Over the past year (2020), the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted small businesses all over the world. It forced us to create a better digital presence online and WebPros and Plesk have the tools to help us with that. We'll look at how the digital landscape changed, how businesses pivoted, and what they can still do going into 2021.
1. Why is digital presence more important than ever before?
We saw industries digitize over the last 10 years. Video meetings, retail stores, digital price tags, and much more. This got accelerated with pandemic. Hyper demand, and it’s not just major companies driving digitization - bakeries, craft shops, and smaller businesses need to get online too.
Customers thought, “Get me to the results faster.” It’s not just website, it’s workflow. And during the pandemic it needed to be good, fast, and cheap.
2. Do you see a future where this goes back to how it was before? Or is this the ‘new normal’ for online behavior?
We have set the standard on digitization and business digitization, and it’s here to stay - Standing in line for hours to get groceries will be unacceptable!
But it really comes down to this: we have more advanced digital experiences
3. How has e-commerce changed since March 2020? (beginning of Covid 19 pandemic)
It’s incredible. We saw big growth rates everywhere; not just the likes of Amazon, but for someone who’s never been in a digital business making money online. A lot of people are moving to transact and make money online. It is the highest priority for a lot of people
4. How does WebPros support its customers in such times?
By supplying the technology that creates digital experiences (not just a shopping cart or web page). They're seeing more demand that ever before because they provide server automation, publish websites, and offer e-commerce, with least amount of effort possible.
Their vision is to create a digital presence for anyone. Anything you can do in physical world they want to do online, and they have the tools to do it.
4. Why is now the best time to start a business or to shift it towards online it?
"It’s always a good time to start a business if you have a good idea."
5. What is the future of e-commerce for small and medium businesses and how WebPros can support them in this relation
It's really important for these businesses - it’s how they’ll make their money. Some will transact online and exchange in real world, but many will start to do everything in the digital world.
It's a huge commodity and everything is getting easier.
Joe Casabona 0:02
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of next level Ops, a podcast that explores tools, tips and techniques for hosting and managing websites presented by plastc. I'm your host, Joe Casabona. And I am so excited to kick off season two with you, and our guests. Jen's meguiars. He's the web pros CEO. And we are going to be talking all about digital presence over the the year 2020 COVID, the covid 19 pandemic has impacted small businesses all over the world. It forced us to create a better digital presence online and web pros and plus have the tools to help us with that. So I'm going to turn it over to Jen's Jen's Welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.
Jens Meggers 0:50
Thanks. Thanks for having me. It's fantastic to be here.
Joe Casabona 0:52
My absolute pleasure. I'm really excited to talk to you. Now, before we get into some of the questions. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and kind of what your day to day looks like.
Jens Meggers 1:03
Thank you, Joe. Well, I'm the CEO of Red Cross. And obviously, it's a technology company. So which I run but the day to day looks like we're creating, you know, great products in the hands of customers that help building up building a digital presences. And, you know, it's all about the outcome, how we can solve our customers problems and, and get them to the best possible outcome.
Joe Casabona 1:29
That's fantastic. And so yeah, let's let's dive right into it. Obviously, the global pandemic has had a big impact on people all over the world, you know, people who are generally used to foot traffic, people walking into their stores had to do something different. Why is digital presence more important than ever before?
Jens Meggers 1:51
Well, look,
I mean, we saw industry digitalization already happening over the last 10 years, right? It started with like advanced sensors. It started with people, video meetings. And, you know, we have seen retail stores that were doing like digital price tags, right. So the idea is like, you go into the store, and you pick up a banana, and at the time you pick up the banana the price changes, because, you know, supply has changed the price. So all of this happened over the last, I would say the last decade, and it got accelerated now with a pandemic. Or we went into kind of like hyper demand for for digitizing businesses, because we really had to bring the physical world into the virtual worlds and doing it fast. And with the majority of the business really only had a few months to do that. And you could tell right before it was the large companies like the GS or you know, like the Siemens of the world who that will drive digitization. And now it's every business from the smallest from the bakery from the little store that says priceless, everybody is digitizing, and I think that that's what really the the pandemic did. It really accelerated the digitization across all segments.
