Lockdown Learnings

Lockdown Learnings

It’s no secret that the lockdown brought on by Covid-19 has taken a serious bite out of the global economy. With the largest nosedive in stocks and shares ever recorded, this pandemic has caused a recession so deep as to eclipse the Great Depression.

Although we are certainly in for some lean years ahead, there are yet valuable lessons we can and need to learn from this lockdown. As the saying goes: when one door shuts, another opens.

So, with this in mind, let’s take a comprehensive look at what can be gleaned from the situation at hand, from shopping and marketing trends to ecommerce and app building.

DIGITAL QUARANTINE TRENDS

Since the official start of lockdown in the UK on the 23rd of March, we saw a dramatic rise in demand for digital strategy, design, web development, SEO, and most of all for social advertising. Why? Well, we’ll get to that in a minute, but first, let’s get a little backstory.

Shopping trends: Ecommerce boom

This one we all predicted. As everyone was ushered inside and asked to stay put as much as possible, barring one hour of exercise per day (which, let’s be honest, most of us used as more of a leisure-wear fashion show than anything else), and online shopping sales sky-rocketed. We all experienced the nausea of trying to secure a slot for an online Tesco grocery order and probably bought a fair few things more from Amazon and other online retailers than was strictly “essential”…

What we’re we buying?

Suddenly, the sales (and presales) of face masks of all different varieties went through the roof and has stayed pretty level since then. Along with that of course was a rise in sales of hand sanitisers and cleaning products, particularly bleach and room sanitisers. This is really of no surprise during a pandemic, but it’s important to note the unexpected as well – hair clippers; skincare products; gardening gear; DIY stuff; baking supplies. All these saw massive growth in sales during the height of the pandemic in the springtime and it doesn’t take too much of an imagination to understand why.

So, what does this mean for businesses?

With the massive increase in online shopping activity, many websites were thrown into harsh relief. A spotlight was fixed not only on their website crawl errors, speed, user experience, design, shopper experience and blogs – but also now focused on how quickly and easily customers stuck at home could get their hands on products they wanted. It was a sink or swim moment, and the businesses that rode the waves of the lockdown were the ones that offered multiple access points to their products (whether via the website, app or social), all rearing and ready to meet the huge demands of a bored-in-the-house-and-I’m-in-the-house-bored population (see TikTok if you didn’t catch that last one).

Of course (and here’s the “why” part) this is why everyone started searching (online and in general) for digital marketing solutions. Demand for digital strategy peaked during the height of lockdown with the app and/or web development and design, digital strategy, SEO and social strategy seeing the most considerable surges.

What next?

Where perhaps before, “future-proofing” for businesses might have brought up images of robots and A.I machines years in the future, now things are probably feeling a little closer and a bit more urgent. With experts saying that another pandemic (whether the second wave of COVID-19 or otherwise) is a case of when rather than if, it’s more important than ever to make sure your business is ready. Even if things are flying right now, take the time and investment to find and create a marketing strategy (or to develop an app), and make sure your website is agile and up to the going standard – you won’t regret it.

Contact one of our Adeo Groupies to have a chat about what we could do to help future proof your business.