There is no doubt that the Pandemic has changed the way of doing business. For some, they think this will be temporary and in some cases, it may be. However, for the majority of businesses, this was a “wake up” call and they are not going to allow themselves to be caught in this position again. Going forward businesses are going to take a different approach and have a contingency plan in place. One of these that is going to become a priority is doing business online.
The Online Presence
There are a lot of brick and mortar businesses that didn’t have an online presence. Or if they did it was minimal. They may have had a one-page website that offered no more than general information. Then when their business got affected by COVID-19 many had to scramble to use their online presence as a lifeline. For most, it was frustrating and confusing and because things moved so quickly they were not able to get their website up to par where it could help to sustain their business.
What Can And Should Be Done?
To being with anyone that is doing business and in most cases no matter what it is, should have a full website that is more than just an information page. It is not too late to put this into motion and is something that should be done sooner than later.
There are a couple of approaches that can be taken for this.
A business person can check out their competitors and see what kind of presence they have online. Then set the goal to be better than these. Being as good is not good enough. The internet is a competitive world and the focus has got to be on taking the lead. This can only be accomplished with a lot of research, planning and commitment.
An option is to hire a professional to build the site, or another alternative is to learn how to do this yourself. Chances are if you are a small or new business you cannot afford to hire professionals. But what you can do is commit some time to learn about what it is going to take to build your website. There are tons of resources both paid and free that can help with this. This is almost a better way to go because it will always allow you to maintain control of your site.
Planning for the What Ifs
When developing this website keep the what-ifs in mind. What if your clients are not able to come into your brick and mortgage establishment. What if you have not been able to afford to keep your premises. What if you cannot afford the staff to run your business.
The idea is to build the site so that it can address all these what-ifs.
Setting Up For Online Business
You can learn a lot from some of the big guns in business. These are those big box stores that jumped onto online shopping before the Pandemic hit. Then once it did they really scaled it up a notch. Some did this by adding a lot of products to their website that they hadn’t normally in the past. Some of these sites grew by hundreds if not thousands of projects.
Your take away from this is to make sure that anything you can offer remotely is well displayed on your website.
Put Your Thinking Cap On
You may have some tunnel vision right now as to what you can offer online. This may be because doing business online has been secondary to you. It may still go back to that way but why not capitalize on what the internet can offer you.
Don’t Neglect Your Taxes
Even though there has been some big changes in the way business is conducted, it has changed the way you need to deal with your taxes. If you are in need of some assistance to prepare and file your business taxes I would be happy to help.
