New Commerce Report takes lessons from 2020 to create a roadmap for 2021 success

Despite being battered by a year of lockdowns and COVID-related store closings, retailers are optimistic about the potential of a dramatically different, but prosperous, post-pandemic commerce world, according to a new research report from Signifyd.

Retail leaders see a new era of ecommerce in the year ahead — an era featuring bigger budgets, high growth, aggressive technology investment and a new wave of shoppers introduced to ecommerce in the depths of the pandemic, according to the “State of Commerce Report 2021: Redefining Experiences for a New Wave of Customers.”

The data-rich report, which recounts the ecommerce boom of 2020 and looks ahead to an ongoing digital transformation, includes a survey of 250 retail decision makers. Some key findings include:

• More than 74% of retail decision makers say they are moderately or extremely confident that their enterprises will grow in 2021. Nearly 63% say their online revenue will increase by more than 30% year-over-year.
• Nearly 65% of retail decision-makers say their 2021 ecommerce budgets are larger than 2020, with nearly 16% saying they are much larger.
• Nearly half say their ecommerce initiatives will accelerate or expand in 2021, including 56% who say they will expand curbside pickup and 29% who said they will expand buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS).

“I think the non-traditional takeover of traditional retail will not only continue but also accelerate,” Ollie Marshall, managing director of electronics retailer Maplin, said in the report. “Online retailers are no longer a minor competition to traditional retailers – now.”

Considering 2021, what is your biggest business concern?

Despite their overall optimism, retailers do have concerns — the biggest being a lasting worry about the pandemic and its effects. More than 60% of those surveyed said their greatest worry in 2021 is maintaining health and safety policies born of the pandemic, but deemed necessary even once the pandemic has passed.

Beyond the survey findings, the State of Commerce Report 2021 turns to Signifyd’s Ecommerce Pulse data to detail the mind-boggling transformation of ecommerce. The pandemic, the report says, fueled online spending to a point where it comprised a third of retail sales. Signifyd’s data tracks the evolution of consumer buying habits, vertical by vertical, and includes sales performance for those retail categories.

A year from now, I’ll be shopping differently than I was a year ago because I will be more likely to:

The report also introduces a new wave of online shoppers. Those consumers, turning to ecommerce regularly for the first time in 2020, pumped billions of dollars into the online economy. They also made the case that the pandemic has completely reshaped retail. These shoppers exhibited habits around curbside pickup, cross-border shopping and mobile devices that were clearly different from new-user cohorts that had come before.

The new consumers arrive online along with some challenges. By definition, they are shoppers that online retailers haven’t seen before. Their orders may arrive with idiosyncrasies that mimic signs of fraud, making the job of sifting good orders from bad more difficult. This at a time when Signifyd’s research shows increasing fraud pressure.

For their part, retailers are focused on seizing the new opportunity. They will be investing in ways to provide an excellent customer experience while still protecting the enterprise from fraud and abuse. The report says nearly 76% of retail leaders surveyed said their fraud and abuse prevention efforts contributed to revenue gains in 2020, with nearly 18% reporting that those efforts resulted in “significant revenue gains.” Moreover, nearly 39% said they would be investing more this year in fraud protection platforms, such as Signifyd.