Joe Casabona 3:16
Yeah, I think that's a really important point to make. And because you're right, it's not just major companies anymore, right? I mean, Amazon has been selling stuff online since 1995. But the bagel joint down the street from me, I legit just got a website, at least a good one. When the pandemic hit, and they I think that they did a really good implementation of I think the people in the e commerce industry call it a bow pack or something like that. Right? buy online pickup at curb. And so you know, are you seeing, are you seeing very degrees of like how well people are doing it, have people flocked to certain tools to help them do it? Well, you know what
Jens Meggers 4:01
I will say variety. Currently, it's all about like getting me to the results process with the least amount of effort because they also don't necessarily want to hire a whole bunch of people didn't want to hire like the bakery doesn't want to hire like an IT person right around the website. Yeah. And it's also not only just creating events, that it's also as you pointed out its entire workflow, because it's not only like, Oh, we have bagels, right? Nobody wants this day, we already know that they have bagels. But do you want to pick your favorite Baker Monday morning 8am, right. And you actually want to pick it up without basically touching anyone. And so the workflow and the automation around that is the most important thing. So and especially during the pandemic, where people have less money to the disposal versus more. So they had to do everything very, very quickly, high quality with a workflow with customer feedback, and then on a very, very small budget. So I think you have to bring all of this together to really see The the the criticality of the of that movement.
Joe Casabona 5:03
Yeah, I can't agree more. And I think you raise a good point, right? Because usually people say, you know, I want it fast, I want it done well, I want a cheap pick two. In the pandemic, you really need it all three for these businesses to survive and thrive. Now, talking about kind of where how we got to where we are today, do you see a future where this where things go back to how it was before? Or do you think this is a new normal for online behavior?
Jens Meggers 5:34
I think it's a little bit like a pendulum, right, it swings into one direction. And then it bounces back, but it will always return. Right. So and so I think we're at that point, we definitely have set the standard now during the pandemic, on digitization, and business digitization. And this is what she has to say, when you used to, you know, standing in line for for two hours to buy like a, you know, some, some beverages at your favorite place. That is not all accepted once you come out of the pandemic. And we have done craziest things, but I think about the long lines at the gas stations and or concerts, right? They were really hard to get in and, and all of these things that we did to, to pick certain goods up and now all of this is getting delivered and automated over digital experiences. And I don't I think 80% of what we basically did was implemented Will you will not be able to take this away anymore.
Joe Casabona 6:39
Yeah, again, I think that's 100% correct. Because, I mean, think about before Amazon again, I keep I keep going to Amazon, but they're the ones who standardized like, two days shipping right? Now, if I order something and it takes like two weeks, I'm incensed. Right? I ordered something this morning, and it's getting here soon. So you know, I think that as as we change habits and make people's lives easier, we can't really go back, you know, go back to somewhere where some way, it's hard. People are gonna want to go to restaurants, of course. But as far as groceries go, if I never have to step into a grocery store again, I will be a happy man. Yeah,
Jens Meggers 7:24
yeah, so that's exactly right. So we'll, that's going to be interesting times, and I think it will help us to actually create better experiences, it comes down to actually honestly, once we come out of a pandemic, we will have more advanced digital experiences across the board. And then hopefully, we can also, you know, go back to some of the really weird things that we were used to before and enjoy them again. I can't wait, but definitely the advanced digital experiences here to stay.
Joe Casabona 7:54
Yeah, absolutely. And with that, so I mean, this is general digital experiences we're talking about, right? People are wanting people want better, more usable websites to create the experience to make their lives easier. But, you know, e commerce is something that has grown considerably since March of 2020. So how has aside from that massive growth, right? How has e commerce changed since the beginning of the covid 19 pandemic?
