Canadian Small Businesses Rush to Get Online

COVID-19 Forces Canadian Business Online

Canadians have been laggards in accepting online purchasing, compared to the rest of the world. COVID-19 has now forced them to make purchases online. Retail business in Canada was woefully unprepared for selling online and many businesses did not have an online presence at all.

There has now been a great rush into eCommerce with small businesses hastily setting up websites with “all-in-one” “do-it-yourself” website companies. These companies make setting up a website relatively easy, they supply everything including themes, hosting, payment gateways etc. for which businesses pay a monthly fee. (subscription)

The rush to find the fastest way to get online may come back to haunt these businesses in the future. What they thought was a cheap and easy way to get an online presence will start to cost more and more as their business grows. Every time they try to add a feature(plugin) to their website there will be an additional monthly cost.

What most of small businesses don’t realize when they sign up with these companies, is that they don’t own their data. Once businesses decide to use these companies it becomes very hard and expensive for them to leave.

It’s a great business model for these companies as their sky-rocketing share prices show. After having signed up huge numbers of small businesses, they can simply raise the monthly subscription and make billions more.

Advice to Small Businesses:

• There are lots of website platforms out there. (Magento, Drupal, Wordpress, Woocommerce etc.)
• Do your research – Don’t rush into it.
• Find a good website designer.
• Many businesses have websites that are pitiful. They are badly designed, don’t work properly and are hard to use. – Don’t be one of them.
• Just because your company has a website doesn’t mean people are going to find it or that all of a sudden the orders are going to start rolling in.
• Invest in SEO (search engine optimization)
• Beware of Google and Bing advertising. It can cost you a fortune very quickly, with very little ROI (if you don’t know what you’re doing).
• A good website designer should be able to steer you in the right direction and will know people who can help.

By What A Jewel | Canadian Gift Shop | Online since 2007