During this months-long COVID-19 pandemic, which of us have not made purchases online? In particular, early on during the lockdown, when only essential businesses were open, the web was the primary shopping outlet. Accordingly, we as consumers have come to learn how varied retailers and brands are in e-commerce savvy.

Think about the last time you bought something online—and about the last time you did that but what you purchased wasn’t something you were after when you opened your browser. What captured your attention in the search results, the assortment page, or the product page that convinced you to make the purchase?

Of late, we’ve seen an increasing number of Cloudinary customers on Shopify and Shopify Plus. Since we first wrote about using Cloudinary with Shopify a while ago, both Shopify and Cloudinary have evolved to better support customers through advancements in our platforms. This post highlights three important areas in which you can integrate Cloudinary’s latest technology and tools with Shopify to accomplish the following tasks:

Part of what draws us to retail stores is their ability to connect to our senses: sight, touch, hearing, and smell. Connections that extend beyond products include decor and store employees. When transforming the experience into online shopping, these natural senses are substituted with a sense of the virtual experience.

There’s no denying that the Covid-19 global pandemic has changed the world of e-commerce. In our own personal lives as consumers, we’ve made shifts that were unthinkable just a couple of months ago. Sheltering in place, social distancing, and caring passionately about the health and wellbeing of our community are now an intrinsic part of our lives. Nielsen1 identifies six thresholds that consumers are moving through as they progress through the stages of this pandemic globally.

We live in a world where we spend increasingly more time online. As our routines change and adapt to new trends and technologies, we perform more and more of our daily activities in virtual environments. A key example of this is shopping. There are many reasons why online shopping has become so attractive for many buyers. A near endless variety of products is accessible from the palm of your hand. Customer reviews give buyers more confidence in their decisions. It's increasingly easy to search for attractive prices. And the list goes on. But a customer's desire to "touch" or "feel" the product is an interactive experience that can be hard to overcome when shopping online.