Jens Meggers 8:24
is incredible. We see an incredible goes right in the e commerce sector. And it's really not only Amazon, it's everywhere. You know, it's because of the e commerce obviously, you could say, yeah, now the bagel shop has a website and I can maybe only buy the bagel. So obviously, I will prefer not to pick my credit card and do a transaction once I pick this up. So if I could buy before it's better. But it's more than that. Because it's it's not only this particular use case of striving it's also the need for a someone who has been in a non digital business before now making money online, a an online expenses that actually supplies your your life, but your annual salary. And so we see a lot of people gravitating towards doing business online, not only to like advertise and drive things to certain areas, but also really to transact and produce produce fans. And that's what we're seeing. People will do a whole bunch of creative things to either sell, or resell or broker do all kinds of things online. So making money online is at the moment, the highest priority for a lot of people. Because it's the only way to make money. And that's why we're seeing a lot of ecommerce growth and in some segments and not oil has isolated throughout the last calendar year. almost doubled online transactions.
Joe Casabona 9:57
Wow. That's That's incredible. I mean, like you said, right, that's incredible. And you're right. It's not just Amazon, right? Or even, it's not even just shops, right? anecdotally, I've gotten a lot of inquiries in the last six months about, how do I use some WordPress LMS to get an online course up and running, right? Because if you're not selling a physical product, then if you're selling online, you're probably selling knowledge. So it's not just the stores that need to be online. It's the people who are maybe used to teaching in the classroom, maybe used to doing, you know, house, showing houses. And in a physical format, I need to figure out how to do it online. So I think you're right. It's not just Amazon, it's, it's anybody. And it's people figuring out Oh, my gosh, this is big, this the place where I can make money without being in person.
Jens Meggers 10:47
That's right.
Joe Casabona 10:49
So, so we've set the stage a little bit here, right? We've talked about kind of why digital presence is important. We've talked about how this is the new normal, that we've made the lives of users more, more convenient. And we can't just take that away from them anymore. And we talked about the big growth everywhere across e commerce. How does web pros support its customers during these times?
Jens Meggers 11:19
Well, we're supplying the technology that actually creates digital experiences. And we're really big partners, we're proud that we can help out in this way during the pandemic. And we're seeing obviously, more demand than ever before for all technologies. So we do Server Automation, we create tools allow you to publish websites, publish WordPress, integrate us with e commerce, and do this with the least amount of effort possible, very, very quickly. So it's a it's an incredible technology that we have all of our brands. And we're very proud that, that we're enabling these, these workflows, and this digital presences, our vision for the company, is really to create a digital presence for everyone. And that is not only websites, that is a social presence that's inside again, ecommerce flows, anything that you could do in a physical world, we would like to help our customers to lift us into the virtual world.
Joe Casabona 12:21
That's great, absolutely incredible. And you mentioned, you said across all of our brands, now, you know, listeners of last season, know that, you know, web pros, and there's plastc, there's cPanel, what other what other brands fall into that umbrella.
Jens Meggers 12:39
We have a brand new kotahi MCs, not a time breaker at all. And so what's great, but this point is, this is really the the fastest growing work right now. It allows you to become a store to host other web websites. So it's a it's a store of a store if you want. And we're seeing a lot of companies gravitating towards it because they'll they will they want to create a business and online business. And that's what wh MCs allows you to become a fully qualified into, and most that within less than a day. So it's an incredible technology, and currently our fastest growing
Joe Casabona 13:16
product line. Wow, that's that's fantastic. And sounds really interesting. No, go ahead. Yeah,
Jens Meggers 13:24
yeah. And then also, we have a company called sovi, based out of Germany, incredible technology that helps our enterprise customers actually small, medium, and large enterprises to optimize this search their their online search results and how traffic is driven to their, to their properties. So it's not only about like, helping you to create digital presence, but also make the digital present presence more useful, and more fruitful to transact more. So sovi incredible technology. If you want to check it out, go to sovi.com. It's a fantastic product.
Joe Casabona 14:02
Excellent. And we'll have everything in the show notes for this episode. So you can definitely check out everything that we're talking about there. And that's really important. I know, I think there's one more brand that we want to mention. But I think that it's that's a really important thing to realize, right is it's not just, you know, if you build it, they will come you need to have a plan to drive traffic to your website, especially if you're trying to reach just beyond your local community who might know you from word of mouth.
