2020 has been an extremely difficult year for business. If you’re running a business of your own, it’s pretty much inevitable that the coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic has significantly affected your business in some way or another. Since March, countless businesses have collapsed, made redundancies, encouraged staff to work fewer hours, or requested that staff accept lower salaries in order to make the profits necessary to stay up and running. Learning to operate in line with government guidelines and restrictions has been difficult. But it has been necessary in order to slow the spread of the virus and reduce the R rate. Despite our best efforts, many countries in the world are seeing the R rate increasing, meaning lockdowns, implementation of two metre distances between people and mandatory mask wearing in many public locations. All of this has led to fewer sales. After all, if you can’t have people in your store, you can’t operate. If you can still have your store open as you sell essentials, the capacity of your store is significantly reduced to allow for two metres between customers inside. So, what can you do to continue making sales and stay afloat in spite of the pandemic? Here are a few suggestions and areas of focus that could help you to pull through.
Invest in Marketing
No matter what products or services you’re selling and no matter what industry you’re operating in, it’s absolutely essential to invest in marketing right now. Market research will allow you to reevaluate the market and your customer base. Marketing itself will ensure that your target demographic knows your products exist and can encourage them to part with their cash in exchange for these products. Use a marketing agency or useful tools like an AdWords report template. This will all help to get the ball rolling in the right direction!
Focus on Ecommerce
First and foremost, you need to start focusing on Ecommerce if possible. If your store sells products, you need to make sure that they are available online, ready for delivery to potential customers. Ecommerce stores are allowed to continue operations, as fewer members of the public will have to come into touch with you or any of your staff who may be working to process, package and ship orders. Of course, you’ll have to implement a number of Covid-safe measures to ensure that the staff fulfilling your orders in the warehouse are safe. If you have your own delivery staff rather than using couriers or public mail services, you’ll need to make sure that they’re safe too! But all in all, operating online is a very ideal way to continue making profits right now. It’s a good idea to make Ecommerce viable for your company sooner rather than later, as peak shopping seasons and dates (including Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season) are fast approaching and you’ll want to cash in over them. But what can you do to start delving into Ecommerce? Here are some steps to take to experience success in this area!
Work on Your Website
First and foremost, you need to make sure that you have a quality website that people can use to shop with you from the comfort of their own homes. If you don’t have a website yet, now is the time to create one. If you already have one, you need to consider how you can improve it. Remember that this is replacing your physical store itself. It needs to be impressive. It needs to showcase your stock in its best light. It needs to portray your brand well.Chances are you’re not going to learn how to code and create the website yourself. Nobody has time for this right now. Instead, make sure to collaborate with three professionals. These are a competent, experienced and recommended web designer, web developer and UX designer. Your web designer will make sure that your site looks great. They’ll guarantee that it’s on brand and looks appealing. The web developer will take care of the back end of your site. This involves making sure that everything actually works. The UX designer is a user experience designer. They’ll make sure that your site is easy to navigate and use. Make sure your site is optimised for mobile – this is really important!
Provide Customer Support
If your customers are going to be buying online, you need to make sure that you’re providing them with plenty of support. You have staff in store to help customers, so make sure you have staff online to help anyone with any questions, concerns or queries about your products and services. Your website should have a contact page with ways to reach out to your customer support team. This should detail a business email address, a business phone number and (if possible) include a chat box that your staff can use to instantly reply to queries. If you have business social media pages, your customer support staff should monitor the messages and comments on here too! The more means of getting in touch the better!
Are Your Staff Able to Work Remotely?
If you’re running a business where staff would usually work in an office, you should consider shifting them to becoming a remote workforce. This way, you can keep up and running without worrying about making your office space Covid-safe, which can be costly and may result in outbreaks amongst staff. The following steps should help get this process started.
- Make Sure Staff are Trained in New Software – your staff are going to be using new software when working from home. Make sure that everyone’s trained (via video call) in using this software to maximise productivity.
- Set KPIs – worried your staff might not work as hard at home while they’re not being monitored. Set KPIs (or “key performance indicators”) so that their productivity and progress can be tracked.
- Be Understanding and Flexible – these are hard times. Be kind and flexible with your staff. If they’re going through difficulties, they are likely to be less productive and proactive. This is understandable.
As you can see, a lot of changes are likely to need to be made to make sure your business can generate profits in spite of the pandemic. But it is possible. Hopefully, some of the above advice will help to get the ball rolling in the right direction!
