We have technically entered a recession in New Zealand this 2024 year, as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) dropped by 0.1% in the December 2023 quarter, based on the news from NZHerald. Industries like manufacturing, wholesale trade, retail, and accommodation were most affected by the 2024 NZ recession.
Kiwi businesses that rely heavily on their business or eCommerce website to generate revenue are in a tight spot where budgets are cut off, finding cheaper solutions to reduce costs, saving money by tightening any large digital initiatives, making employees redundant or business closure. The NZ economy might take a while to recover from the 2024 recession, but here are solutions to keep the Kiwi businesses running.
Starting up a small business website
Use CMS platforms like WordPress for new Kiwi businesses that just need small business websites for online presence. WordPress allows you to manage your website content and images easily when combined with the WordPress Elementor page builder to create design layouts, and using plugins for features like a contact form and image gallery can save you money, as you only need the WordPress developer to set up the initial business website.
How much do websites cost in NZ? The cost starts from $460 for a small business or eCommerce website.
AI tools like Chat GPT to come up with initial ideas
Chat GPT is a great AI online tool for helping Kiwi business owners generate ideas for their website content like the homepage, services, eCommerce website product descriptions, frequent ask questions and about us page. Make sure to revise your content after generating content ideas from Chat GPT, as Google may penalise your website if it contains purely AI content.
Chat GPT is powerful for generating topic ideas for your blog content combined with your domain knowledge and expertise in your product or service business. Chat GPT can also check grammar and analyse your sentence to see if it makes sense, as jargon and internal business terms could harm your customers if they are unfamiliar.
Image and video assets
Hiring a professional product photographer for your eCommerce website’s product images can be expensive.
To mitigate the expenses:
- Learn to take photos by conducting research on two or more competitors’ products to learn more about their photo styling, including the angles, theme, background, and colour. Use social media like TikTok and Instagram to generate ideas and watch YouTube tutorials on techniques for taking good photos.
- Ask permission to use the images from your supplier, which can save you a lot of time, money, and effort.
- Look for free digital assets online instead of purchasing a paid version.
Canva for marketing assets
Banners, ads, social media images, and other marketing assets collaterals are important for businesses as they can attract potential customers to visit your website, whether for lead generation, to get a quote or to purchase a product.
A graphic designer can help you achieve most of the graphic design works at the cost of price. Alternatively, you can use Canva.com to create the graphics you need for your website and social media and combine them with the images you have taken.
What is Canva? Canva is an online platform for creating logos, website banners, social media images, brochures, posters, and other design collaterals. Canva uses pre-made templates where you can slot an image you have taken or from their image library, include your text copy and then export it to an image format with predefined measurements. The starting price from the time of this blog article is NZD19.99 per month.
Prioritisation of website design features
Designing and building website features are a great way to improve the overall user experience of your business or eCommerce website, gain loyalty from your customer base and increase revenue. On the other hand, it can also simplify the business workflow depending on the features.
Adding a feature to your website costs money and time, as the website designer and web developer need to design and build it. To help you make a decision, think about which feature can bring more value to your business while doing the most minimal work.
Resist on adding features that bring less value to your business. You can add them to your backlog for later implementation.
Build an MVP product
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) method focuses on minimum features that are just good enough to release in production and test with your customers. This way, you only spend a bare minimum of your budget, time, and effort.
Hire a local website design company in NZ
Outsourcing your website design and website development work could be tempting, as outsourcing offers a lower price, but sometimes, it comes with a cost.
Here are a couple of examples that you should be aware of:
- A job could only take an hour, but it takes a few hours of your time and effort to review them each time as they could not complete the task correctly.
- A project is scoped out based on both parties agreeing on the requirements, and the price seems cheap compared to a web design company in NZ. Later, during the development stage, they will start charging extra costs as they are not included in the original agreements, which should have been raised beforehand.
Hiring a website designer and web developer in NZ reduces the chance of getting low-quality work output due to our work culture and ethics. Start with a small number of tasks to gauge the competency of the website design company before committing to a large amount of work.
Final thoughts
The NZ recession looms indefinitely and business expenses simply can’t be avoided, but they can surely be minimised when invested in the right place.
