Our blog post, “When do aesthetics purchasers buy online?,” explored the growth of ecommerce in 2019, and particularly shopping behaviors of purchasers in the aesthetics industry. Since that time, the pandemic-induced acceleration of ecommerce has resulted in dramatically increasing numbers of aesthetics practices selling online.
In last year’s post we reported that over 62 percent of consumers shop online at least once a month. In the year since, that number has now grown to 75 percent of consumers (BigCommerce, 2021). There is no sign of slow-down in the growth of online shopping, and it is widely held that online shopping will not return to pre-pandemic levels but only continue to grow. Understanding online shopping behaviors will help your business to serve your customers and patients in ways that make it easy for them to engage with you.
In this post, we explore 2020 data about when aesthetics purchasers are shopping, and what that means for aesthetics practices. By employing ecommerce, top aesthetics practices are able to compensate for pandemic-induced closures as well as extend their hours of engagement with their patients 24×7.
During the spring and summer of 2020 when many aesthetics practices were closed due to Covid-19, their online stores provided them a unique opportunity to earn revenues while not open for appointments. Those online revenues came largely from product replenishment. Additional top sellers during that period included payments on memberships, and pre-paid services that would be performed as soon as the office reopened.
View the full-size Infographic: When do Aesthetics Shoppers Buy Online 2020
The Pandemic Effect
At DermPRO, we know that many of our clients have both high traffic on their stores and high online purchase activity throughout the day while their offices are open. But historically the purchase activity on DermPRO-hosted aesthetics stores has peaked during the evening hours, when ecommerce activity is generally very high.
In 2020, the data for purchases by hour indicated a shift from high evening hour purchasing to more purchasing during the 10am to 1pm time period.
Why the shift in purchase hours? When we broke down the 2020 data further, we saw that the months with the largest mid-day purchasing were those months when the pandemic peaked—April through August. Since many offices were actually closed during significant portions of the April through August time period, we can conclude that what we are considering as “office open” hours is not entirely accurate. In fact, when we filtered out the data to exclude April through August, the purchases during “office closed” hours were much closer to previous years, accounting for 54 percent of the sales.
Putting It All Together
Our chart shows the actual purchase data by hour for the top 20 stores we host, covering the entirety of 2020. Whether or not you adjust for the impact of the pandemic on office closures, the percentage of online revenue coming in during business-closed hours exceeds 50 percent. Further, the majority of our customers’ stores increased their online revenues in 2020 compared to 2019. Are you providing your aesthetic patients the ability to purchase online when it’s convenient for them? Find out how easy it is to extend your engagement hours with your patients. Contact DermPRO for a demo today.
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