Small Businesses Had to Become "More Digital" Because of Covid

In some ways, small businesses are “more digital” than enterprises where it comes to sales tools, a survey conducted by Payments.com suggests.

 “The average SMB now offers a 24 percent more frictionless shopping experience than larger competitors,” Payments.com says. “This is largely because SMBs provide far more digital and cross-channel shopping features than larger businesses.”

“SMBs are 46 percent more likely than larger businesses to offer cross-channel-capable digital profiles, for example, and 44 percent more likely to allow shoppers to pick up e-commerce orders at in-store kiosks,” Payments.com says.

One suspects there is a bit of unavoidable structural bias, though. Many enterprises do not sell direct to end users, so there is no requirement for direct-to-consumer sales platforms. 

During the recent Covid pandemic, many small businesses were forced to sell in non-traditional ways, as customers were prevented from entering their stores. 

SOURCE: Payments.com 

SMBs in Australia, Brazil, the U.K. and the U.S. the four countries Payments.com studied in 2020 and 2021, adopted 13 new shopping features between 2020 and 2021. All can be categorized as aid five aspects of the buying experience:

• Know me

• Value me

• Know what I want

• Make it easy

• Protect me

In nearly every country, the seven most common features SMBs added included voice enabled purchasing, buy online, pickup in-store options, price matching, digital profile support, mobile apps allowing consumers to locate items in physical stores, payment information sharing and coupons consumers could access across purchasing channels.

SOURCE: Payments.com