The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way we live and work. Small businesses have been hit particularly hard, with widespread shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, and a rapid shift to remote work. Even as we move into the recovery phase, it‘s clear that the "new normal" will look very different.
To survive and thrive in this new landscape, small businesses must embrace digital transformation. This means not only establishing a strong online presence to reach customers virtually, but also equipping your team with the tools they need to communicate, collaborate, and stay productive while working remotely.
The good news is that with WordPress and its vast ecosystem of plugins, small businesses have access to powerful, affordable tools to meet the challenges of remote work. In this guide, we‘ll showcase the top WordPress tools and resources to help your small business adapt and succeed in the age of COVID-19 and beyond.
Website Building: Create a Professional Online Presence
Your website is the foundation of your online presence. If you don‘t already have a website, or if your current site is outdated, now is the time to create a modern, professional site that reflects your brand and meets your customers‘ needs.
WordPress is the most popular website platform in the world, powering over 35% of all sites on the web. It‘s free, open-source, and extremely versatile. With WordPress, you can easily create any type of website, from a simple brochure site to a robust ecommerce store.
To get started, you‘ll need WordPress hosting and a domain name. We recommend using Bluehost, which is one of the largest hosting providers in the world and an official WordPress partner. They have plans starting at just $2.95/month with a free domain name included.
Once you have hosting, you can install WordPress in just a few clicks and choose from thousands of free and premium themes to customize the design of your site. For an easy drag-and-drop building experience, try the Divi theme or Beaver Builder plugin. Or for a fast, lightweight theme, consider Astra or GeneratePress.
The key is to create a site that is modern, mobile-friendly, and easy to navigate, with prominent calls-to-action. Be sure to include your contact information, COVID-19 policies, online ordering/booking options, and anything else your customers need to engage with your business virtually.
Ecommerce: Sell Online and Offer Contactless Ordering
With social distancing and stay-at-home orders, many small businesses have had to close their physical storefronts or limit capacity. To make up for lost foot traffic and revenue, it‘s crucial to offer online ordering options.
With the WooCommerce plugin, you can easily transform your WordPress site into a full-fledged online store. WooCommerce is the most popular ecommerce platform in the world, with over 5 million active stores. It‘s free to use and includes all the essential features you need to sell physical or digital products online.
To accept payments, you can connect your store to PayPal, Stripe, Square, or dozens of other payment gateways. WooCommerce supports automated tax calculations, shipping options, coupons and discounts, product variations, and more.
If you run a restaurant or food service business, the Restaurant Ordering System plugin makes it easy to offer contactless delivery and curbside pickup. Customers can browse your menu, select options, and pay online. You‘ll receive email notifications for new orders, and can manage them from your WordPress dashboard.
For a simpler setup, you can also use the WPForms plugin to create an online order form and accept payments. Customers can select their items, add special instructions, and prepay online. The form data is stored in your WordPress database and also emailed to you for fulfillment.
Appointment Booking: Let Clients Schedule Online
If your business involves providing services and scheduling appointments, allowing clients to book online is essential for remote work. It eliminates the back-and-forth of phone/email tag and allows you to accept appointments 24/7.
One of the best WordPress booking plugins is SimplyBook. It allows you to create a branded booking page on your website, with a real-time calendar showing your availability. Clients can select their desired date, time, and service, and even pay online.
SimplyBook syncs with your Google calendar so you never double-book. You can set up automated appointment reminders, confirmations, and follow-up emails to streamline your workflow. The plugin is free to use for up to 50 bookings per month, with affordable paid plans for higher volume.
For a more lightweight option, you can create a booking form with WPForms. The Form Templates Pack addon includes a pre-built Booking Form template that you can easily customize. You can specify your availability, appointment duration, booking window, and more. Form entries are stored in your WordPress dashboard and automatically emailed to you and the client.
Membership Sites and Online Courses: Monetize Your Expertise
With in-person events and classes cancelled, many small businesses are turning to online courses and membership sites to deliver value to their customers remotely. If you have expertise in your field, this can be a great way to generate revenue and serve your audience.
To create a membership site with WordPress, we recommend the MemberPress plugin. It makes it easy to create members-only content, accept recurring subscriptions, manage members, and automate your sales funnel. You can drip content over time, set up tiered membership levels, offer coupons and trials, and integrate with most popular payment gateways and email marketing services.
For online courses, the LearnDash plugin is an excellent choice. It‘s a complete learning management system (LMS) that allows you to create engaging, multimedia courses with videos, quizzes, assignments, certificates, and more. You can enroll students, track their progress, and offer course bundles and memberships.
