In 2020, a huge number of small businesses moved or shifted their focus to online sales. Many of our reseller partners provided a means for businesses to do this fast and effectively, but more than that, they innovated to create new features to help these customers adapt to the virtual-only world. Today, we’re highlighting two niche-specific website builders who serve groups that have been particularly hard-hit by the pandemic: the music and restaurant industries.
Bandzoogle – supporting musicians in the virtual world
There’s no doubt that website platform Bandzoogle has a profound understanding of their customers and a passion for helping them succeed. Their platform is quite literally built by musicians for musicians.
Starting in 2004, they’ve offered an array of commission-free, direct-to-fan sales tools that enable bands and solo artists to sell albums, vinyl, merch, music lessons, you name it.
In 2020, Bandzoogle expanded their online tools offering to help musicians find alternative revenue streams, with COVID-19 removing a big one: live concerts.
As their CEO Stacy Bedford put it “The work we’ve done in 2020 has been a love letter to artists globally. No matter where you are, what challenges you are facing, we will continue to provide you with all of the tools you need to succeed.”
These tools included:
- A Tip Jar feature that provides artists a means to ask for support on their website
- Pay-what-you-want fan subscriptions that help artists build a fan club and increase fan engagement
- A means to sell tickets and link to live-stream events
- Twitch and Crowdcast integration, which helped artists drive fans to their websites to watch live-streamed performances, or regularly scheduled video content
Most recently, they announced an integration with dropshipping company Printul, which easily allows musicians to sell branded merchandise like t-shirts, mugs, and phone cases from their website.
These additions, along with Bandzoogle’s existing sales tools, resulted in their customers earning more than 5 million in revenue through their websites during 2020. The bulk of these sales has been physical merchandise, as well as digital music and file sales, tips, tickets, and fan subscriptions. Websites continue to be a valuable source of direct-to-fan engagement.
Bandzoogle offers pro-level features but a small family vibe, and their commitment to empowering their customers continues to shine during these difficult times.
GloriaFood – Empowering Restaurants to Do Business Online
In 2020, many established restaurants not only lost the revenue generated from in-restaurant dining but also a major source of new customers: foot traffic. To survive the pandemic, they needed to generate and fulfill a steady stream of online orders, which, in part, involves attracting new website visitors.
Enter GloriaFood. Their business exists to make it easy for restaurant owners to create and manage a profitable online presence, and they’ve seen a 400% increase in monthly signups since March of 2020. They provide a free online order system — no commissions or fees — which distinguishes them from many competing solutions that typically charge per order. Plus, their ordering system takes just 10 minutes to set up. And for restaurants that don’t already have a web presence, they offer Sales Optimized Websites with built-in SEO.
Many of their existing website features have proved helpful during the pandemic. For example, their website banner tool was often used to display messages like, “let us know if you want us to leave it at the door!” Many restaurant owners detailed their COVID-19 safety measures on the “Health” section of their website, located on the homepage.
GloriaFood also implemented a few new features, specifically designed to empower restaurants to help their patrons feel safe when ordering food. These features included:
- An “Email blast” feature that enables restaurants to easily communicate their COVID-19 safety measures to their customers
- A “COVID-19 Safety Measures” section on order receipts, where restaurants can state their safety precautions and add additional information, like the name of the person who prepared the food and their body temperature.
- New order fulfillment options, which allow patrons to specify no-contact delivery or minimum-contact pickup options, like curbside pickup.
Between February and April of 2020, the number of restaurants using GloriaFood’s order system more than doubled, now sitting at over 25, 000. At the same time, the number of food orders processed through the system tripled, and it currently sits at over 3,500,000 per month, on average.
Have an Inspiring Story?
The pandemic has been uniquely challenging for small businesses, but it’s been inspiring to watch our reseller help companies move — and even thrive — online. We’re proud to play a small but critical role in that process by providing our resellers an easy and scalable way to offer domains, SSL and, hosted email.
How did you innovate to support your customers during this challenging time? We’d love to hear from you. We’re always looking to showcase resellers that are making great things happen online. Reach out to us!