The Age of COVID-19 Is The BEST Time to Build Your Online Business. Here’s Why.

COVID-19 has changed the global landscape for eCommerce. As customers continue to social distance, many are avoiding brick and mortar stores as much as possible and resorting to purchasing products online whenever they can. The side effect? As retailers all around the world face supply chain issues, many of the popular mainstream brands are unavailable or hard to get. This is bad for those who only buy the biggest names — good for those who don’t mind exploring new brands, and great for smaller, boutique businesses that are trying to attract new customers.

If you’re here, I’m assuming you fit that last demographic. Even in the midst of a global pandemic and economic recession, now is the time to build or enhance your online presence. You have more access to buyers and better yet, more people seeking out your products or services. Even if you’re part of an industry that’s very much affected by lockdowns and virus-related regulations, like a restaurant, there’s a large segment of people looking to order takeout or delivery.

Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the numbers:

• A recent online study evaluated over 30M online transactions and reported that the average order value from stores all around the world increased by 31% globally.
• A survey conducted by eMarketer revealed that sales at U.S. brick-and-mortar stores will decline by 14.5%. Ecommerce sales, however, is anticipated to grow by 18%, fueled by touch free delivery and curbside pickup initiatives.
• A separate study, conducted by QuantumMetric, reported that online conversion rates in general have increased by 8.8% since the pandemic began in February, similar to conversion rate increases seen during Cyber Monday.

On the flipside, legacy retailers who relied heavily on their brick and mortar presence (ignoring the trend toward online sales for years) are now in danger of closing their doors forever. J. Crew has already filed for bankruptcy. Sears, JCPenney, Neiman Marcus and others may follow suit. Old Navy, however, a large company that spent the past few years investing in their online architecture has announced that they are “well-positioned” to survive the public health crisis.

Even when the COVID-19 threat is over, if you treat them right, many of the customers you acquire during this time will remain loyal to your brand. Now is the time to invest in your online presence, whether that’s building an eCommerce store for the first time, or expanding your eCommerce efforts.

So, How Do You Get Started?

BoldGrid has options for you, regardless of your size, budget or experience level. If your online presence is, well… non-existent, take a look at BoldGrid Crio Pro, our WordPress SuperTheme. BoldGrid Crio Pro is a WordPress Theme for Business that allows front-end designers, developers and other web professionals to create without bounds. With intuitive, easy-to-use visual controls on the front-end and powerful back-end customization options for advanced users, you can create anything. Also, it’s VERY affordable — a necessity in today’s economic climate. Crio Pro also comes with our Post and Page Builder plugin, a drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG page builder, allowing you to create your entire site visually and without code.

Crio Pro is compatible with WooCommerce, arguably the most popular (and easy-to-use) eCommerce suite on the web. WooCommerce is created by Automattic, who also helps maintain WordPress, a content management system used by millions of individuals and companies around the globe.

If you’ve already established your online presence, but you need to grow or manage your brand’s digital reach, we have solutions for you also.

 W3 Total Cache speeds up your WordPress website by reducing its download time, which makes your page load extremely fast. Faster website = better search rankings, more visitors, increased revenue and more. Research shows that a difference of just 100ms in load speeds can cause a visitor to prefer your competitors.

Use W3 Total Cache in conjunction with Speed Coach,  our automated website speed test. Speed Coach reveals the secrets to lightning fast website loading speeds. A faster website means happier visitors and higher rankings on the search engines. With Speed Coach, simply type in your website’s URL and receive detailed actionable steps to massively improve your site’s loading speed.

With more customers coming to your website, you’ll need to take precautions to keep their data safe. That’s why we created Total Upkeep: our powerful, focused WordPress backup plugin.Total Upkeep comes with automated remote backups, tools to restore your site even if your WordPress installation is corrupt, the ability to automatically rollback failed updates and more.

Also, if you need a free WordPress installation to practice building your site, or test themes and plugins, use Cloud WordPress.  Cloud WordPress allows you to create a fully functional free WordPress site for sandboxing (with or without BoldGrid) in just a few clicks. Easily design, build, test and share your WordPress website with clients or teams. Use the BoldGrid Total Upkeep Backup plugin to migrate your free WP installation to a live host.

Visit BoldGrid.com to see everything we have to offer. Act now. The longer you wait to expand your online presence, the more time you’re giving to everyone else to dominate your customer base.