US retail is expected to increase in 2020. Even with the pandemic and the expected decrease of spend in brick and mortar locations total sales are expected to increase 0.90%. Increased eCommerce will offset the losses in traditional brick and mortar shopping (eMarketer, Oct 2020). While eCommerce had certainly been making an impact on holiday shopping in the last few years, the pandemic created more opportunity for online transactions.

At the onset of the pandemic, curbside pick-up surged 208% in April and eCommerce saw a 49% increase in March (CNBC). The pandemic has sped up our adoption to online ordering and eCommerce – it is now easier than ever for consumers to buy what they need with a click of the mouse. Likely these changes are here to stay. Many local retailers have been working hard to make their sites eCommerce-compatible to stay competitive and to keep their businesses open and thriving as we work our way through the pandemic.

This corresponds well to digital campaigns. While in-store tracking (footfall attribution modeling) had become popular right before the pandemic, fewer feet in stores and future changes to mobile tracking have made this type of tracking trickier and less reliable. eCommerce, on the other hand, provides a digital place for conversions to take place.

With the use of conversion pixels, we can more easily confirm the success of a digital campaign when all aspects of the consumer’s journey take place online. eMarketer agrees, stating that eCommerce properties have the advantages of shopping and intent data on the targeting side plus closed-loop attribution for measurement and optimization. While the pandemic has brought about many hardships, it has also forced retailers to make the shift online—and from a digital sales perspective, this can only mean good things as we set our goals for 2021. www.zp-pdl.com