Digital Marketers' Blog

The digital world is a unique landscape. It’s one that most people may access from anywhere on the planet with just an internet connection and internet-enabled device. Unfortunately, not all those who go online do so with good intentions. Just as in real life, companies and their websites are at risk from criminals, particularly hackers.

iInstead of tangible goods, hackers are after something more valuable: your business’, users’, customers’, and clients’ sensitive data. Passwords, user names, addresses, card numbers, social security numbers, browsing data, messages, and other private information are vulnerable. 

As a legal entity possessing and processing data, you should worry about cybersecurity. Not just for your user’s sake but also to stop a breach from doing considerable damage to your brand reputation. With this in mind, here’s how companies protect themselves from hackers and ramp up their cybersecurity.

Why Is It Important to Protect Your Business From Hackers?

Protecting digital assets is very important if your company operates online or stores any sensitive information. Here are the top reasons why businesses protect themselves from hackers and take cybersecurity seriously.

To Avoid Damage to Your Brand Reputation

As a company, big or small, your customers look to you to protect their data from hackers. They share data with your website when they shop or interact with you. Most importantly, they do so believing you’ve got their back, and their information will never get used against them. A data breach is a significant loss of that trust and may cause irreparable damage to a brand’s reputation. 

Not even the most reputable companies are safe or have been knowledgeable enough to know how to deal with hackers. LinkedIn, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace, Experian, and many other well-known companies have been involved in high-profile data breaches. However, don’t think for a second that you’re out of the firing range if you’re a smaller outfit. 

The more sensitive your data or weaker your defenses, the bigger the threat, regardless of your user base size. Additionally, the less likely you’ll be able to recover from the consequences of a successful cybersecurity attack. Ecommerce stores and financial websites, in particular, are at risk from hackers. Aside from stealing data, hackers can also cause costly website crashes.

To Limit Damage to Your Users, Clients, and Customers

The reason why hackers try to gain access to sensitive data isn’t purely for fun. Data is money and may get sold for thousands of dollars on the dark web. Once purchased, the data may then get used by hackers, mainly for scams, blackmail, or extortion against your website or mobile app users who have no idea how to deal with such occurrences. 

Alternatively, this data may help hackers gain access to users’ bank accounts and other online accounts to steal more personal information. Who can forget the Ashley Madison (AM) hack that exposed millions of affair-seekers to their married partners, communities, bosses, and colleagues? 

Though some may consider this breach more divinely deserved than others, you cannot deny the damage done. Besides the embarrassment, the data breach resulted in divorces, resignations, and even suicides. Afterward, select users were further subjected to blackmail and extortion scams while the AM team failed to manage the fallout. 

The AM hack is just one disastrous data breach reputation damage example that harmed its users considerably. If you value yours, being considerate and protecting their data is critical. If users happen to require access to your software or site for work or commerce, a cyber attack-caused website crash can also result in a loss of revenue.

To Avoid Lengthy and Costly Lawsuits 

Once the damage and public relations are done, companies may not yet have overcome the biggest hurdle. Lawsuits are another reason why businesses must protect themselves from hackers. Users may be able to claim considerable funds in damages, especially if your preventative measures were negligent.

Ashley Madison users won an $11.2 million settlement for damages from its parent company. Luckily, it had enough funds to foot the bill, but your business may not. On top of settlements, you’re looking at legal fees and investigation costs. Lawsuits may also drag on over multiple years, making it challenging to move past the ordeal.

To Minimize Business Security Threats

It’s not only your user and customer data that’s at risk if you don’t know how to deal with hackers. Included in the hacked Ashely Madison data were the personal numbers and details of some of its CEOs and founders. 

Your business administrator passwords, financials, and other sensitive business data could easily get stolen in a cybersecurity attack. Then, it can get used in a way that results in further security threats to your physical premises, employees, finances, website, and digital assets later on. 

To Avoid Loss of Business Revenue, Value, and Share Value

If there’s one way to wreck a handover, upset shareholders, and cause a significant drop in share or business value, it’s a successful cybersecurity attack. Yahoo was one of the companies that suffered considerable damage to its brand reputation at a critical time. It was notably sold off for less than anticipated after its 2013 data breach coincided with its acquisition by Verizon. 

