Survey: E-commerce sites gear up for Amazon competition

Online retailers are partially prepared to do business in an Amazon-dominated landscape. 

According to the “2020 E-commerce Leaders Survey” of over 120 industry executives from e-commerce platform provider Yottaa, more than 75% of respondents are focused on closing the competitive gap with Amazon. Sixty-five percent are using personalized promotions to set themselves apart, while 46% would consider merging their fulfillment networks with other brands.

However, 71% of respondents are not currently offering free, same-day shipping to compete with Amazon, and 68% do not provide free, same-day shipping promo codes.

The study also indicates that the average respondent annual investment in third parties (which can be used as a competitive tool against Amazon) has grown to $2 million in 2020 from $1.4 million in 2019. The average number of third parties added annually has increased to five from three in the past 12 months. 

However, two-thirds (67%) of respondents are concerned that at any given time, customer data captured by third parties could cause them to become non-compliant with privacy policies. Supporting this finding, the trending investment initiative in 2020 is privacy compliance, compared to mobile in 2019.

The survey also found that:

•    45% of respondents plan to replatform in the next 12 months;

•    60% of respondents currently leverage or plan to leverage a “headless commerce” e-commerce architecture that connects separated front and back ends with APIs;

•    65% of respondents say they have two to three seconds to capture a shopper’s attention before 50% or more of customers leave their site;

•    61% of respondents are confident faster site performance leads to higher conversion rates.