During confinement, many companies had to close their respective stores, regardless of the type of business. Only the basic necessities were saved, but the rest were forced to make a decision: sell online or not sell. The digital sector has given many exits to companies that offered services or products in commercial premises. In today’s post we will talk about how businesses have relied on the digitization of their company to save or even in some cases increase income during the period of confinement and how the future is expected.
Sectors that bet on digitization
An example could be the restaurant sector, they saw how their premises had to be closed for security and even when they have been able to open they have had to do so with a percentage of the capacity, this caused large losses or lack of profitability. Only the premises that launched digitalisation through registration in any of the home delivery food applications or that activated this service through their website have managed to save themselves and be able to resume activity more normally. According to a study it has been detected that “the establishments that continued to operate increased between 40% and 50% their orders”, according to data from Just Eat. This whole process caused new contactless delivery methods to be created and even activation times within these platforms to be reduced within 3 days.
Another very clear example has been the local stores that were dedicated to the sale of electrical appliances or small electrical appliances. These types of companies have achieved sales records in these months, surpassing even the special days of the year such as Black Friday or the Christmas campaign. In general, there has been an increase of 138.5% in electronic transactions, this encouraged investment in payment campaigns by both Google ads and RRSS such as facebook and instagram. These campaigns had very good results, since higher viewing and interaction data were seen during confinement than in the previous period. All this has ensured that many of the companies that had various locations in different cities have been able to keep payments up to date and even return stronger from confinement.
Lastly, one of the sectors with the greatest growth during confinement has been food and beverages. Some companies in this sector even canceled the possibility of making purchases through their website due to the collapse in the preparation and delivery of orders. In the beverage sector, an increase was also reflected both in consumption and directly in online sales. Before this crisis, low-grade beverages represented 43% of consumption within the home, now they constitute 70%, according to the study. from Nielsen. This made the e-commerce or market place for the sale of alcoholic beverages such as wines increased their sales by 31%. In contrast, vermouth was close to doubling its sales, and whiskey and spirits experienced increases of around 20%.
One of the conclusions that we can draw from these months is that the COVID-19 and the forced confinement has caused users to lose their fear of online shopping. For all this, it is the perfect time to encourage you to set up your own online store and join the change in consumer behavior and achieve greater visibility for your business and even better results. One option that we recommend is that you always stay up to date with the news and financial aid launched by the chamber of commerce. Last week the term of the aid for the creation of online businesses ended, but now you still have available the digital xpande aid, which is focused on reinforcing strategies for selling abroad.
