As part of the ritual of examining local commerce and SMB Saas strategies, Localogy goes right to the source: SMBs themselves. How do they feel about marketing and operational software? What features do they want? And how has their hunger changed during a global pandemic that has hit local businesses hardest?
Localogy’s upcoming Modern Commerce Monitor wave 6.1 answers these and other questions across the SMB SaaS product set, which we preview in this Benchmark Bytes series. After the last installment examined SMBs’ Covid-era eCommerce adoption, we switch gears this week to their sustained post-Covid adoption.
Specifically, 27 percent of SMBs rate their eCommerce adoption during the pandemic as very important. That’s followed by 25 percent who rate it as moderately important, 19 percent neutral, and 16 percent who say their pandemic-driven tech adoption was extremely important. These answers were given in Q4 2020.
Looking forward, how likely are these SMBs to continue using the eCommerce tools they picked up in 2020? 27 percent are extremely likely to do so. 20 percent are likely, 32 percent are neutral, 17 percent are unlikely and four percent are extremely unlikely. Favor is clearly weighted towards sustained adoption.
What Does it All Mean?
Going a bit deeper, a few things jump out at us:
— If you add up the positive importance rankings above, 68 percent of SMBs reported either extreme, very or moderate importance for their Covid-influenced pivot to eCommerce.
— If we compare this to the negatively-rated importance results, only 12 percent of respondents rated their eCommerce adoption not important at all, of low importance or “slightly important.”
— Things are similarly weighted in the positive direction when looking at aspirational eCommerce adoption. 47 percent of SMBs said they’re extremely likely or likely to continue offering it.
— If we compare that to the lower-likelihood responses, only 21 percent reported they’re either extremely unlikely or unlikely to continue using the eCommerce tools they’ve been driven to adopt in 2020.
— All in all, the positive sentiments towards eCommerce importance and sustained adoption outweigh negative sentiments.
— The definition of eCommerce here is broad. It’s not just ordering products in the way we normally connote “eCommerce.” SMBs are incorporating other types of digital fulfillment such as online classes or lessons (think: music lessons).
— As examined last week, these types of service-based remote fulfillment were the third most popular form of “eCommerce” in the survey.
Time to Shine
Stepping back, eCommerce is having a moment. It continues to grow rapidly as a business category, including its SMB adoption. eCommerce startups are generally thriving with exit velocity, funding, and public-market performance. It’s becoming a leading subsector of the broader SaaS universe.
Meanwhile, new SMB eCommerce users above could represent permanent adopters — a concept that’s accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs are forced to accelerate their digital transformation. This sends them into the arms of SaaS providers to accomplish a range of operational and marketing functions.
We’ll return in the next installment to go deeper on other pandemic-driven areas of SMB technology adoption. That will include top goals and what types of SMBs are adopting. Let us know what additional insights jump out at you from the above data, and stay tuned for more breakdowns in our Benchmark Bytes series.
