While the battle against the pandemic is far from over, the real economy of small businesses is plummeting. The future foresees a reduction in both business and citizens’ liquidity. The upcoming autumn looks bleak, there’s no denying it.
But amidst this series of unfortunate events, there has been a leap forward in e-commerce across the Western World, including Italy, to withstand the closures imposed by authorities due to the pandemic.
Today’s and future e-commerce is part of a new era, leveraging the rapid digitization of households and businesses. The internet is now accessible to almost the entire population.
The use of e-commerce in early 2020 was a necessity to survive what was supposed to be a temporary crisis moment, with lockdowns, but in the meantime, it has become a business opportunity to be exploited to the fullest extent and, above all, to be planned for the future because nothing will be the same after this pandemic.
Every sector can benefit from online sales, from ready-made food to clothing, sports equipment, parapharmacies, food products, etc. But online, we also find numerous services such as specialized consultations, including medicine, legal and commercial support, etc. Almost all economic sectors can leverage the internet.
Increasingly, buyers prefer to purchase or preview products through the internet, especially via mobile devices. Therefore, the website designed for online sales must necessarily be conceived for smartphones but also usable from PCs and tablets.
Since 2021, Google indexes websites in its search engine only in the smartphone version. This will not exclude the display of the website from tablets or PCs, but non-smartphone websites will lose positions in search engines and will be destined to end up at the bottom of the rankings.
Even recently developed e-commerce sites will need to be updated to comply with Google’s new guidelines. All new websites, if created by reputable agencies, will be developed to be compatible with Google’s new instructions, so the desktop version must match the smartphone version identically. Another determining factor will be the user-friendliness of the website and the speed of navigation. And these latter two aspects are often gravely overlooked.
In short, nothing will be as it was before; businesses, even those of neighborhood stores, now begin from the potential customer’s home, and it is advisable to equip oneself immediately. However, not all activities necessarily need to be offered as e-commerce websites; the business need should be analyzed preliminarily with an expert.
Our company has prepared solutions for the restructuring and construction of websites for online sales with various turnkey packages.
