A Helping Hand by the Ecommerce Community

Online resources to help guide your ecommerce business through this pandemic

These are extremely uncertain times for everyone, as the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the world. Many businesses have already been forced to shut their doors and send their employees home. Stock markets are plummeting and economies are on the brink of collapse, but it’s too soon to tell exactly how this virus will affect the ecommerce industry.

As dark as these days may seem, there are some silver linings that could help you see your online business through this pandemic or even assist you in getting your business online. A number of tech companies and digital brands are finding ways to help businesses by offering discounts on their services and opening up access to software and content.

We encourage you to take a look and see if any of these might benefit your online store and help you weather this storm a little better.

Monitor The Ecommerce Situation

Performance branding company WITHIN are monitoring the effects of COVID-19 on ecommerce, offering a Retail Pulse report with daily updates that could help you navigate the current climate.

• Check out the current state and consider signing up for their updates.

What Shopify Themselves Are Offering

Shopify are supporting business owners in a number of ways:

• Gift cards for all plans and customers (includes all new and existing Shopify plans).
• Enable retailers using Shopify POS to offer in-store or sidewalk pick up for online orders.
• Offering $200 million in small business funding.
• Extended 90-day free trial to move your retail store online, or build a new online store.
• Community support in their COVID-19 community forum.
• Live webinars with weekly virtual programming.

Get your Offline Business Online

In a massive collaborative effort, professionals in the ecommerce industry (not even just Shopify) are working together to help businesses get online. In their own words

"Offline2on.com is a community-led, not for profit, cross platform initiative to support businesses in ramping their e-commerce efforts due to COVID-19 by connecting them with the resources, developers, platforms, and partners..."

Check out Offline2on.com if you need to get your business online or get it to perform better in these interesting times.

Free Shopify Setups

Some service providers offer free Shopify setups, which is ideal for stores that need to take their sales online - and quickly!

• ThemeFast
• ShopaFree

Free Enterprise Grade Push Notifications for 6 Months

Pushnami are offering free push notifications for the next 6 months.

In their own words:

"Pushnami.com will be offering our push marketing platform free to any business for the next 6 months. No contracts, credit cards or holding subscribers hostage. Our platform was built for Enterprise businesses (min 1k/month pricing) and we know bringing that sophistication to businesses struggling right now is going to make a huge difference.
- Eric Stiner"

Savings and Specials on Adobe Software

Adobe are offering substantial savings/special offers:

• Adobe Portfolio is free (until May 15), so you can start building your portfolio site and get free hosting, plus unlimited pages.
• Adobe Talent on Behance is free (until May 15) so that companies and recruiters can post job opportunities for creatives at no charge.
• Adobe Summit will be digital so that you can get free access to the digital experience conference, which starts March 31.

Discount & Extended Trials on Affinity Software

Affinity are offering these three measures:

• A new 90-day free trial of the Mac and Windows versions of the whole Affinity suite.
• 50% discount for those who would rather buy and keep the apps on Mac, Windows PC and iPad.
• A pledge to engage more than 100 freelance creatives for work, spending the equivalent of their annual commissioning budget in the next three months.

Verso eBook & Book Specials

Verso will be offering major savings and free ebooks during the pandemic:

• 80% off ALL ebooks and 40% off ALL print books.
• Some ebooks for free when purchasing paperbacks at 40% off.
• Free Verso Reports collection (covers the various political and cultural moments with interventions that ask the essential questions of the current moment).

Member Perks ($5k worth) Unlocked on Hey Carson 

For the next couple of months, Hey Carson has unlocked their member perks section where they’ve collected over 150 Shopify app perks since January 2019. These perks come to a combined value of $5000+!

• Register on their dashboard and navigate to “Member Perks”.

Use ShoppingGives To Donate Directly to Those Affected

ShoppingGives are helping stores (who process in USD) direct donations to those affected by COVID-19 through their Shopify App, Change Commerce:

• Sign up for Change Commerce.
• Enterprise partners who do over $500K annual revenue will work on deferred payment terms and custom agreements so that they can create an impact right away. They are also waiving any integration fees for a faster launch.

Free Upsell App With Bold Commerce

Bold Commerce are offering the following:

• Bold Upsell free for 3 months to create upsell and cross-sell offers that can increase average order value (useful now that cart sizes are smaller than normal).

25% Off Out of the Sandbox Themes

Out of the Sandbox is offering 25% off Flex and Turbo themes to help you get your business online or use this time to upgrade your theme:

• Use the code SPREADJOY at checkout

Free Webex with Cisco

Cisco are making it easier to keep in touch with your team remotely:

• Unlimited usage (no time restrictions).
• Supports up to 100 participants.
• Offers toll dial-in (in addition to existing VoIP capabilities).
• Free 90-day licenses to businesses who are not Webex customers.

The ecommerce community is banding together in these trying times, and with a mixture of resourcefulness, hope and widespread support in the community we can help many businesses weather the storm. Share these online resources with your colleagues and other business owners so that they reach everyone who needs support right now.