The Role of eCommerce During COVID-19 and Beyond

By Kiran Ranga Updated: March 4th, 2024 Published on: June 8, 2020

Recessions come and go. Depressions come and go. So do pandemics. Nothing is permanent on this planet earth. Most of us did not anticipate the fierceness of COVID-19 and it’s potential impact on our lives. People are forced to stay home, businesses are forced to close the doors for customers for the fear of virus spread. The virus forced the entire world to come to a standstill.

We, the humans, are resilient. We find ways to bounce back. While the research for a cure / vaccine has picked up the pace, we have the needs to be fulfilled, from daily necessities to luxuries. While the restaurants closed, retail shops scaled down, consumers preferring to turn to online shopping more than ever. The impact of Coronavirus is going to last for a while and aftereffects are still unknown. The biggest impact the virus is going to leave is on the commerce, how we do business going forward.

Impact of COVID-19 on eCommerce Industry

In 2019, eCommerce sales are about $600B in US compared to total retail sales of $3800B. eCommerce is still relatively smaller compared to the retail sales. The COVID-19 situation changed the face of retail sales completely. The shuttering of retail store doors due to virus fears accelerated the online sales. eCommerce giant, Amazon sales rose 26% year-over-year during the first quarter 2020 (during early stages of virus spread). With all social distancing measures and consumers being very cautious and the lack of availability of vaccine in the near future will drive more opportunities for eCommerce businesses.

Connect With Customers: Track the Customer’s Changing Behavior

Consumers have many choices. Many websites to shop from, many retail stores to visit for shopping. Though the current situation is temporary, understanding consumer behavior and presenting right experience (offer or content) to the right person at the right time is key for eCommerce success.

Your success as an eCommerce business profoundly rely on persuading your customer by delivering the best unified experiences across web, email, other online and offline mediums.

How eCommerce Platform and Responsible Marketing Are Related?

Current times are tough for everyone, for consumers, marketers and businesses alike. People rely on commerce more than ever to stay safe amid the social distancing guidelines. Obviously stress is taking a toll on everyone.

In such difficult times, it becomes important for brands to establish an emotional connection with their audience and choose the right tone of message to communicate with them. Create engaging, informative, and useful content that your customers can relate to. Show empathy towards others in your marketing message. Put yourself into their shoes and see if the message would resonate with you.

Bring your online brand in front of your audience. With all the traditional marketing methods are going out of the picture and millions of people spending time on the internet more than ever, businesses need to understand that its important to make their presence felt globally with the right marketing message.

People always make decisions based on emotions. Emotions and empathy always help businesses connect to the customers. Marketers showing empathy in their outreach to the customers will always end up on the winning side. This is why a tighter integration between marketing platforms and commerce platforms is so important as empathy can be added in your marketing messages.

Nextrow’s Role in the eCommerce Landscape:

NextRow Digital is a pioneer in delivering MarTech solutions and Commerce solutions to clients, from end to end implementations to integrations to consulting. NextRow has specializations in SAP Hybris eCommerce, Magento (Adobe Commerce Cloud).

NextRow Magento Services:

Quickstart Packages: We have put together some Magento Quickstart packages to help clients to build stores quickly. This will help you to get up and running quickly, while letting you to customize the store however you like.
Custom Extensions: Whether you are adding custom functionality or enhancing an extension, we will guide you and help you plan the right approach and build extensions.
Replatform to Magento: When your current commerce platform not meeting your expectations, NextRow helps you replatform your commerce application to Magento. Whether it’s a simple replatform or a complex one, you are in safe hands with NextRow.
Magento Development: Whether you are looking for full implementation, or some customizations, or performance enhancements, our certified Magento 2 will be up for the challenge.
Magento Custom Themes: Responsive and customized themes are a great way to attract and retain a visitor on your site. Our templates are thoroughly tested for mobile responsiveness and all major browsers to reduce your testing time.
Magento Integrations: Integrating to 3rd party systems is a must for all Magento clients. We will not leave you high and dry. We ensure you have all your integrations built for your eCommerce site to be successful.
Magento Upgrades & Security: Upgrades are a standard process for any application and Magento is no different. Depending on the versions you are behind and the security concerns, we will devise a plan to ensure interruption free upgrades and patches.