8 Tips To Help Your Business Survive The Corona Virus Shutdown

An outdated thought process for many established businesses is that they don’t need to sell anything online and therefore don’t need to be online or worry about their website. 87% of shoppers now begin product searches online meaning if you’re not there, your chances of a sale have suddenly diminished drastically. The statistic doesn’t mean they are necessarily purchasing online, just beginning the process of searching for, researching, comparing etc. Many will still prefer to then walk in to the brick and mortar to complete the purchase, which brings me to my next point.

Note: if you haven’t updated your website in 5 years or more or your website isn’t mobile friendly, you may as well not have the site at all. Google will in all likelihood be ignoring you for the vast majority of searches. Now is the time to do an update.

If you have a product, absolutely sell it online! It’s easier than ever these days to sell products physical or digital online and many reputable websites will include an easy to use app that allows you to manage your store from your phone as well. Statistics show online selling is increasing year on year and this current event will only add to that even further.

Something I preach quite regularly is to blog/vlog. Many of us are strapped for time to do this, despite its advantages. Start getting those thoughts that you’ve had for a while now down on paper (don’t waste your toilet paper on it though), Google Docs, Microsoft Word, whatever you need and transfer across to your site once you’ve proof read over it. Ensuring it conveys the correct message intended for you audience.

Now may be the time to introduce that new product or service that you’ve been thinking about doing, or potentially a temporary pivot on your existing lineup and experience to help meet the situation and keep the dollars coming in.

What are they doing that is a good idea or seems to be working? How quickly can you implement something similar into your business. 

Any idea that helps keep the debt collectors at bay or better yet bolster your foundations when the doors reopen is a good thing.

Now you may find yourself inevitably with a little bit more time available to you. Time to re-evaluate your current processes and systems to see if there’s any room for improvement or efficiencies, brick and mortar stores could potentially spruce the place up a little bit, whether it be a new paint job, rearrangement or anything else that is normally inconvenient whilst you have foot traffic in store. 

Anything that will assist bring those customers flooding back in when the time comes, nice and fresh appearance or save you time behind the scenes is a good thing.

With an ever growing burden on current internet services (yes NBN Co, i’m looking at you), it’s important that your site continues to be accessible even to those with poor, or worse, no internet. Having a website that is also a Progressive Web App (PWA) means you’re ahead of the curve and serving your customers anytime.

I recommend G Suite to any and all of my customers, simply because it’s the best at email combined with all the other features, however one little feature that many may not even realise, is Google Meet. Anyone on a paid G Suite has access to Google Meet currently in order to host online meetings easily and conveniently without you or the other party having to download any extra software. Just needs Google Chrome which most of us have already. If you want to trial it out amongst the numerous other benefits they currently offer a free trial.

There are of course a host of other online solutions dedicated to online meetings such as Zoom that offer a free tier or my favourite that allows you to stream to Facebook and YouTube Live simultaneously is Belive.