11 tips for your e-shop and your business during the coronavirus

The past few weeks have been demanding for everyone. The coronavirus has threatened many lives, and not only in terms of health but financially too. Many people have lost their income and have had to suspend their businesses and the activities that go with them. Prevention matters enormously at a time like this, and if you are at a loss as to how to go on, we will advise you on what to do with your e-shop or your business during a pandemic.

Optimise by the Pareto principle

If you need to cut online advertising costs at this time, focus on the best-performing parts of your campaigns. As a general rule, 20% of keywords generate 80% of revenue. If you run an e-shop, do focus on the campaigns and activities tied to your product feed — Google Shopping, DSA campaigns and Heureka campaigns.

It is important to bear in mind that the range people will buy now is likely to differ from what they bought before the epidemic or in the same period last year. Focus on cheaper products, or on everyday essentials, or on those with a simpler buying process.

Cut back paid brand activity

Building a brand matters enormously to any business, but limiting or switching off paid campaigns in that direction for a short time need not harm your brand at all. So you can focus more on paid online activity with a direct response, and build the brand through channels that need no credit, which we write about below.

Make use of "free" channels

Online marketing is not only about Google or Facebook ads. At a time when companies will be cutting their budgets out of uncertainty, or halting their online advertising entirely, room opens up for optimising or setting up other communication channels. Communicate by email, or within Facebook groups, with your target group. Produce interesting content you can distribute free of charge as well.

Ways you can do it:

• Email
• Facebook groups
• A YouTube channel
• Discussion forums

Activate your customers

One option is email. Go through your email databases and communicate actively with your customers at this time too. Do not forget your social media, and you can use SMS marketing as well. Look at your audiences in your ad accounts too, and talk to the people who know you: give them interesting content and build a relationship even now.

Give your attention to price comparison sites

Have your Heureka, Favi, Biano and Glami feeds been running unsupervised, with you assuming everything was fine? Now is the time to start optimising them more deeply. Watch your costs and revenue daily. Customer behaviour in these harder times is rather erratic and unpredictable.

So do not let the comparison sites spend large sums unsupervised. Look carefully, too, at which products you send to them. Are there products you have trouble stocking or shipping? Optimise them for the best possible overall profit.

Cut back cash on delivery and use online payments

Many couriers have already limited cash on delivery, so if you have not yet implemented card payment or another online service, now is the right time. In Slovakia we have a wide choice of services and virtual gateways such as GoPay, Trustpay, 24pay, Stripe and even PayPal, which is not widely used in our part of the world.

There are of course bank gateways too, from Tatra banka, SLSP and ČSOB. The drawback of bank gateways is the need to hold an account with that bank and a more demanding contractual process. The advantage, though, is that you receive payments straight into your bank account rather than being paid out at, say, weekly intervals as with virtual gateways.

Automate how your e-shop runs

Consider what you could automate in your e-shop and so save time. It might be importing new products, updating data, or connections to invoicing and other systems. A very useful connection can be automatically updating stock from a supplier. In the current situation it can change very often, and this way you save yourself the trouble of out-of-date stock levels.

Do what you have had no time for until now

If there has been no time for writing blog posts, revising meta descriptions or optimising product names, perhaps now is your chance. When the coronavirus passes, your site could be far better prepared for a rise in organic traffic and could offer more unique, more relevant information than your competition. SEO, and building a brand and trust, is a long-distance run, and now is precisely the time to work on it as hard as you can.

Experiment

If you had your social media communication set up and stuck to it strictly during busier times on the assumption that you knew your audience, it is time for a change. The audience is changing, shifting and sinking into the online world. We need to find out again who our audience is, where it is and when it is there.

Search — you have the time. You can try the content you did not have the nerve for, you can find out what your audience likes. Personal questions or updates, experiences or news: you can experiment and find out. You have never had a larger group than now.

Create interactions

Entertain your audience. Ask, find out, play. People are at home and hungry for entertainment and interaction. Make use of it. Find out carefully, note the answers down. Draw on them and build.

Try something new

Has Facebook been enough for you so far? Go further — how about testing Instagram? Make use of the fact that people are looking for entertainment at home and constantly filling their stories with chain challenges; catch their interest too. Try short challenges on TikTok as well. At a time when people are at home and open to challenges and novelty, do not let your brand stagnate.