The impact of the pandemic has meant that fashion retailers globally are driving 38 per cent more online orders, with online sales 34 per cent higher than at the same time last year. After some early dramatic shifts when the crisis first hit in March, sales, orders traffic and online conversion rates appear to be plateauing at a higher level, year-over-year.
Consumers, however, are cutting back on the amount they are willing to spend per order with the average order value (AOV) down 4 per cent globally year-over-year, according to the data from Nosto, the AI-powered commerce experience platform. The analysis covers the US and specific countries in Europe, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
The report titled ‘Effects of the Covid-19 Outbreak on Fashion, Apparel, and Accessory Ecommerce’ shows that with most brick and mortar fashion stores closed and only gradually beginning to re-open with social distancing, traffic to online fashion stores is up 13 per cent year-over-year. Online shoppers are also more committed to making a purchase when they visit a fashion ecommerce store, with conversion rates 16 per cent higher than last year.
For its latest report, Nosto tracked the performance of online retailers within fashion, apparel and accessories sectors between March 1 and May 26. The sample consisted of 271 merchants that use the Nosto platform in the US, UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand and represent a good cross-section of the fashion, apparel & accessory industry as a whole. This 2020 data was then compared with the same time period in 2019.
“Looking back at the overall performance of fashion ecommerce since early March, we have seen dramatic drops with sales down 32 per cent and traffic down 24 per cent at their lowest on March 20th. Since then, the numbers rebounded up in April and are appearing to be levelling off to a new normal after some fluctuation,” said global head of Marketing at Nosto, Matthew Levin.
“Average order value continues to be down year-over-year and seems like it will remain there. Conversion Rate has continued to stay up year-over-year and has definitely reached a plateau for now,” states the report.