If you’re going public, trying to build your business, encouraging new shareholders to opt in, or even selling it, you don’t want to be in the same boat. Those running eCommerce stores may face further challenges. 

These may see a considerable drop in sales due to a loss in customer trust. The last thing most buyers want to do is share their financial account and card details with you after your current customers’ details got exposed.

What Are the Best Ways to Protect Your Business From Hackers?

Cybersecurity is a real threat to fair and open online trade and interaction. Luckily, there are effective ways to protect your business from hackers. Here’s how to deal with hackers and stop them from doing damage to your brand reputation, revenue, and users.

 1. Improve Your Password Security

One of the common ways hackers gain access to your data is by logging into your online systems. They may do so using passwords that have already been compromised by another data breach or an employee.

The top ways to protect your business, devices, and computers from hackers misusing your passwords include:

• Using complex and impersonal passwords. You may get tempted to use passwords that feature personal details or similar elements to other passwords to make them more memorable. However, don’t do this as it’s one of the top ways hackers guess passwords.
• Using a password generator. One of the top ways to deal with hackers is to use a password generator to create challenging-to-guess passwords. These may include nonsensical sequences of symbols, numbers, and lowercase and uppercase letters.
• Not storing your passwords anywhere vulnerable. It may be challenging to remember all our passwords. However, be sure to store your passwords in a safe place, such as a notebook in your safe. Alternatively, you may download a reputable password vault or manager in which to keep them.
• Using different passwords for each account. Once a single password gets leaked in a breach, you’re in trouble if you’ve reused it for other accounts. Hackers may look online to find out the platforms you’re active on or simply make a guess. Then, try your reused password to gain access. The top way how to deal with hackers like this is never to reuse a password.
• Changing passwords regularly. Updating your passwords periodically ensures that you’re protected from unknown data breaches. Set a reminder every month or a few months, depending on your data’s sensitivity. You may also send out password reset links to all your employees to get them to follow suit.
• Prioritizing financial, recovery email, and administrator password security. You may recover most accounts by using the email address with which you created them, which makes these details a top threat. Prioritize the security of any recovery email accounts by changing their passwords more regularly. Keeping them secret by not using them for anything else is another way to deal with hackers. You should also treat financial and admin passwords and usernames with as much care.

2. Train All of Your Employees on Cybersecurity

Another top way hackers gain access to sensitive accounts and information is through employee negligence. Not everyone on your team is tech-savvy. Whoever isn’t is likely your weakest link in a cybersecurity attack.

As such, one of the best ways to protect your business from hackers is to invest in regular cybersecurity training for your employees. Rolling out Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), antiviruses, and encryption software is another of the top ways you may protect devices from hackers. 

3. Treat, Pay, and Charge Your Staff and Customers Fairly

Though not always the case, vindictive employees and customers have been known to pose a threat in regards to cybersecurity. These angry factions may easily damage your brand reputation by hacking your accounts or providing sensitive information to hackers.

Treating staff fairly and ensuring customer service is up to par is one way companies protect themselves from hackers. Setting up internal and external complaints procedures may also help mitigate attacks by making them feel heard. 

4. Store As Little Data Required

Anyone sharing data or operating an online store or a website is vulnerable to being targeted in a cybersecurity attack. A small percentage of users may even have experienced a hacker stealing their information or logging into their accounts. However, what may be the deciding factor on whether or not this causes harm is the data in question. 

How companies protect themselves from hackers has evolved. Storing minimal data is one of the top ways to protect your business from hackers. After all, getting in trouble for data you don’t even use seems senseless.

Many online stores now offer customers the option to store or not store payment details. Storing the bare minimum of data may also act as an effective damage control measure. If all you keep is customer or user names and passwords, it’s easy enough to control the damage by temporarily blocking accounts and sending out direct password reset links.

5. Partner with a Secure Online Payment Service

Online payment is tricky, with its associated data topping the list of the worst data breach reputation damage examples. You need your customers’ sensitive financial details, including card numbers, expiry dates, and CVVs to process a sale digitally. 

However, this is precisely some of the sensitive data that hackers want most. Not only can it be used to steal money, but also to execute more effective blackmail scams. Luckily, banks have ramped up security on card sales, demanding OTP authorization and other secondary security sale measures. 

