How to build great web solutions in the age of COVID-19

Remember that first magic moment when the World Wide Web made a swath of information available online? I don’t either. Because it wasn’t a moment, it’s been a culmination of the past 30 years or so.

COVID-19 has accelerated, exponentially, the push for information to be accessible online instantly and easily. This acceleration demands that IT leaders make decisions right now about technology investments they might want to put off for another 12 months, 24 months, or even longer.

Why? Consider how rapidly our lives have been transformed in the past 10 months. Remote work, massive increases in online ordering of virtually everything, and the replacement of in-person interactions with video calls and chats. This means people must find what they are looking for quickly via an internet connection.

Companies serving these end-users, whether they are customers or employees, are suddenly behind the 8-ball: their existing network infrastructure can’t handle the influx of traffic. Just 6 months ago, e-commerce was up 77% year-over-year in the U.S.; Buy Online Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS) was up 195%.  And that’s just shopping.

All of this leads to one immovable fact; many companies must figure out how to develop web solutions and move infrastructure to the cloud. Fast.

Those who already planned and budgeted for web services development and cloud deployments are lucky—the timing’s great. But for most companies for whom “digital transformation” has been a vague description of the future, rather than an urgent demand for the present, this sudden need to prioritize web solutions and cloud-based infrastructure is daunting.

We get it—change is hard. But here’s our advice: stop thinking about urgent changes as short-term solutions for short-term problems. Reframe them as long-term solutions for the future your customers and employees want to live.

This mindset will help to accomplish three important goals:

1. Making the business case for the immediate digital transformation of infrastructure and services—when you have a long-term view, you can formulate cost calculations and impacts over more than just the next few months, showing increased value over time.

2. Freeing up your thinking for creative solutions—when you’re worried less about only solving for right now and focused more on making changes in the long-term technical health of the company, you can explore more creative solutions. The long view lets you tap the creative minds of others on your team, so you get whole-team thinking, not just fire-drill reactivity.

3. Ensuring user-centric design—whether your infrastructure and solutions serve employees, consumers, or someone else entirely, they’re serving your end-users. Designing for what those users need both now and, in the future —mobile-first functionality, accessible-anywhere convenience, on-demand capabilities—will extend the life of your applications and the happiness of your users.

Need help with your web solutions or cloud infrastructures strategy? We’re here to help. We’ve been delivering brilliant thinking, sound advice, and impeccable implementations for clients for the better part of two decades. And we’d love to partner with you to make your short-term decisions have a long-term impact.

Give us a call.