Social distancing, working from home where possible - a lot has changed in the last couple of months, and business owners have had to adapt to a new normal.
Read on to discover how five business owners from across the country have changed the way they do things so they can keep working while staying safe and complying with government advice.
Shifting sales online
Zaffrin O'Sullivan, of cosmetics business Five Dot Botanics, explained that recent events mean that their focus on selling online has only increased.
"We were always about building a digital brand, so our customers are online and we are visible online," she said.
"Brick and mortar was a smaller proportion for us, if anything it has meant we will likely reduce our focus on pursuing physical store listings and accelerate our growth online on our own platform and with other third parties."
Chris Fryer, of vegan pie makers Magpye, agreed - the company's focus had been on supplying food festivals and pubs with its wares, but this had to change.
"We reacted quickly by drawing up plans to deliver pies locally ourselves to people's homes, with a view to rolling out UK wide postal delivery in the future," he said.
"We found that the website and store creation tools provided by GoDaddy gave us everything we needed to build a professional web shop, within days we had taken our first order and deliveries have been ramping up since!"
"Orders have thankfully been coming in to such an extent we are now looking to move into new premises to enable us to increase production and roll out nationally!"
How GoDaddy can help
Like Chris of Magpye said, GoDaddy offers everything you need to get your business online. Whether you need a simple website that's just a couple of pages, or an online store so you can sell your products online, GoDaddy's Website Builder has got you covered. And if you need any assistance getting up and running, the GoDaddy Guides are ready to help.
Adopting remote working
Lizzy Eaton, of Oddity Events, explained that team members at her events business have embraced technology to ensure they can stay in touch.
"I have two part-time employees, Jaime and Isobel, and we are very close," she said.
"Between our chit-chat with updates on various small projects on Slack, we have weekly team video calls, and they both have a virtual one-to-one with me every week.
"It’s important to have regular pep talks as a team and for me to keep them up to speed on workload priorities."
How GoDaddy can help
You can read about how to work from home when you're not used to it in this guide.
And in this guide you can discover a whole host of productivity tools to help you work more efficiently.
When it comes to the technical side of remote working, you can get Office 365 via GoDaddy, which includes a range of productivity tools (including instant messaging and video conferencing.)
Keeping your business visible
Ruth Bradford runs The Little Black & White Book Project, which creates black and white learning materials for preschool children. Her initial response to the lockdown was to put a pause on sending orders.
She has now been able to start sending out orders again, but she wasn't idle during the pause.
"I mainly worked on designing free content for kids to keep them amused whilst they are at home and keep up my brand presence," Ruth said.
She added: "I have had the most amount of traffic to my website ever since I really started talking about all of the free activities I offer so that's a big positive."
James Lindsay, of event photography firm Palm Visual, also found lockdown had a dramatic impact on "business as usual", leading him to think of new ways to do things.
"You have saleable skills that people want and need," he explained.
"Look for ways to use them without having to physically come into contact with people.
"Think carefully about how to let people know you are ready to use your skills to help them achieve things for their business, in this time of possible growth."
For Palm Visual this includes looking at livestreaming and the creation of "how to" videos to promote the business, and looking at ways to complete photography and video projects in a way that complies with the current restrictions.
How GoDaddy can help
We're always here to help you explore new ways of making the most out of your online presence. GoDaddy Guides can let you know how to make the most of your existing products, and point out new tools which could help you make a bigger impact.
Summing up
Adapting to change isn't always easy, especially in uncertain times. But for many businesses there are ways to change and adapt, even in this situation. You can access more support and resources via GoDaddy's #OpenWeStand community.