Some companies protect themselves from hackers by partnering with secure payment platforms. Online payment services such as PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, Payoneer, Square, Apple Pay, and Google Pay are a few top choices.

When you partner with these services, your business may not even be responsible for storing your customers’ bank details. Your customers will simply be redirected to the payment provider’s gateway to complete their purchases. Once authenticated, you’ll get your confirmation of receipt of payment and may proceed with dispatching the order.

6. Hire a Cybersecurity Company to Put Your Systems to the Test

More often than not, companies fall prey to hackers by accident, not purposely. Ignorance of the weaknesses of software,hardware, and new technological developments, may result in devastating data breaches and cyberattacks. 

If you’re more focused and experienced in other areas of your business, you probably don’t have the know-how or time to defend your data or website. Most companies don’t. However, cybersecurity professionals such as ethical hackers and website maintenance companies do.

These knowledgeable professionals may test your systems to expose security issues. A website maintenance company may not just maintain your servers and site, but also regularly scan your site to isolate security vulnerabilities. This way, it can consistently protect your business website, devices, and computers from hackers.

7. Tighten Up Your Cybersecurity With Professional Assistance

How companies effectively protect themselves from hackers includes partnering with professionals to improve their security measures and processes. These cybersecurity defenses should be a consideration from the start. Be it when starting to use internet-enabled devices at work or when setting up a new online store or website. 

The development team may build extra security features into your website during the website development process. Cybersecurity professionals may also recommend additional cybersecurity technologies, software, and hardware in which to invest. These may be relevant to your business and may also help you to learn how better to deal with hackers.

Some important cybersecurity features that a website development company may build into your website include:

• Biometric authentication: Biometric authentication is a new safety web development trend. It allows website and app users to log in securely using biometrics with facial recognition and fingerprint technology.
• Login notifications: These notify users via SMS, email, or direct app notification whenever someone logs into their account. If users know when an unauthorized login occurs, they may be able to block and deal with hackers quicker.
• Two-factor authentication: Two-factor authentication requires a website or app user to input a code when logging in. Sent via email or text, the process adds another layer of security. As such, it’s ideal for sensitive financial, administrative, and government websites.

8. Plan and Prepare for the Inevitable

Unfortunately, data breaches and hacks are a reality of our digital age. It’s not a matter of if but when it may happen to your company. If you’ve followed all of the steps above to improve your website security, you’re likely to bounce back faster than if you’ve been negligent. However, when a data breach becomes public, all hell may break loose. 

Many companies don’t get in trouble simply because of a cybersecurity attack. Often, they do so because of the way they handle (or mishandle) the event. How companies also protect themselves from hackers is by having PR strategies and people on-hand for crisis management. These may help to minimize damage to your brand reputation. 

Having a strategy for dealing with the increased volume of user calls and emails is also ideal. However, one of the most important steps to include in your plan is damage control. Your company should know precisely what to do to protect compromised data and users in the event of a data breach. 

This plan of action may include temporarily blocking compromised user accounts as well as sending out notifications to users along with password reset emails. The faster you act, the better, and the higher chance you’ll be able to reduce damage to your brand reputation.

CONCLUSION

When operating online, be it on work devices or via internal software, cloud storage, or a website, it’s essential to consider your cybersecurity. Hackers are always looking for a new target, and you don’t want to be that data breach reputation damage example. Professionals, such as the right web design company, can help you map out the right cybersecurity plan for your website and apps.

Originally posted in: https://www.topnotchdezigns.com/8-effective-ways-to-protect-your-business-from-hackers/

The Opportunity

A study conducted across five countries highlights that daily consumption of online content has increased from an average of around 3 hours and 20 minutes before the COVID-19 pandemic set into just under 7 hours.  It suggests that 44% consumers give new brands a go after watching relevant ads. It also points out that younger consumers show a preference toward social media ads.

Looking to Create a Marketing Strategy?

Given the vast population of internet users across age groups, socio-economic classes, and geographies, businesses now have means to reach out to their target audiences in a quick and efficient manner.  It comes as no surprise, then, that 84% businesses had digital marketing strategies in 2020. Unfortunately, only 11% felt their efforts delivered excellent results.

One common problem that most digital marketing managers face is that of oversaturation. In this highly digitalized world, the internet is awash with blogs, videos, podcasts, and other types of content that do not have any takers. To get it right, businesses need to deliver their well-planned content through the right channels by relying on structured digital marketing strategies. Then, they may expect a boost in traffic to their websites as well as increased sales.

