E-commerce is constantly changing. To keep up with trends and evolving consumer demands and to stay ahead of the game, business owners need to keep a close eye on these industry trends.
During the pandemic, social distancing and other preventative measures meant that consumer requirements shifted, and many aspects of e-commerce were changed. Some changes were temporary, while others are here to stay.
With a number of significant e-commerce events around the corner this November, it’s time to look at the post-pandemic trends that continue to shape e-commerce in 2022.

But before we dive into the strategies you can use to advance your e-commerce business, let’s take a look at a tool that can help your business stand out from the rest. Skipper by Zoomd is designed to help you increase your growth trajectory. Paid User Acquisition? With Skipper, you can run multiple user acquisition campaigns across various platforms concurrently through a single dashboard.

E-Commerce Challenges and Trends

Let’s take a look at some of the trends and solutions you can incorporate into your strategies for the remainder of 2022:

• Navigating a newly competitive market

During the pandemic, the e-commerce industry experienced a sudden spurt of unexpected growth. Studies projected that this trend would likely continue, predicting that by the end of 2022, e-commerce will account for 20.4% of global retail sales. This is over a 10% increase from just five years ago. The e-commerce industry’s rapid growth brings with it the challenges of new competition, but it also creates opportunities for new customers. To navigate this challenge, it’s essential to create a unique brand voice and identity that sets you apart from the competition and introduces you to new customers. The ideal way to do this is to maintain consistent customer acquisition campaigns while diversifying your target platforms. While this may be challenging, tools like Skipper can simplify the process and make it easier to manage campaigns on multiple platforms concurrently. 

• Advertising campaigns grow more sophisticated 

With so many new actors in the market, a major part of e-commerce marketing is the race to gain new customers’ attention. This means that organizations are willing to invest large sums in advertising. But, due to the overwhelming amount of marketing materials customers are exposed to daily, advertising has become less effective. As a result, advertising costs rise, and campaign effectiveness sinks as customers become inundated with generic advertising. The solution? Focus on quality over quantity. Rather than throwing generic user acquisition materials at your customers, turn your efforts toward creating unique campaigns that can set you apart. Additionally, target multiple platforms at once, so you can reach potential customers wherever they browse.  

Utilizing tools such as Skipper leaves you free to focus on creating strategies while we take care of the maintenance, diversification, and optimization. 

• Expanding to new vistas 

While the market achieved new growth during the pandemic, in many ways, the world shrank, and organizations that don’t support customers internationally are becoming an exception rather than a rule. Although expanding to new markets requires funding and conducting customer acquisition campaigns with a whole new customer base, breaking into new markets can create new opportunities for your business. As a small business, you can focus on local expansion by extending your customer acquisition campaigns to new platforms and taking advantage of new pools of potential customers.   

Moving Ahead With Skipper 

Keeping track of your campaigns can be challenging, especially when you’re running multiple campaigns across multiple platforms. Our platform makes this process a breeze by collecting all the data you need to set up, optimize, track, and maintain campaigns into a single dashboard. Skipper supports all of the most popular social media platforms and is integrated with 16 channels, including Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, TikTok, Apple Search, Twitter, Snapchat and more. 

By allowing you to keep track of all your campaigns concurrently, Skipper gives you control over your user acquisition activities, allowing you to grow your business fast. 

Now that the e-commerce industry has undergone a major evolution, new challenges and opportunities make it the perfect time to refresh your customer acquisition campaigns and ensure they’re all optimized. Skipper allows you to expand your campaigns to meet the industry’s growing demands and helps you take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. We’re always adding new features to address our customers’ changing needs, making it easy for you to keep up with the trends. Our goal is to help your business reach its potential, so before the busy e-commerce month of November kicks in, check out our platform to learn how we can help you grow with your industry. 

2022’s Fifa World Cup represents a lot of firsts. This year will be the first time the event is hosted by a Middle Eastern country and the first time the event has been delayed until fall/winter. The World Cup generally takes place in June – July, but the event has been delayed to November due to the extreme heat in Qatar.

As Qatar gears up to host this year’s World Cup, e-commerce businesses are gearing up for the expected industry boom that comes with it. The World Cup has traditionally had a strong economic impact around the world, particularly for host companies, but now that the event moved to the eventful month of November, e-commerce business owners are unsure what to expect. With the World Cup now scheduled for a major e-commerce month due to the holiday season, how can business owners prepare for the unique opportunities this year’s World Cup has to offer?

