Over the course of the last two years, businesses all over America have felt the painful blow of the coronavirus pandemic. This has been devastating to many smaller businesses and had serious repercussions for other businesses that took a sudden dive as soon as the pandemic hit. They have had to rapidly change the way they work and their business strategy as a whole, which has been nothing but a whole bunch of stress for business owners all over the country.
Navigating this hasn’t been for the faint-hearted and has proved challenging even for the most business-savvy individuals. With that in mind, here are two of the biggest things that the pandemic has taught American businesses, and that has probably changed it forever.
Cybersecurity should be taken seriously
Cybercrime has leaped dramatically in the past two years. It has affected businesses every bit as badly as the pandemic has. Cybercriminals have taken full advantage of the sudden changes that businesses had to make when they were forced to move out of offices and go into remote working at short notice. Many businesses struggled to get their security up to date with their new tech and everything new that they had to bring in almost overnight in an attempt to keep productivity levels where they were before the coronavirus tragedy struck. It has been a mad scramble for businesses to get the level of support that they need to function.
However, it is not all lost. This situation has caused a lot of businesses to finally get the message when it comes to cybersecurity and taught them to actually treat it like the threat it is. It has been remarkably useful for IT support companies to get a good understanding of what is actually happening behind the mask of social engineering and to really help them help businesses remain safe from threats. It has become an essential part of owning a business and is recognized at last with the level of importance it should have had right from the very start.
Physical stores may have dwindled, but websites have become more important than ever
Many businesses have been forced to work online. For some, it has worked remarkably well, so much so that they have closed their offline shop and have turned to work exclusively online. Others, however, have found working online to be painfully bad for business and have therefore lost a lot of revenue. This has had an awful effect on so many of America’s businesses. However, one thing that they have all relied upon in these past two years is their websites.
Online presence has become more important than ever, whether it be on social media or the results pages of Google. Businesses have started to really learn the ins and outs of owning a website, and the potential has barely been scratched. This is an excellent thing for businesses, whether they still have an offline store or they are now solely online, as they can advertise more effectively to their audiences, hone their sales funnels, and get their sales leads exactly where they want them through social media influencer marketing, SEO (search engine optimization) or by following current trends.
