New data from Adobe puts a number on the huge pandemic-driven acceleration of e-commerce over the past year. Some key takeaways:
- COVID-19 gave e-commerce a $183 billion boost from March 2020 to February 2021, about the same amount spent online during the 2020 holiday season.
- The “Buy Now, Pay Later” payment method and “Buy Online, Pick Up In Store (BOPIS)” have both grown in popularity. Buy Now, Pay Later was up 215% year-over-year from January to February of this year; BOPIS was up 67% year-over-year in February.
- Online grocery shopping was up 230%, when comparing Feb.1 to Feb. 21 of this year to Jan. 6 to Jan. 26 of 2020, before the pandemic.
These trends are huge tailwinds for e-commerce companies including Seattle-based Amazon, which set a record with $125.6 billion in sales during the holiday quarter, as well as startups building tech to power online shopping services such as Stripe, Shopify, and a flurry of others (including many based in Seattle).
“The pandemic produced a rare step change in online spending, equivalent to a 20 percent boost, and future growth is expected to build off of this gain,” the report noted.
Adobe projects online spend between $850-$930 billion this year, and says 2022 will be the first trillion-dollar year for e-commerce. Online spending is already up 34% year-over-year through the first two months of 2021.