Pattern Australia head of customer marketing Kathryn Coleman discusses eCommerce data from 2020.
2020 saw a rise in online adoption greater than we could have ever anticipated with the global pandemic altering the trajectory of the ecommerce industry.
There were winners and losers in 2020, Amazon being one of the major winners, boasting triple profits in Q3 of 2020, and of course the travel industry as whole was a huge casualty.
No one could have predicted what was to come in 2020, and with uncertainty looming in 2021, it is still a little challenging to make assumptions about 2021.
Without a crystal ball, all we can do is look backwards, to look forwards.
Pattern has been monitoring a subset of Australian retail websites since 2014 and analysed the impact of Covid-19 on Australian Ecommerce in 2020.
Here are the top five stats comparing 2020 performance to 2019.
Top Five Ecommerce Stats from 2020
1. +27% increase in Traffic YoY
2. +37% increase in Conversion YoY
3. +73% increase in Revenue YoY
4. -1% decrease in Average Order Value YoY
5. +15% increase in Units Per Order YoY
We saw a strong revenue spike in April as social distancing was enforced, with a +193% lift on the year which continued strong until November, ending the year on a +73% revenue increase compared to 2019.
New traffic also lifted significantly as consumers shifted to online shopping for the first time out of necessity. We saw the biggest impact here in May with a +72% increase in new traffic compared to last year.
Organic Search and Direct were the main traffic drivers in 2020, proving the importance of a strong SEO and SEM strategy.
Retailers and brands must prioritise a One Search Strategy, driving SEO performance through content creation and technical enhancements, whilst bidding on terms that are not yet organically ranking – ensuring strong placement and visibility for your brand within search engines.
Direct and Social saw the biggest traffic increases on the year as many consumers opted to shop with the brands they were familiar with pre-pandemic.
FMCG were the winners in 2020 with health and safety products, shelf stable goods and digital streaming services well positioned growth categories.
Our Amazon Australia client’s in these industries enjoyed a record performance during 2020 Prime Day (October 13-14), with one achieving a 196% increase in orders on the week, and a positive lag effect in the week following the event.
The record performance of Prime Day set high expectations for Cyber Weekend, and for the Australian eCommerce retailers in our benchmark report, it did not disappoint; with revenue +15% compared to the 2019 event.
The four-day weekend of Black Friday through to Cyber Monday were among the top performers for the year in traffic, conversion, and revenue.
Melbourne’s four-month lock down drove historic online adoption with Victorian conversion on average +73% higher than the rest of Australia between July and October 2020 according to our benchmark data.
In 2021, brands must recalibrate and prepare for the possibility of future lockdowns, putting higher pressure on their ecommerce department, logistics and fulfillment.
Looking beyond the impact of the pandemic, in 2021, we will likely see this shift to online spending is permanent, with fundamental changes to the way people work, commute, live and interact with each other.
If you’d like to discuss these benchmark results in more detail or review your digital strategy, please contact us at au@pattern.com.
