Businesses should embrace online potential to survive credit crunch, says expert

14:45 4th December 2008

The economic downturn has impacted upon the business sector with many small retailers currently struggling to survive.

However, some companies are seizing the online initiative and investing in IT training and solutions to facilitate expansion plans and ensure survival despite the credit crunch.

Web services company Hostway states that capacity planning is the key to smooth expansion so businesses can put measures in place to ensure their website can cope during busy online periods.

Thomas Herbert, product manager at Hostway, commented: "[As] companies want to grow larger in the future, they need to look into capacity planning very early on in the year, so they can run through it and test it and see how they can gain more customers later on in the year."

He added that the importance of giving web users what they are looking for when they visit a site is imperative for businesses because online visitors who are disappointed with content are unlikely to come back again.

According to the Deloitte Christmas Survey 2008, those intending to do most of their shopping for Christmas gifts online this year is up by 15 per cent.