What happens to eCommerce in quarantine: 240 companies surveyed


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?

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.

what difficulties companies face in quarantine

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.

 payroll costs optimisation in quarantine


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. 

anti-crisis measures taken in quarantine

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 happened to prices in quarantinewhat happened to sales in quarantine  

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.

 cost of performance marketing

cpa in quarantine

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. what will happen to sales in 3 months

how long will take turnover

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

Leave a Reply

Notify of

Recent posts


March 12, 2021



February 23, 2021



January 29, 2021



January 28, 2021


Let's get the ball rolling


For any questions [email protected]


+44 (0) 20 313 766 81
+44 7852 537715

The Terrace AT5,
Grantham Street,

+1 347 809 34 86

Las Vegas
Suite 100,
NV 89113

Roosikrantsi 2-K230,
Kesklinna linnaosa,
Harju maakond,
Tallinn 10119

CEE Ecommerce Report 2019

Based on the analytics data of 292 websites

enter correct name, please
enter correct e-mail, please

What happens to eCommerce in quarantine: 240 companies surveyed

start now

Start now