Despite the current economic crisis effecting the entire country, Stockport based Shopblocks, the UK’s fastest-growing e-commerce platform, has grown its team by more than 50% over the past two months to deal with customer demand.
Shopblocks, which has already seen investment from Greater Manchester Combined Authority, as part of its Digital City Strategy, has witnessed significant growth during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to a recruitment drive in the local area and beyond.
Shopblocks’ platform allows businesses to create their own website, from a simple homepage, to a complete online store. Its unique technology – which took five years to develop – offers much greater flexibility than template-based platforms but is simple enough for any online business to manage their own site. Business owners can make changes like a developer, without the often timely and expensive development costs. The company also offers an optional onboarding service to manage the entire set-up on customers’ behalf.
Customers range from start-ups to major online retailers. Shopblocks also attracts many existing e-commerce businesses which have outgrown other platforms.
While many businesses look to overcome the challenges from stay-at-home culture, many are establishing an online presence or enhancing their online shop.
To support business during lockdown, Shopblocks dropped their set-up fee for restaurants and takeaways, launching their new website within 48 hours or enhancing their existing online presence to make the most of stay-at-home culture. This has resulted in hundreds of new customers during the recent period, many of them from the food industry.
Founding CEO, Kevin Jones, said:
“We are lucky that the nature of our business has meant that we can remain strong during these uncertain times. At our core, we want to make it easy for businesses to adapt to changes in their market as easily and cost-effectively as possible. Our system enables business owners to control their own website, without the restrictions of templates or timely and costly developers, meaning they can adapt to the current climate as quickly as possible.
“Whilst this has been a challenging time for many businesses, we have tried to support businesses by waiving our set-up fee for restaurants and takeaways, getting them online and selling within 48 hours.”
