The upcoming future of Singapore Digital Landscape

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many—if not all—Singaporean businesses, forcing them to review their business strategies to overcome the crisis.

Nothing changes faster than the digital landscape in Singapore and all around the world, as Digital Transformation is one of a few post-pandemic survival strategies businesses have to consider.

The most successful Singaporean companies have a dedicated team of digital marketers and researchers whose primary role is to monitor the digital industry and come up with ideal digital marketing strategies for their business.

Singapore Digital Landscape in Numbers

There’s a high internet penetration rate of 88% out of a Singapore population of 5.83 million. That means, 5.14 million people in Singapore are online. And the numbers are just keep on growing faster than ever since the beginning of the pandemic, forcing people to stay home and do things online. And as very well predicted, Social Media users also have an exponential impact. There are now more than 4.6 million active social media users in Singapore, which represents 79% of the total population.

More people in Singapore have been using devices such as laptops and tablets since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. The average time spent online is now 7 hours on the internet and 2 hours on Social Media, with increasingly high numbers of device ownership — 95% of the population owns a Smartphone, and 78% owns a Desktop or Laptop computers.

As COVID-19 changes people’s daily living behaviours, and how businesses operate, these figures are only expected to increase, more than ever. The Ministerial Committee for Digital Transformation will guide efforts to accelerate Singapore's adoption of digital technology, and help small businesses go online.

That said, Singapore kept its position as the world's second most digitally competitive country, after the United States, in the latest edition of the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Ranking. Also Singapore stays as the world’s Smartest City.

Singapore Online Shopping Behaviours

As the pandemic forced most people to stay at home, the trends of shopping online has been increasing exponentially, benefiting many ecommerce players in the country, despite other major disruptions it causes to other businesses. Singaporeans spent an average of S$113 online per person from January to June 2020.

The average number of items per purchase also increased by 51% compared to the same period in 2019, and considered as ASEAN’s most prominent ecommerce hub. Major ecommerce platforms in Singapore experienced in average of 25% growth in total web visits (desktop and mobile site) throughout the first half of 2020.

Social Media

Looking at the drastically increasing amount of time people spend online which includes how they research products, brands, and organizations, businesses should be prepared to dedicate more resources to social media marketing in 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, marketers are increasingly making customer retention a priority. In fact, social media budgets accounted for 24% of marketing budgets during the second quarter of 2020. This will continue well into 2021. This creates a lot of opportunities for marketers to engage with new audiences and re-engage with existing customers. 

SEO and Google My Business

SEO will no longer only be about what users are searching for, but also how they search, wether it’s about products, services, or businesses. And more importantly, search engines today don’t only use a bunch of keywords, but also the context, meaning, and intent to deliver the most appropriate search results to users. So always focus on people when optimising the contents that answers questions.

If you run a local business, it’s more important than ever to ensure your local listings are verified and kept current on various search platforms. People would go to Google to find services around their area, and Google loves to recommend the most updated, trusted listings from their database. It’s one of the key factors in search and business owners are often blown away to find out how many directories there are out there.