What is Digital Marketing?

According to Lexito’s digital marketing definition, digital marketing is “a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.” Simply put, it refers to a strategy through which a business creates relevant and valuable content with the aim of engaging with its target audience organically. 

The long-term aim of digital marketing is to attract new customers and boost sales. In the short-term, the goal is to deliver valuable content regularly and to get your audiences interested in more.  Any successful digital marketing manager will tell you that it’s important to acknowledge the audience’s presence and make it feel heard.  Your audience needs to know that you understand its pain points, and you need to work on building trust in the products/services you provide. 

Types of Digital Marketing

Irrespective of the type of digital marketing you use, your aim should be to build your brand’s reputation and trust. For instance, if you’re relying on email marketing as one subset of your overall digital marketing strategy, it should offer value to readers that other similar emails do not. While digital marketing is far-reaching in scope and can make use of different tools, types of digital marketing boil down to five basic categories.

• Written content. This can come in the form of blog posts, landing pages, case studies, press releases, white papers, answers to frequently asked questions, instructional guides, and emails.
• Graphics. These include logos, infographics, charts, call to action (CTA) buttons, and suitable use of color schemes.
• Videos. Videos may include vlogs, behind-the-scene brand stories, customer testimonials, instructional guides, webinars, live feed to events, and virtual reality (VR) tours.
• Audio. Audio-related digital marketing examples include podcasts, interviews, and ads on online audio streaming services such as Spotify and Amazon Music.
• Social media. Social media presents a great opportunity for digital marketing through user-generated content, sponsored content, customer reviews, celebrity endorsements, contests, and hashtags. Popular social media platforms that businesses turn to for digital marketing include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. 

Digital Marketing Channels You May Use

You may consider any avenue that you use to share your content as a channel. Determining which channels will be the most effective in delivering your message is crucial for running a successful digital marketing strategy. The different channels you may employ include:

• Organic searches. Organic traffic refers to the web traffic you generate through search engines such as Google and Bing without the use of paid advertisements. By providing relevant and useful content that is created keeping search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, you increase the possibility of ranking high when users conduct searches related to the subject matter at hand.
• Paid searches. Traffic that comes through this channel is the result of showcasing your content through carefully crafted paid ads on prominent websites and/or search engines.
• Social media platforms. These include popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Pinterest.
• Emails. Well-crafted, relevant, and useful emails have a long history of working as an effective digital marketing tool. By delivering your message via emails, you get the ability to capture an audience that has already demonstrated some interest in your brand (by signing up for them in the first place). 
• Link building. Link building involves an online platform that links to your website/content and sends web traffic your way. This aspect plays an important role in SEO and can work as a rather effective way to boost traffic to your website.

How Your Brand May Benefit By Digital Marketing

Irrespective of which industry your brand belongs to, digital marketing gives it a cost-effective way to boost the results of its overall marketing efforts. Benefits of digital marketing include:

Building Trust

Creating relevant and useful content gives your brand easy means to build long-term relationships with your target audience. When you build trust, it has a direct effect on improving your brand’s reputation. Engaging with your audience remains an ongoing exercise, through which you keep it interested in your existing and upcoming offerings. The content you provide helps foster positive customer experiences, which is always good for your brand’s bottom line.

Generating Leads and Increasing Conversions

Digital marketing gives you the ability to share information with your target audience in a streamlined, engaging, and compelling manner. Digital marketing managers often look at this as a highly cost-effective way to generate new leads. They do this by providing content with engaging CTAs that capture your audience’s attention.

Looking to Grow Your Brand Online?

When done right, online digital marketing has a positive effect on conversion rates as well. This is because it lets you connect and share information with your audience directly – be it new leads or existing customers. If you can manage to provide valuable content consistently, you get to influence your audience so it may make well-informed decisions surrounding the value your brand provides. Once your audience gets a good indication of what your business is and what it stands for, there’s an increased possibility of it investing in your brand.

