Design by Morango.co.uk

Worried About Survival of your business in the recession? Perhaps you should buff up your website. Or start one. Seriously.

As Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC wrote yesterday (13 January, 2009), confirming our own observations, at least one line of business is absolutely recession-proof these days. Perhaps it is hard to believe it given the dot-boom experience of eight years ago, but it is e-commerce. Yes, e-commerce or e-tailing has finally come of age.  Nielsen Online [pdf], which puts web traffic under the microscope, reports that traffic to the top ten UK retail websites was up by 37% in the last quarter of 2008 compared to the previous year. 

“No surprise that Amazon is at the top of the list with a monthly audience of 15.6 million. But that was a rise of just 18% on the previous year, whereas the figures for some traditional retailers were far more spectacular. Argos saw its audience rise by 32%, Marks and Spencer had a 46% rise and Littlewoods’ audience was up 66%.”

As Rory Cellan-Jones says “Back in the late 90s the dotcom evangelists told us that online start-ups would crush the dinosaurs of retailing and leave the shopping malls and high streets deserted. That didn’t happen - but a decade later the online retail revolution is finally happening. And funnily enough, the dinosaurs are now leading the charge.”

Looks like the surest bet to survive, if not plainly thrive, in the times of recession is to seriously re-think one’s online strategy. After all websites turned out to be THE channel preferred by the savvy consumers of today.

On our part, Morango has launched no less than four new sites in the last 4 weeks, and is seeing a growing, if anything, demand for both e-commerce and general marketing websites.

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Morango is a London based creative agency specialising in web design and web development.