Traditional patterns and consumption habits have rapidly and radically changed in less than a couple of months. Companies rushed to strengthen their digital competencies, cut budgets, and rewrite the habitual scenarios. It seems like the world of ecommerce will never be the same after the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a digital marketing agency, Promodo focuses mostly on helping ecommerce businesses located in Eastern Europe. This time we conducted an anonymous survey among our Ukrainian marketers. Its purpose is to figure out how online businesses reacted to the crisis and what are the expectations for the coming months. In this article, we collected the main insights and are happy to share it with our readers worldwide. So, what did we ask?
How was the company work re-organised?
What are the difficulties the company faces?
In what way did you optimise the payroll costs?
Did you take anti-crisis measures at the product/service level?
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What happens to the sales and pricing policy of the company?м
What is the budget allocated for performance marketing?
Try to forecast what will happen in the next 3 months
The report is based on a survey of 243 respondents from Ukrainian ecommerce companies working in different niches. The questionnaire contained both closed and open questions. The latter ones were supplied with a field for notes so that respondents could describe the current situation in more detail and share their predictions for the future.
How was the company work re-organised?
During the quarantine period, more than 70% of companies have fully switched to working remotely, 10% announced themselves as closed until quarantine ends and 0.4% were forced to close the business forever.
What are the difficulties the company faces?
More than 60% of companies confirmed a fall in demand is their main problem, 10% claim that they had to start value engineering, and 6.6% experienced some difficulties organising remote workspaces.
In what way did you optimise the payroll costs?
43% of the companies surveyed did not optimise payroll costs, 27% started working part-time, and almost 2% have (surprisingly) hired more people as staff for the quarantine period.
Did you take anti-crisis measures at the product/service level?
41% of the companies surveyed launched new products or introduced additional services, while more than half of the respondents indicated that they had not taken any anti-crisis actions, meaning no changes were applied for the quarantine period.
What happens to the sales and pricing policy of the company?
Speaking about the pricing policy, almost half of the companies surveyed fixed prices for their goods and services. Around 12% of respondents increased them. At the same time, only 10% of respondents reported an increase in sales, 76% observed a significant decrease in the number of transactions during the quarantine period.
What is the budget allocated for performance marketing?
46% of respondents preserved the budget for performance marketing (Google Shopping, PPC, presence on price aggregators, marketplaces), 41% reduced costs.
At the same time, for 38% of respondents, the cost of attracting customers increased, while 47% of companies reported no changes applied.
Try to forecast what will happen in the next 3 months
32% of the companies surveyed estimate that it will take at least six months to fully restore the turnover, and 53% expect a decrease in the number of orders in the next 3 months. 
We cannot but mention that real macroeconomic changes have not yet fully affected the ecommerce sector, but the flywheel continues to spin, and the consequences of the quarantine period are yet to catch up with online sales. And this is where small businesses have been the most vulnerable.
Promodo is standing by your side during these difficult times. You may find interesting the other anti-crisis articles we published:
8 Steps That Help Business Get Through Crisis
Brand Communication: Quarantine Strategy
About the Authors
Viktoria Zimnitskaya
Marketer at Promodo
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