A Year of Lockdowns: The Impact on Digital
23rd March 2020 - a day that had an impact that nobody in the UK could have imagined.
Whether you told your work colleagues you would see them in three weeks, rescheduled your holiday until July or closed your retail shop for just a couple of months, the day that Britain went into its first lockdown completely changed the lives of everyone in the country.
Fast-forward to today, 23rd March 2021. Many March babies have now already had two lockdown birthdays and devastatingly, many, many businesses have shut their doors - some for the last time.
During this time, while high street footfall was quickly reducing, online traffic was rapidly increasing. So quickly that many believe COVID-19 has actually accelerated online market growth by five years.
Booming Online Retail
We have seen Ecommerce enquiries increase by more than 1000% during 2020, showing that the consequences of COVID-19 have transformed the development of the Ecommerce market from an evolutionary pace to revolutionary speed!
As expected, continued lockdowns and social distancing rules have limited in-person shopping and driven more customers online. As a result, existing Ecommerce businesses have brought forward their plans and scaled up significantly. Many companies without previous online retail capabilities have also been quick to move online and adapt to the Ecommerce revolution.
We’re recognised that the recent change in customer online behaviour is now embedded, with the speed of the transition to online retailing as a result of COVID continuing to increase.
For those companies which have embraced online trading, that’s great news! For those who have not yet invested in Ecommerce, as long as you have clear planning then you will achieve success and if you need any advice ... you know where to come!
Getting Social
If we cast our minds back to the first lockdown here in the UK, we’ll remember the vast amount of spare time that we all suddenly had. For many of us that weren’t key worker heroes, we now had an enforced break that many of us chose to spend on social media.
Social quickly became a key channel for finding out the important local information that we needed more than ever.
From local takeaways and shop opening times, to food groups for shielding neighbours and seemingly endless TikTok videos, social was the go-to place for even more of us, for longer, during lockdown.
Now, a year on, this change has shaped the way that people use it - and consequently how businesses should be marketing within it too.
First up, TikTok. Where did that come from?! As an up-and-coming platform for a couple of years, TikTok really exploded onto the scene in 2020. With plenty of time at home, the UK population were creating dances, following trends and scrolling through hours of TikTok content like they never had before.
Then there is Facebook. As previously mentioned, this has now become the place to find out key information such as whether your local restaurant is doing takeaway ... and we know how important this is!
As an award-winning website agency, we constantly preach how important it is to keep your site updated for both search engines AND your customers - but alongside this, Facebook allows businesses to update their customers at the right moment and in the right place.
There is no better time than now to embrace the online market. So if your business still isn’t ready for selling online or reaching people through social media, then speak to our expert team today and we’ll help you to get ahead within the digital scene.