With Covid-19 having a dramatic impact on the high street and shopping centers across the world for almost one year, more and more companies are turning their attention online to boost sales.
While online marketing is not new, businesses have been using social media advertising, SEO and affiliate marketing for over a decade, but the pandemic has given a number of companies that push they needed to move their businesses online.
In many cases, both consumers and sellers have had no choice other than to transact online, since in many ways it was the only way to access products or continue trading as a business. The frontrunner in this area is of course, Amazon, that despite being a dominant force in the UK for so long, still continues to boost sales by 51% in 2020 alone.
Creating Online Stores and Driving Them
High street stores have continued to push online, using the likes of Shopify and Wordpress as their platforms to sell their items, from clothing, equipment, electronics and jewelry.
Some companies have made the slow transition from bricks and mortar to online stores, cataloguing all their products and putting them up for sale online. This includes retail specialist, Aaron Jonah, one of the largest suppliers for jewelry and cufflinks for department stores in the UK, which has just reached its own online store, after 15 years of trading.
An example was Primark, the UK’s version of Target, who never sold online or had an online presence until last year, despite 2019 revenues of almost $10 billion.
Facebook marketing has been one of the biggest ways to drive sales, with Facebook’s revenues reaching $85 billion in 2020 and expected to rise to $100 billion in 2021, with an increase in 12% of users in the last year.
Instagram has also skyrocketed, with very low barriers to entry to starting an online busy. Entrepreneurs can create a page with a name and a logo and they are in business straight away.
Consumers and households have looked online to acquire products that they could not buy in store, either due to lack of accessibility during Covid-19 or due to no availability of the product.
There has been a huge popularity in laptops and printers, helping those who continue to work remotely.
Almost every citizen has bought PPE in some shape or form, either as masks for their household or visors, separators and equipment for their businesses. For more information about PPE, you can read about Steve Dechan, Platform-14, a leading industry supplier specializing in medical devices for those suffering with chronic pain difficulties.
Additionally, gym products such as weights and yoga mats and board games and puzzles for those family lockdown days.