Improving SEO Effectiveness

People who ask “What is digital marketing in SEO?” should know that the former can help improve the effectiveness of the latter. SEO has an important role to play in the online visibility and accessibility of your brand, which is why it is important to use content that highlights your brand’s value. By creating and publishing SEO-based content regularly, you get to increase your brand’s online presence. This is why most prominent websites have blogs through which they offer content that their audiences might find useful. More often than not, content provided through blog posts is optimized for search engines.  

Increasing Authority

Creating a variety of online content helps your brand build its reputation. By offering high-quality content regularly, you get to build respect. While the content you provide can help differentiate your brand from its competitors, it can also help you in showcasing your expertise. Over time, this helps you establish yourself as an industry expert and your audience will look at you as a form of credible authority. With consumers becoming increasingly conscious about where their money is going, establishing a sense of authority can go a long way in boosting your business.

Coming Up With a Good Digital Marketing Strategy

Any digital marketing strategy is only as good as the results it produces.  Formulating an effective strategy requires paying attention to different aspects. While there is no set strategy to follow, some factors remain the same across all good digital marketing strategies.

Setting Uniformity Across the Brand

If multiple people speak on behalf of your brand, it’s important that they maintain the same voice, tone, language, and personality. Businesses that have no set protocols in place may benefit by taking a look at what industry leaders are doing right. While your digital marketing strategy should account for your audience and employees, it should also factor in other stakeholders such as suppliers and vendors.

Assessing Resources and Capabilities

The lack of a standard digital marketing definition results in several businesses being unsure about what marketing strategy to employ, and they end up spending valuable resources in the process. Determining the right digital marketing fit and identifying what’s in and out of scope gives marketers the ability to focus on the right combination of resources for formulating and executing their strategies. 

Looking to Boost Your Business Online?

After you establish which type of content you wish to do extremely well in, you need to address aspects such as what your digital marketing budget is and how you wish to break it down, who will create the content, the types of creative specialties you are looking look for, and the technologies and processes that might come into play when implementing your strategy. At this stage, it’s important that you take complete stock of the resources and capabilities you already have access to, so you may then look for external help accordingly. 

Setting Clear Objectives

Your brand’s digital marketing requirements help determine its key performance indicators (KPIs) and goals. Different types of content with relevant metrics may come in the form of content that caters to building brand awareness and consumer perception; content that focuses on performance marketing through a variety of promotional content; content that caters specifically to local markets; as well as content that relates to specific business objectives surrounding products, pricing, promotions, and placement.

Creating Customer Personas

A number of successful businesses now create customer personas (semi-fictional representations of their ideal customers) based on data and research. This gives you the ability to focus your marketing efforts on qualified prospects and to develop products that align with the needs of your target audience. Factors that go into creating customer personas include age, gender, income, location, marital status, employment status, personal values, likes, dislikes, needs, and media preferences.

Using Data

When it comes to getting customer insight, data and research play vital roles. This can come in the form of data from your own research, historical data, and data acquired from third parties. 

Mapping Customer Journey

A journey map comes from your customers’ perspective and gives you an indication of how they progress when interacting with your brand. In this fast-paced world, a customer may switch from one stage to another depending on a range of factors, and might even skip a touchpoint or more completely.

Following a Streamlined Process

Effective digital marketing requires following an iterative process from the creative stage to putting forth your content. Grouping your content into separate sections is a good idea, as is creating and following a best practices approach to deal with different types of content.

Conclusion

When handled in the right manner, digital marketing can help boost your business’s online presence as well as overall sales. However, creating and implementing a digital marketing strategy requires considerable research and planning, which is why several small and mid-sized businesses steer clear of taking this path. Fortunately, expert help is available more easily than you might imagine. Besides, when you get a digital marketing agency to work on boosting your business online, you get to focus on the internal working of your business. 

Originally posted in: https://www.topnotchdezigns.com/a-guide-to-how-content-marketing-can-boost-your-business/

It’s fair to say that 2020 will be seen as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just how long its effect lasts are yet to be seen, although some experts opine that implications might last for up to a decade. Several big businesses across the United States have already filed for bankruptcy, and an alarming number of stores are shutting shop.

How have people’s shopping habits changed during COVID-19? For starters, online and bulk buying is gaining even more traction than before. This comes as no real surprise because social distancing norms stay firmly in place. Consider this – eCommerce sales accounted for 11.2% of the total retail sales in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2019. It has moved to 14.3% in the third quarter of 2020. In the second quarter of 2020, it even breached the 16% mark.

