There’s a lot to be said for the ingenuity of small business owners faced with closure during the pandemic. Take, for example, the craft brewery owner who moved his entire business online by offering curbside pickup and home delivery. Business is down 10%, but his doors are still open, so to speak.
Think of all the small restaurants in your area. How many of them are surviving, or even thriving, despite the pandemic? Even in the face of uncertainty, people still crave the going-out dining experience, even if they must do it at home. Yes, the food is delivered, but it’s still creating a small island of normalcy in an ocean of chaos.
Being Small and Agile is A Winning Combination
If nothing else, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that being small has its advantages in the current economic climate. A small online business can duck and weave and change their tactics to connect with customers wherever they are. For now, most customers are at home, stuck indoors, but still in need of goods and services.
The economy has been shifting towards online commerce for a few decades now, but the pandemic has rapidly transitioned shopping online into being “the new normal.”
For example:
Online business was once the domain for more exotic one-off purchases or for hard to find items. Now that we have a growing economy of shut-ins, online customers have become accustomed to ordering everything from toilet paper to beauty products and sofas to televisions online and having their orders delivered to their door.
However, customers’ expectations are still high, and they demand the same level of convenience, reliability, and understanding. An online business that restructured their business model to cope with a demographic of shut-ins will be in the best position to profit when the pandemic finally moves on. As a result, once people get a taste of the convenience of shopping online, many become converts for life.
From the examples above, customers have seen first-hand how small businesses can adapt quickly to their needs, and they will bear no truck with large corporations who are not willing to do the same.
Consequently, big corporate’s futures will come down to how fast they can adapt to a rapidly evolving market. A stuffy, set in its way’s corporation will quickly lose value as more customers realize that better service is just a couple of mouse clicks away.
Empowering Workers In An Online Business
Successful small business owners know that good ideas can come from anywhere. Moreover, listening to employees can reveal new insights about how to make the customer experience better, more convenient, and reliable.
Subsequently, in large corporations, with leaders sitting in their ivory towers, change comes slowly, and decisions are endlessly deliberated. There is little, if any, input from the people operating in the thick of it. As a result, by the time a new strategy is finalized, it’s often too little too late.
In the current economic client, “too big to fail” is about as inaccurate a statement as you can get. More and more of the public are starting to realize that big isn’t necessarily better, nor is it where you get the best value. Being small and agile is giving every small online business a distinct advantage in navigating the obstacles thrown up by the pandemic. Click here to read how to increase online holiday shopping sales this year.
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