In less than four months, Australia’s supply chain and business processes have capsized due to the COVID 19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown.
This unprecedented upheaval has brought us on the verge of radical transformation. With a steep fall in the production and supply processes, we can witness a drastic change in consumer behaviour and their shopping patterns. We are certainly going through a nightmare, but like they say “this too shall pass”. Adapting and soldiering on are the keys to sail through the rough waters!
Ecommerce Sites are the New Norm in the Post COVID World!
In these times of crisis, when most brick and mortar stores have been locked, many retailers have moved to the virtual world. Many have started selling online, restaurants operating completely through takeaway and offering free delivery.
In the last few months, the most ravaged countries like Italy, China, Iran and the USA have seen a surge of around 81%.
In fact, we have seen this shift earlier during the 2003 SARS epidemic. The Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com was a brick and mortar store back then. However, when the SARS epidemic took a hit on the economy, they were looking down the bankruptcy barrel. To save their business from going down the barrel, they started selling their products via various digital forums and chat groups. Its success eventually inspired the entire business to go online and now they are one of the largest B2C ecommerce companies in China.
While SARS was just limited to a few regions in the world, the effects of COVID – 19 has spread far and wide in almost every corner on the globe. According to an estimate, more than 60 per cent of all Australian businesses have been hit by the pandemic. Retailers and restaurants have taken the maximum brunt of this economic downturn.
To ensure their businesses don’t get down to the drains once it’s over, retailers are quickly adapting to this paradigm shift. Most are now looking for ways to implement technology to trade online and to stay relevant.
Considering the current conditions, it is difficult to say how the physical shopping aisles will look and serve in the future. But, there’s one thing that we are sure of and it’s that e-commerce will become inevitable. In fact, it will play even a stronger role in the increasing virtual checkout lanes that eventually drives sales and profit for retailers.
Digitalisation of your retail business will help you balance out the risk by helping to get closer to the customers and still keeping a safe social distance.
With a well-designed ecommerce architecture, you can connect the brick and mortar shopping experience with various crisis proof online channels like web or mobile.
Digitalisation is the New Mantra – What Lies Ahead in a Post Lockdown World
There’s no doubt that COVID 19 has resulted in a shift in the consumer behaviour. There are all the possibilities that a handful of these new habits will stay with us for a long time. Here are few consumer habits that are predicted to influence us for few years to come:
- Online purchasing will inevitably become a prominent channel for consumers. Therefore, it’s essential that brands that aren’t available easily online news to adapt to this new order to survive in the rapidly changing world.
- There will be a rise in consumer restore to their laptops and smartphones to get food from restaurants. Moreover, the weekly grocery shopping will mostly become online. So, going online will help you bounce back and bring back your business on the track.
- With a majority of the population bracing itself for an economic slowdown, it’s likely that purchasing luxuries will decline significantly. Most people would want to stop the discretionary spending to save more. However, it is believed that people will not shy away from spending an above-average amount on products like health, food and medicine.
- Additionally, great media consumption, especially the online video content is predicted to grow even after the pandemic is over. Therefore, brands should consider new ways to reach their target audience. They can target a particular audience demographic via apps like TikTok or YouTube.
Elearning Portal – The New Age Classrooms are Becoming a Reality
With a majority of countries locking down, the education industry has also faced the brunt of this pandemic. With schools and colleges closed for indefinite time, many educators have started adopting the new-age technology to conduct classes.
This paradigm shift has ushered the education industry into a new era! Online learning portals have picked up a pace and will retain its momentum in the future. Going by this trend, it is high time for educators to implement e learning capabilities to reach out to more potential learners. Going digital will not just help the educators, but can assist personal fitness trainers and Yoga instructors to get in touch with their existing students or even get prospective learners on board.
The bottom line here is that adapting your business strategies to meet the demands of today will help you sail through the rough waters.
How Intesols can help?
Intesols offers top-notch eCommerce store development services with the industry leading software and development plans catered to every client’s unique requirements. We have a dedicated team of developers and project managers to ensure our customers receive a successful development process.
We are a leading E-commerce Development company offering a broad range of web development services such as eCommerce web development, mobile app development Woocommerce, Magento, Magento 2 migration, support, and maintenance. Get in touch with us today.
