With greater choice, value, and convenience, online shopping is taking the UK by storm, with almost 20% of all purchases now taking place online.
Although day-to-day we probably don’t think about the overall impact of our inclination to turn to Amazon before our local high street, we’re sadly now starting to see more and more shops - that we thought we could always rely on to be there - close down as a result.
We recently ran some research using retail sales data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) because we wanted to see how prominent internet shopping has become in recent years – and what this will mean for the future of bricks and mortar retail.
While online spending varies throughout the year (with expected spikes around Christmas for example) it has grown dramatically since 2007. 11 years ago, the average number of online sales as a proportion of all retail was just 3.3% while so far this year, online sales already account for 17.5% of all retail transactions. This represents a 1.29% average growth every year.
Now common sense would suggest that with constant digital innovation, year-on-year growth is only set to speed up, but even if we did continue to follow this trend of 1.29% growth each year, a quarter of all retailing will be done online by 2024! It’s starting to make sense now why we’re slowly but surely losing our high street…
By 2044 half of all purchases will be carried online, and by 2082 we’ll eventually hit 100%.
In reaction to these findings, our Founder and CEO Andy Soloman, commented:
“As a company that has pioneered innovation in business through technology, we welcome any development that can help improve a business, both from a professional and consumer standpoint. This research shows how prominent technology and the internet is becoming in our day-to-day shopping habits, and further innovation to the retail sector could even see the high street struggle to compete a lot sooner than these figures suggest.
However, we believe the human element is absolutely vital in commerce - even with the best technology - and particularly when dealing with complex customer enquiries. Rather than the high street becoming obsolete, we like to believe it will survive and evolve to deal with the changing face of consumer behaviour as people will always value that personal aspect that a physical shop provides.
What’s perhaps more important for high street retailers to consider, is how they not only pivot with the times, but integrate a successful solution into their current offering to accommodate a growing preference for customers to approach and engage with their business online. This could be through a more engaging website, web-based contact options such as automated contact forms, a well-formed FAQs section or a managed live chat service. The internet isn’t going away, but there’s more than enough room for everyone to exist and to use it to our benefit.”
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