How are SMBs Adopting and Integrating eCommerce?

SMB SaaS Survey

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 in a pandemic? This is all a moving target.

Localogy’s Modern Commerce Monitor (MCM) answers these website dynamics questions across SMB SaaS, which we preview in this Benchmark Bytes series. After examining how SMBs’ feelings and familiarity with cryptocurrency last week, we switch gears to look at their eCommerce adoption

Specifically, how have SMBs adopted eCommerce functionality to replace or augment their physical store sales? We’ve heard a lot about how the pandemic accelerated this digital transformation for SMBs, but how is it playing out in practice? The short answer is that SMBs have been considerably adoptive.

Localogy members can access full charts and SMB survey reports. Non-members can purchase reports

Data Dive

Going deeper, a few insights jump out from these findings.

– 45 percent of SMBs surveyed say that they adopted eCommerce functionality during the pandemic in order to adapt to restrictions and/or consumer behavior.

– Though this represents a minority, it’s still notable in that almost half of SMBs raised their eCommerce game in the past three years.

– This is an adoption inflection that far outpaces normal cycles of new tech adoption among SMBs.

– This is also one of many pandemic “silver linings” in terms of accelerating SMB digital transformation.

– The big question is what new muscles SMBs have developed, and how that primes them to be more competitive and digitally savvy in a post-Covid world.

– Anecdotally, we’ve observed that many SMBs that picked up new skills and competency during the pandemic didn’t stop using those new tools as Covid recedes.

– As we’ve examined, the result may be a new flavor of Darwinism across the SMB sector where companies are fire-tested and more tech-savvy overall.

– One practical outcome of all that: the bar has been raised among SMBs for digital marketing and operational excellence.

– Another key question is if this new set of standards ends up forcing non-adopters (the 55 percent represented above) to pick up digital tools to stay competitive and meet the baseline for industry a new industry standard.

– We’ll venture to answer this question in subsequent survey waves and in broader SMB sector analysis.

– We’ll also host a panel discussion at L23 in April on this topic of the “New Face of SMBs.”

The New Face of SMBs: A Conversation with Yelp

Time to Shine

Stepping back, SMB online marketing – website-based or otherwise – continues to grow rapidly.  SMB SaaS startups and online services providers are correspondingly thriving as it continues to grow as a leading subsector of the broader SaaS universe. There’s a long-tail opportunity at play.

Meanwhile, new SMB SaaS users could represent permanent adopters. This is a concept that’s accelerated in the Covid era as SMBs are forced to boost their digital transformation. This sends them into the arms of SaaS providers to accomplish a range of marketing and operational functions.

We’ll return in the next installment to go deeper into Localogy original survey research. That will include SMB goals and success factors. Let us know what additional insights jump out at you from the above data. Stay tuned for more breakdowns in our Benchmark Bytes series.

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