How are online stores coping with the coronavirus crisis?
Forums for marketers are buzzing with comments and information exchange - drops on the stock market and drops in SEO - writes Adam. For offline training and restaurants - ads suspended - adds Tomasz. Everyone is noticing viewership declines. When on Wednesday, March 11, it was announced that school classes would be cancelled starting the following week, mass buying of long-shelf-life food began in supermarkets and discount stores. Customers left their computers, and eCommerce owners felt a chill down their spines.
As part of the study, data from selected YouLead Sales & Marketing Automation clients from the eCommerce industry was analysed between March 9-16, 2020. The goal was to check what impact the coronavirus pandemic had on their operations.
Viewership declines:
YouLead Sales & Marketing Automation clients are online stores recording anywhere from a few thousand to several hundred thousand visits per month. For one of the larger YouLead clients, during the analysed period the number of users visiting the website dropped by 26%, and interestingly, at the same time the number of sessions increased by nearly 6%. The chart below illustrates a comparison of the number of users from March 9-16 to the equivalent Monday-to-Monday period in the previous week:
Fig. 1. Drop in the number of users March 9-16, source: YouLead client
Viewership declines
Other analysed clients recorded drops in user numbers ranging from 3% to 38%. For some clients, a slow upward trend appeared:
Fig. 2. Increase in the number of users from March 16, source: YouLead client
Viewership growth thanks to an e-mail campaign:
Growth thanks to mailing
It is worth citing here the example of one YouLead client who, during this difficult period, decided to send a mailing to the mailing base gathered with the help of YouLead. As a result, during the analysed period the number of users increased by 38% compared to the previous week, which helped recover part of the lost sales.
Fig. 3. Increase in the number of users after sending the mailing, source: YouLead client
Turnover:
Turnover in crisis
During the analysed period all YouLead clients recorded a drop in turnover; the scale of the declines depended on the industry and ranged from 21 to as much as 52%. The clothing industry recorded the largest drops. Only electronics recorded increases of 6 to 7%. It is also encouraging that already on 16.03, compared to the previous Monday, a significant portion of clients saw an increase in turnover. The declines compared to the previous Monday amounted to only a few percent, and some companies recorded significant turnover increases, amounting to between 26 and as much as 39%.
Below is a chart from one of the clients whose turnover is returning to the level from a week earlier:
Fig. 4. Increase in turnover from March 16, 2020, source: YouLead client
Recovering abandoned carts:
Carts still work
YouLead clients, despite the drop in turnover caused by the market situation, are still benefiting from marketing automation mechanisms. The analysis shows that although customers' willingness to finalise transactions has decreased, the mechanisms recovering abandoned carts and recommending products work well and still increase turnover for YouLead clients. During the analysed period, as much as 15% of turnover came from YouLead's abandoned cart recovery mechanisms, whereas in the period preceding the coronavirus crisis, turnover coming from this mechanism amounted to as much as 24%.
eCommerce with hope
After a temporary collapse, the first statistics allow us to look at the eCommerce market with hope, which is confirmed by a review of YouLead clients' statistics, which after sharp declines in the previous week, on Monday and Tuesday achieved an upward trend, although most of them have not yet returned to the level from the period preceding the national quarantine.
The material contains examples taken from the statistics of YouLead Sales & Marketing Automation clients - software that increases sales and marketing effectiveness thanks to unique capabilities of influencing customers' purchasing decisions. The system operates on the website, in the e-mail channel, webpush and sms, and enables, among other things: rescuing abandoned carts, increasing cart value through up-selling and cross-selling, as well as product recommendations via www/e-mail/WebPush and customer activation. Acquiring contacts for the mailing list is, thanks to YouLead, up to 2x faster thanks to personalised forms. The software also works in industries that acquire Leads from websites and generates
The above text should be understood as a case study, not a market analysis, because there is still too little data on customer behaviour in this difficult period for the economy.
Krzysztof Piądłowski, ys
Concepts from the article
SEO — Search Engine Optimization. A set of technical and editorial activities improving the understanding, indexing and visibility of pages in search engines. It covers content, structure, metadata, linking, performance and structured data.
Why it matters: It determines whether content will be found at all: search engine ranking is today the main source of free traffic. Technique, structure and content work together here.
When it is applied: Constantly: when writing content, building a website, during migrations (redirects!) and visibility analysis.
What the omission risks: Without optimization, even a great article lands on the tenth page of results — traffic must be bought with ads or it simply doesn't exist.
Summary
The YouLead case study from March 2020 shows that the pandemic caused online stores to see user drops of 3–38%, and turnover drops of as much as 52% – most painfully in fashion. The exception was electronics with increases of 6–7%, and some companies were already making up losses on March 16 (increases of 26–39%). Mailings and marketing automation also proved effective, e.g. abandoned cart recovery generated up to 15% of turnover, although before the crisis it was as much as 24%.
An interesting fact is that despite a 26% drop in the number of users, the number of sessions increased by 6%, which suggests deeper engagement among buyers. The author stipulates that this is a case study, not a market analysis – there is still too little data.
