Business Matters
By Michael Raine www . canadianmusictrade . com
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PHOTO BY : FREEPIK
SELLING
ONLINE
IN THE COVID ERA
Possibly never has shopping behaviour shifted as suddenly as it has in the last seven months . In the U . S ., online sales increased 42 % year-over-year in August 2020 , which was actually a slowdown from the previous month . Even more dramatically , in August , BOPIS ( buy online , pickup in-store ) sales shot up 259 % year-over-year , according to Adobe Analytics . Ecommerce has , of course , been a larger and larger part of the retail equation for many years , but in March , it suddenly became the only option for any non-essential products , including MI .
“ Some businesses were ahead of the game and were already running online , but a lot of them had to make that shift . With challenges like that , it forces innovation and it forces change in how this retail market works [ and ] with that type of evolution and progress , very rarely does it backtrack ,” says Madison Revell , lead designer at Inbound AV , who has worked with a number of MI retail and pro audio companies on their websites and presented at NAMM U multiple times .
“ Whereas [ six months ago ] you had , ‘ Okay , we ’ re shifting everything online and trying to get that rolling ,’ now you ’ re starting to see a little more balance . Business owners are able to open their brick-and-mortar stores again , yet they ’ ve spent months working on these online platforms and now they ’ re seeing the benefits of having a wider reach , a wider audience , and being able to do business online . You see them doing more of this juggling and balancing between , ‘ Okay , let ’ s have this physical store , but now that we ’ ve seen the benefits and now that customers are used to online orders , let ’ s try to do both .’”
For customers , this involuntary mass shift towards ecommerce has removed any lingering fear or mistrust of online shopping . Those who rarely or never shopped online now have , and those who did but wouldn ’ t previously , say , by large-ticket items online now are . And with this increase in online shopping , Revell says ecommerce platforms have had to adapt . Many of the old best practices still apply , of course , but some strategies have gone from “ recommended ” to “ required ,” and other elements are new and unique to the current circumstances .
64 CANADIAN MUSIC TRADE