Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - Page number 108 - July/August 2021

108 Time to get craftier online With Google having made sweeping changes in May, everyone needs to make sure that their online offering is up to speed, in order to compete. Julaine Speight director at First Internet gives her advice As stores and events have tentatively opened up again in the UK, businesses of all kinds are welcoming the return to face-to-face selling − but need to ensure that it’s combined with e-commerce and an effective online presence. Online sales have risen massively over the last 12 months, for retailers of all sizes. Compared to just a decade ago, consumers are way more diverse, and they are getting younger all the time − over nine million craft buyers were under 35 in 2020 − and this has had a huge impact on how they shop, with many going online. This growth of online has also pushed international growth. According to the Craft Council, around half of professional craft makers selling work overseas compared to just 18 per cent in 2006. Covid accelerated the trend: Hobbycraft has reported over 200 per cent rise in online sales since the start of the pandemic and Statista has forecasted that online retail revenue in Europe alone will rise from $394b in 2020 to $465b by the end of 2021, driven even further by the option of Click and Collect, which has offered a popular replacement for many non-essential retailers and an alternative for consumers who didn’t want home delivery. It has proved so successful that some leading brands have actively closed high street branches and converted them to bespoke Click and Collect depots for the foreseeable future. In the past, Google has sprung updates on us without warning. Its previous large updates, Panda and Penguin, came out of the blue and made significant changes − Panda penalised thin or poor content and pushed the offending site down the search ranking, while Penguin penalised sites that had bad link building and were stuffed with keywords. This new update, in comparison, is all about website usability and performance. In the simplest possible terms, this means that if your users find it difficult to navigate their way around your site, or struggle to find the information they’re looking for, you’ll be penalised accordingly. Websites that are easy to use, meanwhile, will be rewarded by being higher up the rankings. When you consider that 90 per cent of the world uses Google, it’s a good idea to keep the giant search engine onside. There are a few things that contribute to ‘usability’ − or UX as it is known in the trade − and that can therefore be checked and improved easily. these include the following... SITE SPEED If your site was slow to load before, it would most likely lead to your customers jumping ship to a competitor site. Now however, it could prevent them even finding you in the first place. Make sure you optimise your images (compress them so they’re the right size and in the right format). This will affect page speed;