Jens Meggers 14:32
Yeah, exactly. So so we see we our responsibility, not only making it easy for you to create a digital presence and doing it quickly, and then obviously with very little overhead and automate everything. We also want to help you afterwards, get traffic there, do the right ecommerce transactions, make sure that the website always stays up. So we're introducing a lot of monitoring technologies. It tells you when things change when you have your WordPress site on is the WordPress site actually still working right. I have a lot of things presets I go into at the beginning, they look really good, you come back happy later. But anymore error message, right? So we will tell our customers when that happens, because at the end of the day, we want you to create a digital presence. But we don't want to make this hot for you. Right? So we're pitching the idea of what I call a smart server. Okay, so, and the smart server is really this thing, when you can put your digital presence on an input the whole thing and autopilot, and the server is going to tell you when things change and not the other way around.
Joe Casabona 15:30
That's great. And that's so important for the mom and pop shops, right, then we were talking about earlier, who can't hire an IT person who just want to make sure their websites running and don't want to worry about it. I think that's absolutely fantastic. And so you have one more, you have one more brand here under this umbrella, right?
Jens Meggers 15:50
Yeah, one more way. But before we go there, I want to talk about the mom and pop, it's very important for mom and pop shop. But it's also important for the bigger company, because as they have more pressure than ever before to run the digital presences and their digital business. And it's not that they're doubling their staff by doing a pandemic. So everything is always doing more with less. And it has been true like that in technology, business fire, right? do more with less. So we're getting to the largest of the largest of the customers, we have customers who have over 100,000 servers with our technology. And we're making it very, very easy.
Joe Casabona 16:22
Wow, that's amazing. And I mean, anybody who has experienced the outages with, like, you know, Netflix, or whatever that's happened over the last year understand the importance of making sure everything's running well.
Jens Meggers 16:35
So no, but yeah, other brands, we got more stuff, we have more stuff coming out, we have we're very, very busy. We're producing new technologies and new innovative things, obviously, on a daily basis. And then you know, what our solos i o and solace, VM technologies are fantastic. It's virtual machine management done right. And making it incredibly easy to use for anyone out there. And with very high reliability. So this is more like an enabling technology that sits a little bit lower on the on the stack. But it's very important. Customers are loving it. And we just launched a new technology stack called solace i o and zebra received by our initial customers as well.
Joe Casabona 17:18
That's fantastic. I mean, it really sounds like you've got everything covered there. And that's great. So we set up the problem, get your, you know, you need to have a digital presence, we have the solution, which is the many offerings from web pros, what what are you looking forward to most in the 2021 digital landscape? Well,
Jens Meggers 17:40
our highest priority is obviously doing a great job for customers. enable them to create the digital presence, making it easy doing it fast, reliable, and, and then engaging, right. So everything we do is really trying to do a better job for customers than we have done before. And so this is our main motivation. And so what we end the other day, we really want to be the trusted partner for anyone out there that builds the digital presence and say, Look, if I want to work with someone to make this happen to build this technology and get this out there, it has to be done with that post. And with the cPanel. And the better plastc bytes. That's our number one priority. And that's why we're innovating, we always try to get the latest and greatest out there. If you for example load or press Control Panel. It's It is like packed with with innovative features. And we always add more to it every two or three months. But we were capturing industry trends early and then making them available to our customers. So incredible times we couldn't be more proud serving our customer base than this. Yes. It's incredible.
Joe Casabona 18:53
That's fantastic. And there's there's one more thing I kind of want to mention or think about here is we talked a lot about kind of pre existing businesses making sure they're getting online. They're still I mean, I'm based in the United States, there's some economic uncertainty, of course caused by the global pandemic, but is what would you say to somebody who's thinking about starting a business now? Do you think it's a good time? Is it maybe the best time to start a business right now.
