The consumer electronics industry is a rapidly evolving industry. Its ever-changing nature means brands must stay alert and be up-to-date with the recent trends in the space. Since the pandemic, many industries, including consumer electronics have seen a rise in eCommerce penetration and activities. Many consumers adjusted to working from home earlier this year, and there was a significant growth in the demand for home office equipment such as headphones, and video conferencing equipment. Consumer electronics is one of the most popular verticals during Prime Day as consumers rush to find deals.

It is rumoured that Amazon Prime Day 2020 is going to take place in early October this year. With the biggest shopping festivals around the corner, we at ChannelSight have sought to present the top trends for consumer electronic brands in 2020.

Trend #1: Mobile eCommerce Rises

Modern consumers research, explore, and purchase products with the aid of digital experiences. Many shoppers in various countries and markets shop for consumer electronics products from their phones. In 2019, Statista estimated that by the end of 2021, 73% of eCommerce sales will take place on a mobile device.  With this in mind, your website and apps should have a robust responsive design and offer the best possible purchase journey to your customers. 

It is also reported that many experienced shoppers undertake some degree of planning in advance, compared to spontaneous shoppers, ahead of Amazon’s sale weekend. “75% or more of all consumers in the markets surveyed say they will be researching potential purchases ahead of the game.” Hence, your product purchase journey on various retailers’ websites along with your brand’s website must be seamless and effective.

Trend #2: Digital Touchpoints get more competitive than ever

In the consumer electronics space, with increasing competition, brands need to make their products stand out. This can be done by offering strategic deals and encouraging users to buy your product.

One of the best ways to win over your competitors and grow trust and familiarity with your customers is to offer a seamless path to purchase. Converting consumers on your site is of prime importance for brands. This means optimising your product pages and making them stand out across all of your marketing channels, especially on Amazon. There are various organic and paid channels and various devices through which your customer might enter your product listing on Amazon. Making sure all these digital touchpoints offer your consumers a personalised purchase journey through your site is the key to winning the digital shelf. 

To understand and read the best strategies to win the digital shelf, you can read our existing blog on ‘The Big Fight: Winning The Digital Shelf’. 

Trend #3: Work from Home and School for Home Drives Conversion

As outlined in the heading, specific categories within the consumer electronics vertical are driving conversions in 2020. In this ‘new reality’ or the ‘new normal’, many consumers have adopted a new work schedule in their home-offices. At ChannelSight, we are uniquely positioned to provide insights and data into the emerging trends in the eCommerce ecosystem. Within our data we saw some interesting buying patterns. There was a huge spike in the traffic and conversion data for consumer electronics as shown below in the graph. 

Around April and May, we saw traffic hitting 60+% growth and baskets generations growing by 150+% YoY. The growth in March and April was dictated by increased sales conversions in different consumer electronics categories such as office peripherals (monitors, headphones, webcams) and also CE essentials such as laptops, desktops. 

According to the report by Criteo, the category growth index report for the US suggests a massive spike in online sales for webcams, modems, monitors and other office equipment.

Trend #4: Product bundling is made for Amazon

As mentioned in trend #2, strategic deals can help brands win over their competition. On this Amazon Prime Day, seize the opportunity to offer product bundles to your customers. It offers increased savings and convenience to the consumer. This in turn helps your brand and Amazon sell more products together. Happy customer, happy brand, happy Amazon! The main rule on bundles is that they consist of complementary items that enhance the overall customer experience when sold together.

There are endless opportunities for bundles. Our product-level insights provide great inspiration for them. For example, you sell keyboards and see many consumers are purchasing a mouse and a monitor with your keyboard. The logical move here is to create a discounted ‘one-stop-shop’ bundle of all three.

Trend #5: Consumer Electronics Tops the Category List – The Amazon Factor

Even pre-COVID-19, consumer electronics category was among the top three categories for which consumers planned to shop for during the Amazon Prime Day event in the US, UK and Germany.  This is followed by clothing/accessories and books/movies as the other leading categories.

At ChannelSight we can see data from various markets and provide in depth insights for consumer electronics brands.

• Americas: CE sales in the USA contributed close to 25% of all the baskets that were generated around the lockdown. A small % of the sales also coming from Mexico and Brazil.
• EU: All major EU markets such as Germany (21%), UK (11%), France (5%), Italy (5%), along with east EU markets such as Ukraine, Poland, Romania also captured growth.
• APAC and South Asia: Key markets in Asia such as India (10%), Japan (5%) also saw an increased volume of consumers purchasing CE online.

With ChannelSight data, we can identify the key retailers where consumers have been shopping in 2020:

• Amazons around the globe captured close to 70% of all the sales generated for H1 2020.
• Amazon US, DE and UK generating more than half of the CE sales.
• Amazon Canada, France and Italy also saw significant chunk sales generation.

Looking to optimise your strategy for this year’s holiday season? 

Q4 is a very important quarter for brands across categories, especially as an increasing share of sales move online. Optimising your eCommerce journey and ensuring that you have the right solutions in place will be key.  ChannelSight has a team of experts that can help implement solutions that can enhance your eCommerce strategy. Contact us today to book a demo with our team of experts.