E-Commerce and Past World Cups

In the past, the World Cup has been a lucrative event for the industry, but tapping into this opportunity has required some extra spending. For example, in 2014, companies spent $1.5 billion on World-Cup-focused advertising and marketing. During the 2018 cup, a 14% increase compared to previous years was predicted for the global e-commerce market. The outcome exceeded this expectation with sales rising a dazzling 15%. The most growth was seen in the year’s first three quarters, the time period close to the World Cup.

Although the landscape has changed slightly due to the pandemic, online spending has been rising for years, and high-profile events like the World Cup provide an excellent opportunity for companies to expand their user acquisition and awareness activities. The previous World Cup had fans streaming over 15 million hours of digital content, tweeting 700 million times, and posting over three billion World Cup-themed Facebook posts – and this was before TikTok (currently the World Cup’s biggest sponsor) even existed. This means you have an easily accessible and already online audience you can capitalize on with your own user acquisition ventures.

But with World Cup-specific advertising requiring such large investments of time and funds, are the benefits worth the costs?

Consumer Spending During World Cups

The World Cup is more than just an opportunity to further your user acquisition goals with targeted advertising. Several studies have revealed that during previous World Cup events, e-commerce sales have spiked, and user spending has soared. During preparations for the 2014 World Cup, e-commerce purchases began rising in December 2013, seven months before the event was to take place. Studies before the world cup projected that the event would generate a 27% rise in e-commerce sales in the host country of Brazil alone. This increase translates into a monetary value of approximately $16.6 billion US dollars.

Citizens of other countries also increased spending, with UK consumers estimated to have spent approximately 174.71 million pounds. The study added that had their team advanced to the finals, this number may have grown to 367.49 million. These are significant numbers that have the potential to grow your business, and it’s all at your fingertips. So even though it may require more of your budget to be diverted to soccer-focused campaigns, the results prove that investing in World Cup mania is often worth the price.

The Risks

Unfortunately, investing in World Cup-related campaigns isn’t always smooth sailing. Data collected during the 2014 World Cup revealed that consumer spending is often closely tied to their team’s performance in the Cup. For example, Germany, the winner of the World Cup in 2014, showed an average of 75% increase in sales on the day after their victory. On the other hand, Brazil experienced a 17% drop in transactions after their loss to Germany, compared to the 9% increase they experienced after winning a match.

After its elimination from the World Cup, the USA experienced a 7% decrease in online spending, while Mexico had a 51% drop in spending after its loss. Finally, UK’s spending was reduced by 13% after losing to Uruguay. These statistics prove that investing in World Cup campaigns can be a gamble. Although it’s often successful, be prepared for a sudden decrease in user acquisition following a devastating match loss.

Manage Your World Cup Campaign with Skipper

After examining the potential benefits and risks, you’ll need to analyze whether allocating your budget towards World Cup advertising or channeling your budget into the e-commerce events that take place at this time of year will be more beneficial to your company. It’s important to consider your product niche, audience, and user acquisition goals before coming to a decision, and it’s important to remember that the decision doesn’t need to be a choice of “either-or”. With tools such as Skipper, you can manage multiple user acquisition campaigns across multiple platforms- at the same time.

Skipper allows you to create, maintain, and optimize your campaign across multiple platforms without breaking the bank. With real-time performance insights and actionable reports, you’ll be ready to adjust your campaign to accommodate any outcome and address consumers’ needs as they arise. In addition, Skipper supports all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, TikTok, Apple Search, Twitter, Snapchat, and more.

Get in touch today to learn how we can help you kick off your campaign and meet all your user acquisition goals.

As Andy Williams famously sang in his seasonal classic of the same name, the year-end holiday season is considered the “most wonderful time of the year.” However, the year 2020 has sung a different tune thus far from every other year — and as many businesses that closed during the first wave of the pandemic still struggle to recover, it’s yet to be seen if this year-end holiday season lives up to Williams’ iconic lyrics.

The restrictions forcing people to work and shop from the confines of their homes accelerated an already advancing e-commerce market that was years in development. As a result, the pandemic has created a case study for e-commerce and retail of the 21st century. Moving forward, this holiday shopping season will likely witness one of the next major shifts toward a different future in retail.

From the Shop to the Laptop

It’s been well documented in the retail industry that during the last decade e-commerce has encroached on brick-and-mortar sales.

In 2019, for example, consumers spent US$601.75 billion online, compared with $136.4 billion in 2007, according to a Digital Commerce 360 report — a 77 percent increase.

Not only have total sales skyrocketed, but so has the e-commerce share of total retail sales. Brick-and-mortar shops might not be out of the game quite yet, but the evident growing demand for the variety of items and convenience of buying online certainly looms large.

