Where We Are and Where We’re Going: Top Insights from The Shopping Index Report
What’s to come for ecommerce companies moving forward
The best way to chart a path forward is to understand what you are likely to face and plan for it. In business, that means keeping an eye on all of the trends in your industry, analyzing data collected by yourself or others, and letting the insights available to you be your guide.
One of the most popular places to find insights is through industry reports put together by large organizations that have access to billions of data points. The Shopping Index is one of those reports. The report is published quarterly by Salesforce and contains information about consumer behavior, shopping activity across numerous platforms, and a look into how different industries are performing.
In one of the most recent Shopping Index reports, Salesforce collected information from more than one billion global shoppers in order to paint an accurate picture of what the world of ecommerce looks like and where it could be headed. On a recent episode of Up Next in Commerce, we broke down exactly what that report says with two of the people who helped put it together. Caila Schwartz is the Senior Manager of Strategy and Insights, Retail and Consumer Goods at Salesforce and Ann Marie Aviles is the Senior Associate of Industry Strategy & Insights at Salesforce, and together, they have compiled and then parsed this report with a fine-tooth comb to divulge some of the most interesting aspects exclusively here. So what is ahead for the holiday season? How much of the consumer behavior adopted during the pandemic will stick around? And why do people stay loyal to a brand?
Here are some of the top insights.
- Mobile Ordering is Here to Stay
For the last few years, mobile shopping has been on the rise. In 2020, thanks mostly to the pandemic, mobile ordering spiked across industries. And even though average order value is lower on mobile, mobile is the leading driver of overall ordering. That trend will not be going away even after the COVID-19 crisis is behind us. What that means is that smart business owners should be prioritizing the creation of seamless mobile experiences.
2. Shoppable Video Is On Its Way
Around the world, and especially in Asia, there has been an influx of video platforms being used as shopping channels. While customers are watching a video, or a fashion show or are scrolling through a video social platform and see something they like, having the ability to buy it right there from the video is the next step in ecommerce.
3. Social Media Will Continue to Expand as a Shopping Channel
Millions of hours are spent on social media every day by consumers all over the world. Especially in younger generations, social media is becoming more than just a place to connect and share. In fact, since the pandemic started, 63% of US millennials said they had made a purchase over social media. To meet this demand, many social media companies have deployed shopping integrations into the platform, but there will be even more expansions in the future.
4. Digital Adoption Is Often Permanent
Every year starts with a baseline of digital shopping metrics, and every year those baseline numbers are ticking up. What the data shows is that when consumers adopt new digital behaviors, they tend to stick with that behavior. As every holiday season passes, and more people shop online, those customers are maintaining that online behavior long-term. Each holiday season can be viewed as a stepping stone in digital growth. The holiday season can create a new normal if you have a strategy to meet demand and then retain the consumer.
To learn even more about recent consumer behavior and how it will affect business in the future, check out Up Next in Commerce.
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