Jens Meggers 19:23
It is always a good time to start a business. If you have a good business idea. You always say be in a in a good business have a strategy to win, this probably will be my number one message for them. be in good business, make sure there's something there and have a strategy how you can win. Right? And if your business is selling certain goods online, and you have a good strategy,
Joe Casabona 19:43
do it
Jens Meggers 19:44
and and obviously use our technologies and think the digital presence and the virtual world think it through and execute that first. You know, we used to remember this like years ago there was this term called mobile first, right? Yeah. So you had when you build software, you always wanting to do more software first. And now it's like digital first. Right? So it's almost like an exponential version of mobile first is that when you build a business, always think digital first.
Joe Casabona 20:13
Yeah, I, I love that answer. Because you're right. I mean, you know, you saw when the pandemic started, you know, Walt Disney started in a economic downturn, Johnson and Johnson started in economic downturn. But if you have a good idea, then start your business. And the the advantage of starting a business now, especially to those who are listening to this episode is they know to go digital first, and then they can think about their workflows With that in mind, right. And they, they don't necessarily have to think I'm so used to just somebody coming in and picking a bagel off the shelf. Now I need to figure out how they're going to do that, and pay for it, and come pick it up in the right window. So it's not cold by the time they get here or whatever. So I think that's a really, it's always a good time to start a business if you have a good idea.
Jens Meggers 21:03
That's a good idea. And then think about the digital strategy. First, think about the digital
Joe Casabona 21:07
strategy, get through,
Jens Meggers 21:09
execute, be in and good business with a digital strategy to win.
Joe Casabona 21:14
Yep. Amazing. Now, the last question I want to ask you here is, is kind of about the first the future of e commerce right, I spoke to a few of my friends in the e commerce space when I was doing kind of a year and wrap up. Some mentioned that the big thing to do in 2020, was just to just get online in any way. And potentially for 2021. Now we're going to look towards optimizing and improving. What do you see as the future of e commerce for small and medium businesses? And how can web pros support them in this?
Jens Meggers 21:53
Well, I think it's really important that says, how you how you will make your money, right, so you transact online. And then if it's a physical good, kind of like experience, it's really transact online, and then you will ship and an exchange of goods and in the physical world, but as as many experiences as possible will move into the virtual world. And ecommerce is probably really one of the key key elements there. So, so therefore, it's here to stay, you would see it everywhere, every app will have ecommerce. And, and that's where the ghost is happening. It is becomes a humungous commodity. I mean, in a good sense, a commodities of people see that, but where you you will not even think about anymore. authentication is getting easier. You will have your online profiles already filled out, you already have your payment methods all figured out. And it's gonna be really, really quick. So and there's incredible goals. Obviously, we're seeing, but I think the course will keep going. And it's it's a very important industry. trend. It's unstoppable.
Joe Casabona 23:01
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think I think about if this had happened, like 10 years ago, right before we had stripe and like, PayPal was the only game in town, like, I don't know, what would have happened to businesses, because it wasn't nearly as easy to get online and, and start managing a digital business as it is today. And I mean, in a way if this was going to happen to us at all, we're lucky it happened now and not 10 years ago.
Jens Meggers 23:29
Yep, no, I agree. So I'm, we're excited about the future. Hopefully, we get over the pandemic at some point. And then we can, you know, there will be some positives, very few positive things out of this will be that we have better digital experiences. And so, you know, so it's, it's great. I'm looking forward to that and looking into this digital first experiences. And that's, that's the one positive thing that will hopefully come out
Joe Casabona 23:59
of all of that. Absolutely. And it really sounds like web pros is equipped to help everybody from small businesses, small businesses, to agencies, really get online and improve your digital presence. Jen, thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
Jens Meggers 24:15
Thanks for thanks for having me was fun.
Joe Casabona 24:17
Thank you. My pleasure. And thanks to everybody out there listening and I hope you liked this first episode of season two, be sure to subscribe in your favorite podcast app of choice, like us, and leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts. You can get all the show notes over a plus.com and until next time, let's take it to the next level.