By Dan Berthiaume
Source: chainstoreage.com, August 2020

E-commerce activity in July slowed down from the prior month but soared from the same month a year earlier.

According to the Adobe Digital Economy Index for July 2020, which tracks the state of e-commerce using Adobe Analytics data, online shopping rose 55% year-over-year to $66.3 billion. While year-over-year e-commerce sales were up significantly, July spend did draw down a bit from 76% growth in June.

Digital Economy Index data indicates the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in $94 billion extra spent online since March 2020. This means that the first seven months of 2020 (January through July) have driven $434.5 billion in online spend. At current growth levels, Adobe estimates online spending in 2020 could exceed online spend for all of 2019 by Oct. 5.​

Additionally, the report finds that U.S. digital purchasing power—which measures how much more people can buy online now vs. when Adobe started tracking e-commerce in 2014—was down 1% year-over-year in July 2020. This means that consumers are now purchasing an online basket of goods for $1.01 that was worth $1.00 in July 2019.​

Other trends reported by Adobe include:

  • States that have already reopened are seeing an 8% smaller year-over-year increases in online sales in July. Rhode Island, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont are seeing the highest increase in online spend year-over-year; while Kansas, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and Iowa are seeing the lowest year-over-year increase in e-commerce spending.​
  • Buy online pickup in-store (BOPIS) has continued to see strong year-over-year growth, with July ticking up slightly (23.3%) in usage over June, amid a second wave of increases in COVID-19 cases across the U.S.
  • Apparel prices were down –4.6% month-over-month, while the category’s year-over-year online revenue growth was up 3.6%.

“It’s important to note that while the growth in e-commerce is down from June, 55% growth in July year-over-year is still really strong,” said John Copeland, Adobe VP of marketing and customer insights. “E-commerce isn’t new, and before COVID-19, it was seeing much slower growth. The fact that even while states are starting to open up, the numbers remain so much higher than typical proves that things will never really go back to ‘normal.’ E-commerce is more embedded into our lives than it has ever been before and that is irreversible.”