These are unprecedented times, and the move to online purchasing certainly has ramped up many notches under lockdown. Total spend for the first week of lockdown compared with last year was up 16.49%. New Zealand of course lags behind the rest of the world and is frantically playing catch up in the digital economy. Our online sales only account for 6% of total spend, whereas in countries like the UK it is closer to 20%. Unfortunately during lockdown this has disparity as become worse. A new Covid-19 commerce insight tracker shows the stark differences between the New Zealand ecommerce market, where retailers’ online sales revenues have plunged 20 percent year on year in the past seven days, and Australia where revenue has jumped 54 percent. It’s a similar story for pure-ecommerce players: In NZ they’ve logged a 16 percent decline in revenue, while in Australia revenue has jumped 49 percent.
And now with level 3 restrictions set to loosen up the economy a bit more, retailers are frantically setting up online stores and click and collect services. This all means the movement to online purchasing has changed dramatically and businesses need to now start accepting payments online or suffer.
The current situation has all businesses feeling the pain to varying degrees, but it’s independent traders that are hurting the most. At BusyBee, our immediate priority is to help our businesses shift from brick-and-mortar and manual payments to online, so they can weather this storm and build a more resilient business.
Below, we’ll outline the essential steps to get your traditional business setup and running classes online.
How to go about it Moving your classes online may require a bit of creativity and effort but the benefits of having continuity are endless. Just because face-to-face lessons have come to a halt temporarily, there are still lots of ways you can teach online. Put your innovative cap on and start thinking about how you can translate your physical lessons online. You can see some of our top picks below:
- Pre-recorded Lessons: Start thinking about pre-recording classes and what type of content might work well. Is this football drills, dance routines or a gymnastics move? This option would be good to issue to parents to work through lessons with their children and they can record and send back their results. Your club could then use this as content which can be shared on your website and social media - whether its video or written testimonials - this will show how your club is still running efficiently.
- Homework: This is a very practical option but important nonetheless. It offers the opportunity to assign work that is more theoretical and also work that is fun. It could be anything from quizzes to creating drawings of their favourite move associated with your club type to written work to colouring activities. It may even supplement pre-recorded lessons and shows parents the value in still paying for your classes!
- Live Streaming: There are a variety of different platforms to teach lessons via live stream which we’ll cover later in this article but live streaming will allow you to be accessible to parents and those you are teaching in real time. You will need to be considerate in selecting the right content of your live stream but this could be a good opportunity to go over homework packs that you have assigned and answer any questions parents or children may have. It’s also a great way to get the children to collaborate together and adds a social element to the classes so that they don’t miss out.
- Private Tutorials: Some parents may be happy for one-to-one lessons happening from their homes, so include this in your planning process. This option is one you will need to speak about with parents on an individual basis to see if this would work for them and allows you to schedule lessons to fit your day.
Once you know how you will move your classes online, it is important to learn how to get setup with our online classes feature.
Our system aims to have you running online classes in a few simple steps.
- Create an activity like normal. And from within 'further details' post a link to your online streaming system of your choice.
- Use an online streaming service of your choice. For example if you are using Zoom, you’ll be able to include all meeting details including time and meeting ID. As with any classes you run using our system, you’ll be able to access a register of children who will be attending online classes so you know who will be turning up.
- Use our invite function to invite any existing parents to signup for your activity
If you have any questions or just need some help why not speak with one of our online specialists? We can provide you with some helpful tips and ideas around how this feature could help you. You can find out more about how the online classes feature works and how it can assist your club by clicking here