While consumers appear to have moved past the panic buying stage, the pandemic has definitely impacted purchasing behavior in different ways. According to a report put together by BigCommerce, while younger generations are already cutting back on expenses and spending less on experiences, the effect is not as pronounced on older generations.

Number Speak

While there has been a growth in online sales, not all sectors have seen similar benefits. According to a survey of online consumers from nine countries carried out by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), when it comes to consumers who make at least one online purchase every two months:

There has been a 10% increase in the sale of ICT/electronic goods

The pharmaceutical/health sector has seen a 9% increase in sales

There has been a 9% increase in the sale of gardening and DIY tools

There has been an 8% increase in spending on education and online courses

The home furniture and household goods sector has witnessed a 7% jump

However, there has been a fall in average spending, and sectors that have suffered the most include:

Travel and tourism (-75%)

Home furniture and household goods (-53%)

ICT/electronic goods (-48%)

Fashion and accessories (43%)

The need for consumers to turn online is great for eCommerce in some sectors. After all, businesses that give consumers the ability to experience products and services from their own homes can reach out to much wider audiences. If you look at the SARS crisis of 2002-2003, you can notice significant expansion and growth of Alibaba and JD.com around the same time. What this means is that businesses need to recognize their consumers’ changing needs, and address them in a quick and effective manner.

How Have Online Consumer Shopping Habits And Behavior Changed?

The COVID-19 pandemic has, without a doubt, changed consumers’ online shopping habits in different ways. From the point of view of a business, here’s what you need to know.

Consumer Loyalty is Redistributed Because of New Shopping Behavior

With COVID-19 restrictions still in place in several parts of the world – the U.S. included – a number of people have become first-time online purchasers of groceries and a range of staple products. Shopping online is becoming the new norm, especially for staples, and a distinct pattern of growth in this sector seems to be emerging.

Instacart, popular grocery delivery and pick-up service provider, saw its app downloads increase by more than 200% from February to mid-March. A study by CivicScience highlights that the percentage of shoppers from its list of respondents who purchased groceries online increased from 11% on March 1 to over 40% on March 22.

A Nielsen market study carried out in the U.S. illustrates how long it takes for consumers to “digest and process new outbreak information”, and then make buying /spending decisions in accordance. By looking at these behaviors and identifying early indications of changing consumer actions, businesses can successfully manage their supply chain networks.

Given that it can take seven times more money to acquire a new customer when opposed to retaining an existing one, businesses need to switch their focus from customer acquisition to customer retention. This becomes particularly important for brick-and-mortar businesses that are trying to find a foothold in the online world.

When a consumer forms a habit, be it a shopping habit or a habit of any other kind, it typically takes around 21 days for the habit to become a norm. Businesses that wish to make the best of changing consumer behavior get this much time to make their impact felt.

Some Sectors Have Experienced Significant Growth

Some sectors that build on people’s need to remain socially distant have seen considerable growth since the beginning of the pandemic, and the trend is not going to change any time soon. While these include essentials, digital entertainment is finding an increasing number of takers as well. An entire gamut of “new essentials” is now there for the taking, and it includes home improvement supplies, sporting goods, toys, and office supplies.

Subscriptions to online platforms such as Netflix and Spotify have seen a noticeable surge; so much so that the European Union got Netflix to slow down its speed by 25% to make sure that broadband networks continue performing properly.

While consumers are lining up to register with online services that aim to make the buying process more convenient, even some industry leaders such as Amazon are finding it hard to keep pace with the slew of orders.

Phone and video conferencing apps have witnessed a rise in use as well – not just by businesses that have employees working from home, but also by online retailers that are trying to make the best of social distancing and home isolation norms.

With people how having to spend most of their time at home – be it working, entertaining, or parenting – the need for several products becomes all the more pronounced.

Computers are Back

An analysis carried out by the New York Times suggests that there has been an increase in the number of people using websites as opposed to apps. While using responsive web designs continues to remain important, businesses need to come to terms with the fact that consumers are spending more time at computers than before.

Given that people are at home for long periods of time, it is natural for them to spend more time at their desktops or laptops when compared to their mobile phones. For many, computers present a simpler and better way to shop, especially when it involves comparisons.

