Imagine what it means for a business that in just four days the demand for its products increases by 400%. This was what happened with stationary bikes on very specific days that changed us forever: during the start of the confinement in March 2020.

Then, thousands of citizens used online shopping to get in shape at home or to get more comfortable clothes, which meant an e-commerce 'boom' like nothing had been seen before.

Far from seeming like an eventual situation, the data shows that the habit of buying online has been consolidated. The last Christmas campaign has served to verify this by revealing itself as the Christmas period with the most online purchases in history.

50% more has been sold through e-commerce, which means that consumers have spent 1.1 billion dollars online worldwide. These are the data collected in the 2020 Holiday Shopping Report by Salesforce, the leading multinational in cloud-based on-demand software focused on customer relationship management (CRM).

To prepare the report, Salesforce has analyzed the data of more than 1,000 million buyers in more than 40 countries during the Christmas sales campaign, between November 1 and December 31, 2020, thanks to its Commerce Cloud tool.

The rise of e-commerce at Christmas

Interest in buying sporting goods has also continued. You just have to remember that during the Christmas campaign, revenue from this type of item grew by 108% compared to the previous year. Other sectors that have benefited the most from e-commerce have been household items, which experienced an increase of 89%. The Salesforce report also detects growth, albeit lower, in retail e-commerce: clothing purchases in general grew by 40%, footwear by 39% and sportswear by 35%.

The bulk of all these online purchases were concentrated at the end of the year, although retailers started discounts and promotions earlier, at the beginning of October. Specifically, the total digital sales of Cyber ​​Week, in November of last year, reached 270,000 million dollars worldwide, while in the first two weeks of December, 181,000 million dollars in global sales were generated.

The number of shoppers looking to pay for Christmas gifts in installments grew by 109%

Faced with this expense, e-commerce consumers decided on financing options. The number of buyers looking to pay for Christmas gifts in installments grew by 109% over the previous year, with the largest increase occurring during the week before Christmas, according to the aforementioned report.

The response of the businesses

How to Increase Iron Absorption from Foods: https://t.co/XqBttgdLV6 #iron #absorption #nutritionforest #green… https://t.co/hKKJNWvd5J

— Nutrition Forest Sat Jul 29 15:43:21 +0000 2017

The great increase in e-commerce sales has not benefited all businesses equally. Some have been able to get more out of the situation than others by offering other services. An example of this is that the businesses that offered different collection options, such as the one that is done in store, grew almost twice as fast as those that did not.

Salesforce studied how retailers with curbside, drive-thru or in-store pickup options outperformed those without these services, responding to already overwhelmed shipping systems. consumer demand for more security.

Merchants that offered different pickup options, such as in-store pickup, grew nearly twice as fast as those that didn't

If we look at the case of the United States, analyzed by Salesforce, retailers that offered these collection options increased their digital income by 49% compared to the same period of the previous year, while those that did not have this service experienced growth less than 28% year-on-year.

Additionally, those that offered multiple pickup options saw 54% growth in digital revenue in the five days leading up to Christmas, compared to 34% growth for those that didn't.

Customers are expected to return more than $330 billion in online purchases worldwide

It is a challenge that has forced “retailers and brands to innovate rapidly with the introduction of services such as collection at the store door and have focused heavily on social networks, messaging and streaming to reach shoppers in innovative ways,” says Rob Garf, vice president of Retail Industry Strategy at Salesforce.

How to face the challenges

With physical stores closing due to the pandemic, retailers had to expand their e-commerce operations, and many of them found useful tools in Salesforce, such as the Commerce Cloud. Thanks to this solution, Salesforce customers were able to deal with more than 204 million online orders, which means that digital sales driven by this platform grew by 76% compared to the previous year.

Additionally, Salesforce services enabled retailers to offer their shoppers fast, easy, and personalized digital experiences. One of the solutions that made it possible to do so was the Marketing Cloud.

Thanks to it, global marketing communications have experienced a general increase: a total of 7,200 million push notifications, 3,700 million SMS messages and 129,000 million emails have been sent during the entire season that has been studied.

Retailers, thanks to Salesforce services, offered shoppers fast, easy and personalized digital experiences

The Salesforce Einstein Intelligent Assistant is another tool that demonstrates the importance of artificial intelligence, as it has continued to play a key role in how consumers shop around Christmas. Einstein generated 11% of digital orders, growing 25% compared to the previous year, according to Salesforce.

This high volume of operations has an impact on the work of agents, who have handled more than 14.5 billion cases and received more than 946 million customer service calls this holiday season, all through the Salesforce Service Cloud. A tool, therefore, decisive for interaction with the consumer.

“We hope that all these innovations will remain in 2021 and that the strategies that have been promoted during the holidays will become the new standard that shoppers expect from their favorite stores and brands”, concludes the vice president of Salesforce.

How to attract your customers thanks to empathy