It took only three months for COVID-19 to infect a million people around the world. The coronavirus is dangerous and deadly for both the people and the economy. More than 26 million people lost their jobs during the first five weeks of lockdown.
The pandemic’s global cost could end up being between $2 and $4 trillion, or between 2.3% and 4.8% of the global GDP. There’s a realistic chance we’re heading to a new recession and only 21% of people are ready to handle the situation.
Does this mean that things are completely lost? Not at all.
It just means that if you want to come out of this situation unscathed, you need to do some things to protect your business. If you’re in the eCommerce industry, you even have a good chance of surviving this without a scratch.
How Did the Coronavirus Affect Ecommerce?
The online world is seemingly changing as quickly as the one offline. Last month, Chinese market research has shown that companies are now spending 17.7% more on eCommerce advertising and 22.2% more on social media advertising.
Naturally, since people are spending more time at home, companies are trying to get their attention through the most obvious channel: the Internet. Marketing experts are predicting that online ad spending will either stay at the same level or even increase in the following months.
In the United States, market researchers share the same sentiment. New data suggests that almost 75% of US consumers are likely to avoid offline shopping completely if the pandemic worsens. What’s more, 50% of people think that they’ll avoid real-life shopping even if things get better.
In the countries where the coronavirus struck particularly hard, such as China and Italy, 50% and 30% of customers have been shopping online more frequently. But will this trend die down after a few months? Surely, we can expect things to go back to the way they were before the epidemic, right?
What Will People Do After the Pandemic?
It turns out that this situation may have a long-lasting effect on the habits of modern consumers. A recent study conducted by Kantar suggests that a large share of people will continue to shop strictly online even after the pandemic is long gone.
At the moment, up to 80% of people make half of their monthly purchases online. That number will undoubtedly go down, however, researchers predict that 60% of people in markets such as the US, UK, France, and many others, will continue to do so for a long time.
As opportunistic as this may sound, those numbers give you a perfect chance to capitalize on the changing habits of your consumers and position yourself as a stable source of goods. What do you need to do to separate yourself from your competitors?
Where Does Web Personalization Fit In?
Web personalization has been a hot topic even before we found ourselves stuck in this situation. The topic of personalization has been the most-discussed among marketers for a while now. Seven out of 10 marketing companies have made personalization their number one priority.
Why is it so? How does making your website more personalized help your sales numbers?
Modern customers don’t want to have a sterile relationship with their business of choice. They want to connect with them on a more personal level. In simple terms, they want to have what feels like a personal relationship with the people they do business with.
You can use customer data to personalize their experience and increase revenue.
How to Use Web Personalization
Here are a couple of ways you can use web personalization to attract new customers, guide them through the sales process, and hopefully, turn them into regulars.
1. Goal Detection: Set the Right Goals for Your Business
In order to improve customer experience, you need to have measurable goals. For example, you might want to decrease cart abandonment rates, increase conversions, or boost sales. By setting clear goals, you’ll be able to measure the effectiveness of your personalization efforts much easier.
2. User Profiling: Study the Behavior of Your Shoppers
Knowing your target audience is crucial for your personalization strategy. By recording the behavior of your users, you’ll be able to see how different demographic groups interact with your sales funnel. In turn, this will allow you to tweak your strategy, improve your content, and increase sales.
3. User Journeys: Analyze User Engagement
Let’s say you have an e-commerce business. Why do users visit your site? Their goal is to purchase something off your site. A user journey is a path they take to fulfill that goal. Analyzing the user journey will allow you to optimize your funnel, map out the journey, and speed up conversions.
Improve Your Website Sales Today
As Charles Darwin famously said, a species that survives is the one that’s able to “adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” Or simply put, if you want your job to remain successful you need to find a way to make use of the situation with the resources at hand.
The fact is, despite the pandemic, people still need to buy certain things, and they are mostly doing it online. Even when all of this spills over, that probably won’t change.
Since people who buy online like personalized experiences, you need to cater to their wishes as much as possible. Make sure that your sales funnel is personalized for your customers. That way, they will not only purchase on your site, but they will probably come back to do it again.
