Online sales are booming as people stay at home, place bulk orders and rely on electronic means for everything they rely on.
Some estimates have already placed sales increases in some sectors at more than 50 per cent compared with the same time last year. The number of online shoppers has increased 8.8% since the outbreak began, according to the SaaS platform provider Quantum Metric.
With so many staff working from home, broadband and team-sharing tools such as Microsoft Teams are, in the words of another, “creaking at the seams” as face-to-face networking opportunities and trade shows have been stripped from the calendar.
While everyone from airlines to restaurants are laying of staff industries such as online grocers are actively recruiting staff.
Health charities and insurance companies are receiving unprecedented enquiries from people seeking advice and are under immense pressure to provide up-to-the minute information.
What is clear is that a lot more activity is going on online and that things are changing fast while businesses rush to keep up and keep their heads above water.
Leadoo has seen not only its customers’ web traffic but conversions – be that online sales or new contacts – increase “monumentally” over the past few days.
As an example, the company reported a 223 per cent increase in customer traffic on Monday and a 55 percent increase in conversions. Tuesday saw a further 15 per cent rise in customer traffic.
Santtu Kottila, Chief Marketing Officer and Co-Founder said: “Everyone predicted that the giants of e-commerce would benefit most from people working from home and not going out to shop and so on, but our customers are mainly SMEs and the data we are seeing from their websites shows that there is also a flurry of traffic and conversions on SME websites.”
Kottila believes that over the next few months online behaviors will change significantly and possibly permanently as many are predicting a long term working from home revolution as more people get used to buying new and different products and services online and accessing information in new ways.
Leadoo MT itself is seeing unprecedented interest in its chat bot services from businesses wanting to maximise their online business and engagement in the absence of face-to-face opportunities.
