Retail sales are facing the steepest decline ever recorded, as they are down 8.7% in March. In April, e-commerce has been seeing unprecedented growth, which has been aided in part by government stimulus payments. Data has been released by Adobe, Shopify and PayPal over the past week, each reflecting the scale of e-commerce gains and even “Black Friday” level traffic transactions.
Adobe’s new “Digital Economy Index” released March 12 finding that e-commerce grew sequentially by 49% and individual categories experienced even higher growth. Daily online grocery sales are up 110% and electronic is up 58%. This data is from“trillions of transactions, tens of millions of products, and thousands of retailers.”
According to Adobe, buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) orders were up over 200% year over year in April. This type of transaction form, along with an online purchase and offline fulfillment is a metaphor for a digitally integrated future retail can be.
Adobe said that prices have stayed in check or deflated, with the exception of electronics and online groceries. On the opposite side of things, online clothing prices experienced “the largest April price decrease in years.”
In the 2020 earnings report for Q1, Shopify beat analysts’ exceptions and announced annual revenue growth of 47% and gross merchandise volume increases of 46%. But in-store transaction fell 71% due to store closures.
In April, Shopify CTO Jean-Michel Lemieux tweeted that the company was experiencing “Black Friday level traffic every day” and adding “thousands” of merchants to the platform during the pandemic.