Both MemberPress and LearnDash integrate with Elementor, so you can visually design your sales and course pages without code. They also offer built-in payment processing, so you can accept credit cards directly on your site without needing a separate merchant account.
Live Chat and Customer Support: Be There for Your Customers
With more business being conducted online, customers expect prompt, convenient support options. If you‘re not available to answer the phone or respond to emails in real-time, consider adding live chat to your website.
The WP Social Chat plugin allows you to provide live chat support directly from your WordPress dashboard. You can see all active chats, visitor information, and chat history. It also integrates with Facebook Messenger, so you can handle chats from your Facebook page in the same place.
For a more robust support desk solution, WP Awesome Support is a great choice. It allows you to manage all support tickets from your WordPress dashboard, with options to assign tickets to agents, set priorities and statuses, and send canned replies. Customers can submit tickets through a web form, and you can offer both live chat and a self-service knowledge base.
Project Management: Keep Your Team Organized and Productive
Managing a remote team can be challenging without the right tools in place. To keep everyone on the same page and projects moving forward, a project management system is essential.
One of the best WordPress project management plugins is WP Project Manager. It allows you to create projects, assign tasks to team members, set deadlines and priorities, and track time spent. You can communicate through comments and file attachments, and generate progress reports to keep stakeholders informed.
For client work, the Client Portal addon lets you give clients access to only their specific projects. They can view status updates, deliverables, and invoices, and can approve tasks and milestones.
If your team is already using a project management tool like Trello or Asana, you can embed project boards directly in WordPress with their official plugins. This is a great way to keep your website as the central hub for team collaboration.
Intranet and Team Wikis: Create a Virtual Office
With your team working remotely, it‘s important to have a centralized place to store and access company information, policies, and resources. A WordPress intranet or team wiki can serve as your virtual office, keeping everyone connected and informed.
The BuddyPress plugin is a great foundation for a WordPress intranet. It‘s a social networking plugin that allows you to create user profiles, activity feeds, groups, and private messaging. You can restrict content by user role, so only your team has access.
To organize your company knowledge base, the Heroic Knowledge Base plugin is a great choice. It allows you to create a searchable library of articles and tutorials, organized by categories and tags. You can embed videos, images, and file attachments, and even offer article feedback and ratings.
For a complete intranet solution, the WP ERP plugin provides HR, accounting, and project management tools all within WordPress. You can onboard new employees, track attendance and leave, generate payroll and invoices, and much more. It‘s like having an all-in-one business management platform right on your website.
Online Forms: Streamline Data Collection and Communication
Online forms are an essential tool for remote work, allowing you to collect data and communicate with customers and team members without manual data entry or back-and-forth emails. Whether you need to create a simple contact form or a complex registration or survey, WordPress has you covered.
The best WordPress form builder plugin is WPForms. It‘s beginner-friendly with a drag-and-drop interface, yet powerful enough for advanced use cases. You can create any type of form with its pre-built templates or from scratch, and add features like conditional logic, multi-page forms, file uploads, and digital signatures.
WPForms integrates with popular email marketing and payment platforms, so you can automatically sync form entries and collect payments. It also supports GDPR compliance out of the box and offers built-in spam protection.
For more advanced form building, you can use Formidable Forms. It allows you to create front-end form views, calculator and quote forms, user-submitted posts, and directories. You can even use forms to plot locations on a Google Map or generate custom PDFs from submitted data.
Putting It All Together
By leveraging these WordPress tools and plugins, small businesses can not only adapt to remote work, but thrive in the new digital landscape. The key is to choose the right tools for your specific needs and budget, and to fully commit to using them consistently.
Remember, these tools are only as effective as the processes and culture you build around them. Make sure to provide adequate training and support for your team, and establish clear guidelines and expectations for communication and collaboration.
With the right mindset and toolkit, small businesses can emerge from this crisis stronger and more resilient than ever. By embracing digital transformation and remote work, you can expand your reach, streamline your operations, and provide more value to your customers, no matter what challenges come your way.
As the inspiring entrepreneur and author Bob Parsons once said, "Anything that is measured and watched, improves." By leveraging data and technology to track your progress and optimize your performance, you can continuously improve and adapt to changing circumstances.
So don‘t let the pandemic hold you back. Seize this opportunity to modernize your business and unlock your full potential with the power of WordPress and remote work tools. The future is digital, and with the right approach, there‘s no limit to what you can achieve.
