Lockdown Effects on Online Shopping

The coronavirus has changed everyone's life. Especially buying our behavior, whether it is clothes or gadgets or even groceries during the lockdown.

After studying the current situation, this lockdown is not going to over soon. Because of that, we can not stop our life and daily routine, right? We have to keep it working but more safely now.

Businesses are working on changes according to customers' behavior, based on their shopping patterns.

How COVID-19 has changed online shopping behaviors

The current coronavirus pandemic and the lockdowns and social distancing measures have had a significant impact on shopping behaviors.

Moreover, some B2C, as well as B2B businesses, have seen a significant uptick in sales and eCommerce activity.

The increase in online sales is raised because people can’t buy them in person.

Not only online sales of these things are increased, but subscription services have also been increased as people are getting bored sitting at home.

Is it safe to buy online?

Firstly, after seeing the infection spreading from anywhere, people are worried to buy online.

Secondly, if they decided to buy, they are thinking of safety guidelines. Because the virus would survive on your purchased products from the time they were packed to the time you received your package.

Many experts stated that there is a very low risk of spread from products or packaging that are shipped over days or weeks.

It is suggested to Keep the products untouched for a few days to be safe.

Effects of lockdown on E-commerce businesses

There are a lot of changes in shopping behavior. It has affected businesses having an online business and not having online business as well.

Businesses with no online presence started online to overcome the situation and to get the benefits of online business growth.

Already having online shopping websites are trying to provide more user-friendly and unique shopping experiences. Competition has also increased for those having online stores, as most of the businesses started online.

Let's take examples,

=> Grocery Shopping:

As the lockdown started, all the local stores become unavailable and unsafe to shop from.

People began to shop all the essential grocery from online stores keeping safety in mind. They also have adopted the BOPIS (buy-online-pick-up-in-store) option to avoid crowds at supermarkets and stores.

If we study the surveys of growth in online grocery shopping, there is a huge & drastic development than ever.

=> Fashion & Apparel:

When it comes to shop clothes, people chose to buy in person to get better quality. Due to this lockdown, sellers are at a loss, as they are avoiding to go and meet personally for buying clothes.

Some of the sellers had to close their store as people sensibly not interested in shopping for clothes in person.

Even online shopping of clothes is less now, as people are using their budget on necessary and daily essentials to use the money on the right thing.

=> Mobile Apps & Subscription Services:

As we can see that online shopping increases, so does mobile applications. All the businesses started selling on websites and applications.

Most of them are for food delivery. People can not go out of the home to eat their favorite food and beverages, so these applications are their saviors if we say so.

Along with these applications, subscription and convenience services, have significant upward in both revenue and conversion.

People are buying more subscription services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and so on to avoid boredom.

=> Changes in Men & Women's shopping behaviors:

It is always seent that women do more shopping than men, right! Well not anymore.

During the pandemic and lockdown situation, women are more concerned about covid effects and being careful while shopping online.

Furthermore, men are doing more shopping than women. They are more likely to avoid in-store shopping and taking advantage of buy online and also pick-up from store options.

=> Payment Gateway Providers:

As online shopping is increasing day by day, a boof and secure payment gateway is an essential key for your eCommerce store.

Shopping cart abandonment is one of the greatest issues that eCommerce merchants facing.

The perfect payment gateway can help you maintain customers by making it simpler and secure for them to check out.

There are so many payment gateway providers in the market which give you the best payment gateways. Such as subscription & recurring payment options, partial payment, deposit payment, and so on.

This requires only a simple setup to become available on your website.

Depending on the industry you are in, you should accept the change and work accordingly.

In Conclusion:

We all are going through the same situation and trying to accept the changes.

Your customers are also trying their best to adapt to the changes in their daily life activities and needs.

All you have to do is, understand your customer behavior and respond to the developing situation.