2020 was a record-breaking year for Swiss Post online. The number of visitors to its homepage skyrocketed, while the use of digital services was up by around a third on average compared to 2019 and has since stabilized at a high level. Coronavirus has accelerated the trend towards further digitization and highlighted just how useful Swiss Post’s online services are to customers.
With the shops closed and many people working from home, many websites experienced sharp rises in the number of visits when Switzerland entered its first lockdown a year ago and the system was largely shut down. The drive towards digitization is rapidly accelerating developments in many sectors, sometimes by several years. It has also triggered a deluge of parcels, which has meant lots of work for Swiss Post. The company has proved equally crisis-proof on the digital side and the online boom has seen a sharp rise in the use of digital services at Switzerland’s leading logistics provider: visits to its website, online services and various digital channels surged from mid-March 2020, then levelled out and stabilized at a high level, before the curve spiked again when tighter measures were imposed in autumn. “2020 was a record-breaking year for us online,” says Jürgen Kübler, Head of Digital External Channels at Swiss Post.
There has been an increase of over 100 percent in some cases relative to 2019: the number of logins to the Swiss Post portal year-on-year, comparing 2020 to 2019 (green) and spring 2021 to 2019 (orange). Calendar week 12 was the start of the first lockdown.
Swiss Post portal: 32 percent more visits than in 2019
Jürgen Kübler, Head of Digital External Channels at Swiss Post
The figures for the Swiss Post portal, Swiss Post’s homepage, were particularly impressive. “Swiss Post’s digital gateway for private and business customers saw an unprecedented number of visits last year,” says Jürgen Kübler. Compared with 2019, the increase for the whole year is 32 percent on average. The curve spiked when lockdown began on 16 March 2020. User numbers before and after Easter are particularly impressive. On Wednesday, 15 April 2020, swisspost.ch recorded 175,866 visits. This was a record and a really momentous day, Kübler adds. “While people had to stay home, they clearly carried out their postal transactions online.”
Where’s my consignment? When is my local branch open? Can I still send letters abroad? Questions like these are really important during a pandemic. Customers were able to find answers on the Swiss Post portal. As discounting peaked at the end of November 2020 during Black Friday week and Swiss Post processed mountains of parcels, the number of visits to Swiss Post’s website reached April’s record level again. The figures then stabilized at around 110,000 visits a day. It’s also remarkable that just 55 percent of the visits to the Swiss Post portal are via desktop. “Customers are increasingly using mobile devices to carry out their postal transactions while at home – that can be done on the fly,” according to Kübler.
“My consignments”: 28,000 new subscriptions a month
Of all Swiss Post’s online services “My consignments” is the most popular. Customers can conveniently manage the receipt of incoming consignments online – and decide where they’d like them delivered. It’s the point where the digital and real worlds meet – the increased take-up has been incredible. In September 2020, the service reached 1.8 million consignments a month, while 28,000 new subscriptions a month on average are currently being recorded. It’s a highly practical solution, which means customers no longer miss their consignments. “My consignments” offers major benefits and ensures the high quality of delivery and satisfied customers. Lots of people are seeing that now,” says Kübler.
Swiss Post Customer Login: a 21 percent rise in daily logins
The development of the Swiss Post Customer Login – the gateway to online services – is also exciting. More and more customers are using a personal login to access Swiss Post’s digital services and the number of logins is soaring, which means online services are being used more intensively. While just over 80,000 logins a day were recorded in January 2020, the figure had risen to over 183,000 a day on average by December – that’s up by 21 percent on 2019. The all-time record was set on 1 December 2020 – with 280,823 logins. “More and more customers are seeing how they can make everyday life easier for themselves by using Swiss Post’s login and online services,” explains Kübler.
Lots of logins in April and another sharp rise at the end of the year: the number of times the Swiss Post Customer Login was used indicate that Swiss Post’s online services are being used more.
Post-App: more popular than ever
And finally, there’s the Post-App. Isn’t it outdated? Not at all. It’s one of the most widely used company apps in Switzerland and is more popular than ever before. In 2020, Swiss Post recorded 31 percent more installations on mobile devices than in the previous year. The Post-App is used on one in three mobiles in Switzerland. Jürgen Kübler is convinced the figures in the new year indicate that the app has become part and parcel of customers’ everyday lives.
*This analysis is based solely on visits. A visit is based on a certain period of time. Users who continually click on a page in a short space of time are counted once rather than multiple times.
