Covid–19: A Guide to Steer Your e-Business Through It

The world is facing a one-of-a-kind crisis right now. The Coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we perceive life and how this world functions. However, our world has witnessed the worst and we will rise above this calamity too.

Business world, particularly, is reeling under the shifts caused by Covid-19. With determination and right guidance, you can steer through this situation too. 

So,  with an optimistic approach, the expert team at Ranosys Technologies has crafted a meticulous guide aimed at steering your eCommerce business through this testing time. 

With the following step you can safeguard your eCommerce business during Covid-19 lockdown. We have broadly divided our steps into 3 areas: 

1. Ramp up or Increase 
2. Restructure  or Realign 
3. Exploring your option or Be Agile

3 Steps to Safeguard Your eCommerce Business During the Coronavirus Lockdown

Increase: Any business, no matter which part of the world it belongs to, is going to be eventually affected by Covid-19. Yet, there are certain areas in which you should increase your efforts. 

• Increase Social Awareness Messages: Whether you belong to an industry which is directly affected by Covid-19 or not, increase your efforts in creating social awareness for your customers. This would not only help you curb the spread (which in itself is a noble cause) but would also help develop a positive identity for your brand. 
• Increase Proactive Messaging: We know that the customer agitation and dissatisfaction is going to peak during these times. Thus, you must proactively intimate customers about any probable delays and unavailability of goods. You must also mention any other kind of issues that you are facing and its workaround. You need to devise these messages in such a way that within a first couple of clicks, the customer can view the message of unavailability and 

Realign: The Covid-19 crisis has forced all of us to accept new realities. In the similar fashion, our business goals and actions need to be restructured too. Whatever plans you had devised in the beginning of the quarter require alteration. 

However, you can utilize the period to restart your dormant plans. Following are some of the aspects you could switch to as the Covid-19 lockdown continues:

• Realign to Inbound Marketing: Your customers are consuming more digital content than ever in the Coronavirus lockdown. Hence, this is a great opportunity for you to adopt an aggressive approach towards inbound marketing. Get your content team onboard and increase your SEO and social media outreach.
• Concentrate on Dormant Projects:This is a perfect opportunity for you to get your creative juices flowing. Every business has plenty of ideas for their in-house development but client service takes precedence over them. You can direct your employees to work on these long-forgotten, but important projects. 
• Focus on Improving Existing Features : During this time, it would be better to finally implement the feature improvements you had always planned for. You could also introduce interesting marketing campaigns to utilize this time. 

For example, if you’ve an eCommerce business selling clothes, you could build and release complete lookbooks and style guides to engage with your users. This is the time to realign your goal from customer loyalty than conversion. 

Be agile: In the worst-case scenario, you might have to stop taking any new orders or serve any customers. This decision will completely depend upon the spread of Covid-19 in your region, the government norms and the overall difficulty in remaining operational. Although, before taking such a call there are a few aspects that you should contemplate.

• Product Innovation: Is there something in your product arsenal that can be tweaked to serve a particular need of your customer during these times? If yes, then make that change, innovate and serve your customers. 

A good example of it would be, how alcohol producing companies have transformed their business to produce hand sanitizer and how clothing companies with sufficient resources are working on making face masks.

• Restricting Your Geographical Area of Operation: Though many webstores would be temporarily non-functional but you can restrict your order intake from a particular region. This might be the region in which you have your warehouse and offer an in-store/warehouse pick up for your customers. 

The good thing about this is you can easily maintain social distancing by providing your services and segregating your customers into different batches.

• Clear Messaging Regarding the Situation: Your registered as well as prospect customers should get a clear message regarding the status of their order and the future plans of the company.  The ideal way is to put up a banner with this message.

You can also put smaller labels on each product details as well as the product listing page. The labels must clearly mention the reason (Manpower Shortage, Precautionary Measure, Governments Directive or any other in relation to Covid-19), provide a directive,  and a tentative date of when you would be functional again.

Wrapping up:

The silver lining of the Covid-19 crisis has been the solidarity and unity it has brought in the world. As part of a larger community, we must stand together and build each other up. At Ranosys Technologies, our culture has always been of sharing and growing together. 

To keep this culture alive, we have gathered a panel of industry veterans and experts on “Ranosys Covid-19 Response Taskforce” to provide their insights, helpful tips and aid to those who need guidance during this time. 

We would love to have you as a part of this team. So, if you’re a contributor who wants to extend a hand with your consultation or a startup who needs to discuss their course of action, do drop us a mail at sales@ranosys.com.