1. Google Search History 2020
It should come as no surprise that three of the top five generic Google searches of 2020 in the United States go to coronavirus or its alter ego, COVID-19. That’s coronavirus at number 2, coronavirus update at number 4, and coronavirus symptoms at number 5. Number 1 went, naturally, to this year’s US elections, with number 3 reserved for the death of basketball giant Kobe Bryant. In the News search category, coronavirus, stimulus checks and unemployment make up a diabolical, yet complementary trio. Pandemic and asymptomatic made the top 5 Word Definition queries. Google even went as far as creating an independent …during coronavirus search category. Although coronavirus search peaked in the March to May period, there has been a recent resurgence due to the second wave, but mostly to all queries concerning the incoming vaccines.
2. E-Commerce
This already latent trend, extending as far back as ten years ago, has only upped its ante over the last year, with 2020 probably marked for the ages as the turning point in electronic marketing and sales. Consumer behavior online has taken a definite turn towards Omnichannel. And when coupled with retail outlets, the visible trend is how such retailers are modifying their merchandising and channel strategies to maximize customer attention and loyalty by creating a seamless omnichannel experience. “Omnichannel is as much as a mindset as a toolset,” asserts Donald Pettit, Sales & Partners Manager at Salewarp, a leading Advanced Order Management System. Tracking how customers shop today and what key elements make the experience a seamless one, thus achieving their much-elusive loyalty, is as much a part of our new commercial reality as brick-and-mortar once was. Omnivhannel shopping will become the new normal.
3. Online Courses
Research and Markets learned that 2020 has had a no-turning-back impact on the educational arena, namely in specialized learning. Both in terms of trends and of structural changes, the educational world is seeing a rapid shift toward digital content and courses. Higher education institutions continue to show an expanding demand for these, largely based on the fact that 63% of consumers find that this online option is the best or most viable fit to merge with their work and life responsibilities. A subset of this winning inclination is micro-credentials, especially in the Business and Technology arenas. This specialization is supported by governments worldwide, which are pushing hard in this direction, while the numbers are backed by experience itself, with the post-pandemic online traffic surge to websites like Coursera ¾ a free learning resource offering online courses from top institutions¾ up 644%, having experienced 10 million enrollments in 30 days.
4. Voice Commerce
Voice-assisted commerce is already a thing, but will boom into 2021 and are anticipated to reach $40 billion by 2022. The growing accuracy and convenience of the technology is definitely a winner. Google and Amazon, spearheaded by their famous digital assistants Alexa and Google Assistant, are also pushing the ticket, incorporating more and more regional languages. However, a tendency that might have gone unnoticed until quite recently, which would certainly vouch for the growth of this technology-assisted shopping optimization system is when and where Americans are buying online.
Take a load of this: 43% shop in bed, 20% in the bathroom, 20% in their cars, 23% in the office.
Sources:
https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US
https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/consumer-behavior-infographic/