32 percent of U.S. respondents expecting to shop online even more than they did during the 2020 holiday season.

The survey also revealed some challenges for retail brands, most notably how to improve the user experience to enable consumers to find what they want more easily and deliver better and more relevant product recommendations. In response to these challenges, e-commerce business owners are tasked with creating compelling and engaging shopping experiences that lead to sales and repeat customers and figuring out how to combat ongoing challenges with site abandonment and the loss of visitors to competitors. Total Retail Report shared three strategies e-commerce retailers can employ to address the ever-changing e-commerce retail landscape.