The focus in the few years has been on following a mobile-first approach. However, while there is a need to optimize online content for mobile devices – and this will not change – it is important to keep desktops and laptops in mind too. For instance, a website should be able to handle any increase in traffic, because close to 50% of users don’t wait for more than two seconds for a website to load.

At this stage, businesses should look at making the most of the increase in website traffic by focusing on creating great user experiences. Statistics suggest that around 60% of consumers engage with websites that are attractive and well designed. Unfortunately, over 75% of digital agencies are of the opinion that their clients’ websites can do much better when it comes to user experience.

There’s a Shift in Shopping Priorities

Bazaarvoice’s research highlights how COVID-19 pandemic has affected the priorities of consumers. Their priorities before the pandemic included:

Quality – 48%

Price – 47%

Brand – 24%

With a shift in consumer behaviors because of the pandemic, their existing top priorities include:

Availability – 49%

Price – 36%

Quality – 34%

Availability is a top concern now, because:

Close to 60% of all respondents have experienced product shortages

More than 40% said that finding essential and non-essential supplies is tricky

Only 30% said they got everything they needed with ease

Businesses need to look at this as an opportunity, as it gives them the ability to reach out to wider markets and attract more potential customers. While this requires ensuring that the supply chain remains unaffected, it also requires marketing your products to a wider audience.

What Businesses Need to Do

There has been a steady rise in eCommerce over the last few years, although the pandemic has definitely accelerated the pace. It is safe to say that eCommerce will only continue to grow in the coming times.

In 2019, global eCommerce sales accounted for over 3.5 trillion. According to predictions that have not taken into account the ongoing pandemic, the number is set to cross $6.5 trillion in 2022. As a result, if your business does not have an online presence yet, now is as good a time to get started. This might include getting your branding right, creating a user-friendly responsive website, and making your presence felt on different social media platforms.

Businesses need to understand that there is a much bigger pool of prospective customers in the online world than before the pandemic. They need to engage with existing and potential customers seamlessly while trying to boost sales and increase customer retention.

Small and mid-sized businesses can use this opportunity to make their mark felt and increase their outreach, as larger players continue struggling with overloaded services. The two main aspects that require attention, in this case, including providing a great online shopping experience and effective engagement with the target audience.

The eCommerce Supply Chain Problem

The changes in online consumer shopping habits and behavior because of the pandemic require that businesses pay due attention to supply chains and communications. Manufacturing units have stopped production in several countries, with the closure of many apparel factories shutting shop in China, India, and Bangladesh serving as prime examples.

In the existing scenario, businesses need to come up with suitable short-term responses to tackle the problems they face.

Ensure employee and customer safety while trying to optimize production as well as distribution capacities.

Come up with a list of critical components, determine the origin of their supply, and look for alternative sources of procurement.

Get estimates of available inventory that you might need to bridge any possible supply chain gap in the future.

Carry out a realistic assessment of customer demands during shortage-buying behavior.

Determine logistical capabilities while being flexible on modes of transportation.

Understand where supply-chain problems might have adverse financial impacts, and manage cash flow accordingly.

Businesses that depend on regional supply chains seem to have been more resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic, so it might make sense for businesses to think about localized operations as far as possible.

Businesses that face logistical problems should take extra measures to communicate with their customers about aspects such as availability of stock and any possible delays in shipping. This is simply because you cannot expect any good to come from reaching out to a large online audience and overpromising while being unable to deliver.

New Shopping Behaviors are Here to Stay

Several eCommerce trends that have come to the fore owing to the COVID-19 pandemic will stay in place for as long as we experience elongated periods of social distancing, and they might continue even after life returns to some kind of normal. For instance, consumers who started shopping online for essentials might well continue to do so long into the future.

Conclusion

The growth of eCommerce in the last decade has been phenomenal. Changes in online consumer shopping habits and behavior during COVID-19 have worked as a catalyst to speed it up even more. While one can say with certainty that online retail will overtake traditional retail in not too distant a future, just when it might happen is anybody’s guess.

Businesses – both online and offline – need to take this opportunity to reach out to their target audience in the best possible manner, while trying to build long-standing relationships with them. Remember that following strategic measures at this point in time are bound to pay huge dividends for small and big businesses alike.

Originally posted in: https://www.topnotchdezigns.com/shopping-habits-during-covid-19/