Lockdown Worries in Website Design
I want to come out all guns blazing, saying we’re busier than ever, more is going on than ever and in the digital world the future lies. But it’s not quite like that.
Bear with me – there is a curve that I want to describe it goes like this… a gentle upwards incline, let’s call it 1% or 2% upwards, every now and again over time it might reach 5%, but the point is it is upwards.
That’s NCompass Web Design as a rule… a few more clients, a chunk or work and we manage to get by. Then Lockdown and as with everyone else, plummets down. I do not mind sharing with you that NCompass Revenues in April 2020 were 45% down on the average monthlies over the last 12 months. We were 55% down compared to last April (something good must have happened that month) and we had our worst month in terms of straight revenues since March 2014, when we were one third the size.
I think that’s pretty eye-opening, I’ve no real idea if that is a good statistic or not, it really is just the way it it is.
Wind forward to May
Along with this downturn in our fortunes we’ve reduced costs big time… little choice if you like, result many of our team have cut back, we’re smaller, costs lower.
But here’s the rub, I can see it now… monies tight… our curve has gone from gentle incline to cliff drop, and has now been bubbling along the bottom for a short while. We’ve reduced capacity in line with our customer needs.
Our problem is the to rise again sharply back to pre March levels requiries not only a demand from our clients, but also a rise in our resources and capacity to do the work.
I can see that post pandemic or lockdown, website design demand is going to rise very sharply, lots of our clients are going to want us to do more… everything that has been on ‘hold’ between March and April will now be moved forward.
Our problem is capacity… we can easily rise back up to where we were pre lockdown, we can re-employ the team and get everyone working at full speed. What we will struggle with is rising capacity further. As clients want to catch up – we won’t be able to enable that. We have limits.
Our curve, gentley rising, drops off a cliff, bubbles along a bit, and then rises as lockdown is lifted… but it cannot go much higher than where it was before. Result… bottleneck.
Bottomline – Get your Projects done now!
I need you, our clients, to help us now. If you want us to build websites and make planned and known about improvements. Now is the time for us to do it. The sooner we can get back to capacity, the more likely we will be able to fulfil our obligations in both time and budget.
Waiting does not work for us, everyone is going to be in full demand as soon as lockdown is lifted and our choices will be to either extend timelines or increase the budgets. It’s not a future I want for my clients.
I suspect hundreds of businesses will experience the same situation, we cannot now be expected to reclaim or make up for the lost months of March, April and May, it’s asking to much of any business and this will reverberate right through the economy.
At this time of year, we should be flat out trying to get everything we know that needs to be done by the Summer, done so we can go on Holiday. This year is very different, we have many hands that could be working much harder.
Bottomline – Get your Projects done now! If you think you need IT or Digital projects done… do them now.