Recession Health Check Call

[caroline]

We would like to hear from you regarding what has been the effect of the recession on your business.

The forum creates an opportunity for you to express what is happening with your business to orders, jobs,trends etc. Tell us why you think it is happening and what is needed to help and by whom?

Do you envisage other problems and what do you think the consequences will be locally as a result?

www.rhylbusinessgroup.co.uk

If you encounter any problems using the website please contact Caroline on 01745 343605

Regards

[rbg_admin]

Hi,
from the Web Development point of view, I think the recession is helping us as more people are looking to sell products and services online.

For instance, a manufacturer of goods can sell to a much broader audience having on a good quality website and using their advertising budget for online advertising methods such as Google Adwords. The return on investment is much higher than that of a local or national newspaper advert. People who visit your website using these methods are generally already in the market for your products or services byt the time they reach your site having been targetted with key phrases of your choice.

We are finding that as the recession bites deeper more clients are looking to companies such as ours for interactive "transactional" websites.

We are in the final test stages of system for a rubber stamp manufacturer based in Sheffield that will give their affiliates a fully feature E-commerce website to sell custom rubber stamps with discounts on products of up to 70%.
The system uses a technique known as dropshipping - That is, an affiliate sells a product to the end customer and the product is delivered direct from the manufacturer as if it came from the affiliate themselves.

The upshot of this is that more and more "home based" businesses are starting up. This is certainly a boon for the web industry as a whole.

[John Lane]

We are all effected by the recession, be it either through work, business loans, savings or pension, but we have to try and continue to bring in new business from were ever we can, which is not easy at present.
We as a company have had two orders shelved until, who knows when, and one order cancelled completely. With the level of worldwide enquiries dropping away to 10% of what they were this time last year and UK enquiries dropping to zero, it is a worrying time.
We are however in quite a strong position at present with a full order book for the next twelve months. We are one of the lucky companies and hopefully during the next twelve months things will start to improve.
The major differences it will make to us is that we will not be sending out any subcontract work, which fortunately does not impact on the Rhyl area, as 90% of this work is carried out abroad.
The impact it will have on Rhyl is very hard to estimate, but I am sure that the level of unemployment is bound to increase, which will put a greater strain on local government and the local economy. This will also unfortunately increase the risk of burglaries to businesses and homes, which is another side effect of unemployment.
It may sound all dome and gloom but we must hope there will be an upturn soon, after all we are supposed to have the best brains leading the country??

John Lane
Managing Director
LANE(UK) DESIGN LTD

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