Companies have all experienced this over the last 18 dehe last few months: the impossibility of opening their doors has considerably reduced their sales. For businesses that had not yet taken the plunge into the digital sphere, the health crisis has often been the catalyst that accelerated the transition to e-commerce. But how did they put it into practice?
With just over 200,000 e-commerce players in France by 2021, e-commerce is firmly established in French consumer habits. The connected enterprise has become a standard, revolutionising purchasing behaviour and providing access to a wide range of services.
Following the waves of lockdowns and forced closures of a large number of so-called "non-essential" physical retail outlets, the health crisis, acting as a wake-up call, will at least have contributed to an unprecedented acceleration in the growth of online sales.
SMEs (with fewer than 250 employees) are the first companies to be affected by these upheavals. Christian Delabre, marketing expert for ORSYS, talks to us about the challenges of e-commerce for SMEs.
A change in consumption habits towards e-commerce
Between increasingly powerful technological tools and the need to avoid 'physical' shops, the health crisis has triggered a major change in consumer habits.
In one year (April 2020-April 2021), the growth in sales (around 15 %) took total e-commerce sales to 130 billion euros. That's 13.4 % from the retail sector. (source: FEVAD 2021). This success can be explained by the increasing use of smartphones and tablets in the purchasing process. This is partly due to more advanced technology, but also to greater security on these devices. Indeed, a large proportion of purchases are now made from a mobile device. This puts all companies offside when it comes to digital.
At the same time as this surge in online ordering, the click and collect has become widespread. Favoured by the fact that it was impossible for shops to open, it enabled companies with a strong local presence (particularly in the B-to-C sector) to discover sales techniques that had previously been little used or not used at all, and to begin a genuine process of transition to digital technology.
Generally speaking, consumers were quick to adapt their habits. They made use of the possibilities that already existed: food consumption that was more local, fewer physical sales outlets, and so on. All that was left for retailers to do was to take advantage of these opportunities.
E-commerce in full swing
For many SMEs, the digital transition has become essential to maintaining or continuing their business. But adapting to this new context is not easy.
Faced with giants such as Amazon, the big winner in the face of the pandemic, whose profits have tripled in 2021(Digital CenturyAs we look ahead to 30/04/2021, SMEs are torn between a feeling of powerlessness and a strong desire to do well.
Nevertheless, according to LSA in its July 2021 issue, with its omnipresence on the global e-commerce market, the market place has enabled 13,000 French SMEs to sell their products and benefit from national and international visibility (for 65% of them) that they would not otherwise have enjoyed.
According to E-commerce mag, these market places (Amazon, Ebay, MisterGoodDeal, Rue du Commerce, etc.) are favoured by 52% of French consumers. Hence the growing interest among retailers in this concept. It's a major realisation: digitisation is playing a bigger role than ever in the competitiveness of businesses. Retailers are becoming e-tailers. And it's to support this transition that the public authorities have rolled out a plan to help businesses digitise (clique-mon-commerce.gouv.fr, Paylib, etc.).
Accelerating digital transformation
According to an OpinionWay survey conducted in April 2021, 61% of SMEs with more than 50 employees consider that they are digital because they have a website. But digital transformation does not stop at simply having a merchant site. It requires development and therefore dedicated budgets to improve communication, the customer experience and brand loyalty.
While companies have clearly understood the benefits of digital transformation, there is still much room for improvement. Navigating the digital world requires very specific codes and skills. Properly applied, they contribute in large part to the success of an e-commerce business and to its visibility. Developing a digital storefront requires special attention to be paid to all aspects of a company's digital life: accessibility, e-reputation, cross-channel strategy, search engine optimisation, order tracking, delivery times, responsiveness, customer satisfaction, etc.
To sum up, a website on its own is not the lifeblood of a company's e-commerce business, it's just the shop window.
Website creation becoming more and more accessible
A website alone is no guarantee of success. Nevertheless, it remains a very important channel in an e-commerce strategy. Today's evolving technologies make it possible to create a merchant site in an extremely simple, rapid and cost-effective way, while at the same time meeting the needs of the business as closely as possible. The use of these technologies does not require in-depth technical knowledge: they are truly accessible to all.
The Shopify platform, for example, lets you develop a merchant site in just a few clicks. For a monthly subscription of between €25 and €250 (depending on the options chosen), you benefit from unified management of the various sales channels (Internet, physical shops, etc.).
Other platforms, such as WooCommerce or Magento, are also very powerful, but require a minimum of development knowledge.
E-commerce: the big winner of the crisis
E-commerce has emerged as the big winner from this crisis (excluding the tourism and air transport sectors). The retail sector has even seen extraordinary growth.
Despite this, many SMEs have been able to seize the opportunity to build sustainable models for their future strategic development. In particular, the crisis has enabled them to make a radical transition towards new growth drivers by exploiting the complementary nature of e-commerce and traditional retailing.
For example, the catering sector, which was heavily impacted at the start of the pandemic and traditionally far removed from the digital world, was able to bounce back quickly by offering new services such as order-taking, point-of-sale collection and home delivery.
With this in mind, multi-starred chef Anne-Sophie Pic (who is already very active in the digital world) has created Daily Pic, a French-style 'fast-good' chain. The platform focuses on two key elements: practicality and sustainable development.
There is no shortage of successful examples of SMEs (in all sectors) that have developed a digital strategy. The success of e-commerce is not about to run out of steam.
Train yourself, rethink your strategies, adapt to new markets, respect your customers, constantly innovate, be daring... And as Richard Branson says: "Don't care, just go for it".
