Ecommerce Booms Again. The Rise and Rise of Online Sales.

Image source: Kaiasm Demand Radar showing peaking demand in product categories in the Outdoor & Garden sector.

I’ve lived and worked through two dotcom booms (and crashes) over my digital career and a positive side of the covid-19 pandemic - at least for online retailers - is the huge shift to online sales we’ve seen over the past 4 months and its predicted long-term shift in consumer behaviour. Or, Boom Number 3!

According to research by Growth Intelligence, 85,000 retailers launched online during the lockdown - the largest ecommerce shift ever recorded. IMRG report multi-channel businesses seeing the highest online growth ever during the week when bricks & mortar stores re-opened for the first time in 82 days, with sales sky-rocketing 71% year on year during the week commencing June 14th.

And as we come out of lockdown and life starts to get back to “normal” a quarter of British shoppers - 17.2 million - plan to continue to shop online marking a permanent shift in consumer habits. (Alvarez & Marsal, Retail Economics).

What’s really interesting, although not completely unpredictable, is amongst the successes in food & wine, and [arguably resulting-in] sports equipment sales, the DIY industry - particularly outdoor - has seen an almost unbelievable rise in demand as people invest in making their homes & gardens a happy place to be.

Kaiasm - the ‘knowledge capital’ people - have charted the rise in DIY searches online over the past 5 years, highlighting the last 3 months. Here’s their growth chart for the Garden & Outdoor sector:

Demand Trend: 52-week rolling sum, 5 years to May 2020

Clicking through to the page will show you the detail behind the winners and losers both in terms of search terms - from their Retail Nowcasting insights - and the retailers who rank for those keywords. Their Market Leaderboard from October 2019 to May 2020 tracks the leading domains in the sector and shows a strong performance from Screwfix and Homebase (both of whom use Kaiasm insights across their business) and a worrying trend from some players like George at Asda and niche retailer, DIY Garden. It also shows the hare in the race, ManoMano’s, recent ascent. You can click on any individual domain to see their performance. Watching the movements in their chart over the period is quite mesmerising!

With thanks to Flourish, a Kaiasm partner.

Love it or hate it, Google can make or break your online business. Knowing what your audience is looking for and how they’re searching for it - and optimising your site to deliver it to them - is key to riding this, or any other, online wave.

Get in touch to discuss how you can take advantage of this huge opportunity. From big brands to first-time local shops, Google matters. And… I can help.