Fast forward to Q1 of 2020. The pandemic created a unique scenario whereby e-commerce sellers sold in record numbers. With much of the population relegated to staying at home during the peak of the first wave, consumers went on their devices at home to shop. During Q2 of 2020, consumers dished out $200.72 billion for online purchases with U.S. retailers, an increase of 44.4 percent from the $138.96 billion spent in Q2 of 2019.

This year, retail e-commerce sales totals will depend largely on the eagerness of shoppers to spend large amounts on gifts if they’re facing reduced disposable income — not to mention fears about being in crowded spaces.

Despite these concerns, Salesforce predicts that up to 30 percent of global retail sales will be made through digital channels this upcoming holiday season. Meanwhile, Deloitte estimates that holiday e-commerce sales will reach between $182 billion and $196 billion, which is a 25 to 35 percent increase from 2019’s $145 billion.

Attention to Logistics

As COVID-19 drives more e-commerce sales, retailers must make new considerations to prepare accordingly, which translates to new logistical considerations, ranging from site infrastructure to last-mile delivery.

For retailers looking to cash in during the opportune holiday shopping season, it’s imperative first to review the existing retail infrastructure and assess its preparedness for a larger volume of consumers.

During the last few years, retailers have invested significantly to improve the customer experience and cater to the growing e-commerce demand. Walmart is one example of a big-box retailer that has successfully expanded an infrastructure now capable of offering quick delivery and a wide variety of products on a platform vying with Amazon.

Although most retailers don’t have the financial capacity to upgrade their e-commerce platforms to the extent that these giants are able to, finding solutions for sustaining uptime, ensuring fast pages load times, and protecting consumers will all be especially critical for the anticipated increase of the 2020 holiday shopping season. Shopify, which saw enormous revenues in Q2 of 2020, remains the e-commerce platform white label leader, and will likely be the crutch on which many proprietors depend in the coming weeks.

Some e-commerce businesses may also consider invisible technologies like virtual reality and automation processes to enhance the online shopping experience. Or consider social commerce to promote their products — a growing e-commerce channel.

On the delivery side of logistics, e-commerce sellers have some considerations to mull over regarding the cost of shipping, which has risen significantly for air and last-mile delivery. While many sellers spent time and money upgrading their last-mile delivery during the last two years, the pandemic has posed some new supply chain challenges.

Last-mile delivery, which is already considered the most inefficient part of the fulfillment process, will see much more demand from consumers this season — and questions remain if the disrupted supply chains will be able to keep up.

The cost of shipping by air and sea rose by several percentage points during the summer. These increased costs could trickle down to the consumer in some cases, but could also end up as costs that sellers will need to absorb in order to appease shoppers.

Looking Beyond the 2020 Holiday Season

How e-commerce sellers respond to the COVID-19 challenges will dictate what’s to come. Because the pandemic could last well into — and perhaps beyond — 2021, the 2020 holiday shopping season will likely set important precedents both in the market and logistically.

Brick-and-mortar stores may not disappear from our lives entirely, but their slow demise could be hastened by the prolonged imposition of social restrictions brought on as a result of the pandemic.

Before COVID-19, brick-and-mortar stores experienced a gradual decline that matched the increase of e-commerce sales. So with a sustained pandemic, we will likely continue to see the sharp acceleration of e-commerce, where consumers of all generations grow more accustomed to online shopping.

Even recurrent shopping for groceries in the U.S. has now become a booming segment in e-commerce. As this trend continues, logistics will have to adjust, which means predominantly brick-and-mortar retailers will shift their real estate holdings from physical shops to distribution centers for their e-commerce infrastructure.

Only time will tell what happens with the 2020 holiday shopping season, but the developments in e-commerce during the last few years are now blossoming to a greater degree because of the conditions forced by the pandemic.

Charles Darwin famously said it best: “Survival of the fittest.” As the limitations we face pave the way for the dominance of e-commerce, it’s the retailers who can best adapt to the changing logistical and consumer demands that will lead the industry this holiday season and for years to come

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This article first appeared on E-commerce Times on October 8th, 2020:

https://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/The-2020-Holiday-Shopping-Season-Will-Set-Long-Term-Precedents-86871.html

Zoomd enters Q4 2019 announcing several collaborations with large companies on user acquisition projects as part of its continued international expansion efforts.

HERZLIYA, Israel–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Zoomd (TSXV: ZOMD) the leading mobile user-acquisition and site-search platform, is announcing a broader business expansion plans for Q4 2019: Zoomd will be onboarding companies in a variety of industries, including fast-food giant McDonald’s. Other notable names include Ladbrokes, Bet America, Nord VPN, AutoDoc and VuClip. Zoomd will collaborate with these companies on user acquisition projects as part of its continued international expansion efforts. On September 3, 2019, Zoomd went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) as part of its international expansion efforts.