New research from e-commerce cloud platform Yottaa examines online retail trends based on feedback from some of the biggest brands in the industry. Although this year the majority of respondents were from brands generating greater than $200M in online revenue annually, over 40 percent of respondents in the firm’s new 2022 eCommerce Executive Key Initiatives Survey Report represent smaller brands.
Top focus for 2022—online revenue growth
More than half of survey respondents said their brands experienced online revenue growth of between 26 percent and 50 percent in 2021. Eighty-seven percent of brands are looking for year-over-year increases in conversion rates of between 5 percent and 15 percent in 2022.
Other top ecommerce initiatives
Include maximizing return on e-commerce technology investments (56 percent), optimizing shoppers’ digital experiences (48 percent), and decreasing page load times (47 percent).
Top investment areas
Brands are investing more in customer acquisition, data security, improving site speed, and site analytics.
Significant customer acquisition investments
More than 79 percent of brands are investing 25 percent to 50 percent more in customer acquisition than in previous years. That’s an increase of $125,000 per month for the average brand. Survey respondents stated they are planning to spend between $300K and $450K per month on customer acquisition.
Brands are beefing up online security
One of the top e-commerce investment areas is data security/privacy. Why? Sixty percent of online shoppers say they won’t do business with a brand that has experienced a data breach in the past 12 months.
Large retail brands are doubling down
The e-commerce heavy hitters are spending money to make money in 2022. The focus is on investing in digital experience and maximizing online ROI. Seventy-two percent of large retailers will increase their investment in e-commerce initiatives by 25 percent or more in 2022.
Fast site speed is crucial to growth
Over 86 percent of respondents acknowledge that site speed is one of the most important factors in e-commerce success. This is a big change from 2021 when 53 percent of brands were unaware that over 50 percent of shoppers will leave a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Improving site speed by just 1 second can increase conversion rates by 5.7 percent and reduce bounce rates by 12.2 percent.
Amazon: Has the king been dethroned?
In 2021, 33 percent of respondents to this survey viewed Amazon as a competitor. Fast forward 12 months, and only 11 percent of brands view the retail giant as a competitive threat. What changed? Fifty-seven percent feel that recent innovation and investments in e-commerce sites and digital experience have leveled the playing field for brands to compete with Amazon.
To re-platform or not to re-platform
Forty-three percent of respondents stated that their brands are re-platforming. Where are they going? The top five choices are Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Netsuite, Oracle Commerce Cloud, SAP Hybris, and Shopify Plus.
“After the unprecedented, explosive growth of 2020 and 2021, online brands are squarely focused on continuing growth in 2022,” said Rich Stendardo, CEO of Yottaa, in a news release. “Now in its fifth year of publication, the annual eCommerce Executive Key Initiatives Survey Report provides a roadmap for online growth in 2022 through direct insight from some of the industry’s biggest brands. The key initiatives outlined in this report, from increasing customer acquisition spend to improving page load speeds, will help all online brands achieve their growth goals in the next 12 months.”
Download the full report here.
The objective of the research, which contains data from questions answered by 128 executives from leading ecommerce brands across a wide range of vertical markets, was to gather data from online retail executives to identify their key e-commerce initiatives for 2022. The research was collected both online and via telephone during February of 2022.
