UK online retail rises sharply as shops reopen

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: UK online retail rises sharply as shops reopen.

Consumer confidence in the UK appears to be rising as online retail grew sharply since the reopening of shops on the 15 June, data from ecommerce expert Emarsys shows.

On the 14th June, the day before the shops reopened, online retail revenue growth stood at 41% compared with this time last year. By the 24th June, however, revenue growth shot up to 88% year on year:

Alex Timlin, senior vice president of verticals at Emarsys, who has been analysing the data, said: “There’s obviously a long way to go to fix the economic damage of Covid-19, but this rise in online retail indicates early signs of a recovery. 

“The challenge for brands who run physical stores now is how to persuade customers to come back to shops when consumers have become accustomed to buying things online during lockdown. The in-store experience is going to be a key factor in driving that footfall.” 

These most recent online customer trends were identified by Covid-19 Commerce Insight, a joint project between leading customer engagement platform provider Emarsys and data analytics provider GoodData showing the impact the impact of Covid-19 on consumer confidence. 

Covid-19 Commerce insight draws on more than a billion engagements and 400 million transactions in 120 countries, providing a global and regional picture of ecommerce activity and trends – a key indicator of overall economic conditions in these unprecedented times. 

Key insights from Covid-19 Commerce Insight include how the pandemic is affecting the number of online consumer transactions, order numbers, the average order value, types of items purchased and more – in any industry and region in the world – in context of the extraordinary measures taken by governments globally.

Methodology 

Covid-19 Commerce Insight is an online commerce tracker commissioned and created by omnichannel customer engagement platform Emarsys, which incorporates data visualisations from GoodData, a proud partner of Emarsys. 

Emarsys provides technology solutions to more than 2,500 brands globally and the ccinsight platform provides an anonymised, daily view of more than 1 billion engagements and 400 million transactions in more than 100 countries – including major global markets such as the US and Canada, UK, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong and Greater China.