Independent Shop Guide Website

The Independent Shop Guide website is still very much under construction on my laptop. I have a pretty good idea of what it is going to look like, but I am struggling to impose my will on the code at the moment so it actually resembles what it should look like. Setting up a website is a curious business. Like writing an e-mail you have to think through what the person the other side of the screen is going to get out of it. Unlike an e-mail, you also have to think through what the computer is going to do to your idea as well. The important thing is what the potential shopper is going to make of it. I need to give them all the information they need to make a journey to somewhere they have never been before with the intention of shopping when they get there. And I need to make sure that the website design helps rather than hinders that intention. I just hope it all comes together soon.

Fewer small businesses

98,000 businesses started in the first three months of this year. 100,000 closed down. If the trend continues for the rest of the year it will the first year it will the first time since 2000 that more businesses close than open. There are a number of ways to look at this. It is easy to get into the mindset that this is somehow doom and gloom and yet another sign of the credit crunch cutting a swathe through our prosperity. But I think it is better to think of it as a welcome return to some kind of normality. The credit crunch as not come out of the blue. It comes after a long period of whatever the opposite of a credit crunch is. A credit binge I suppose? The plain fact is that everyone has been borrowing too much. Homeowners have paid outrageous prices for their homes, with outrageous mortgages the necessary co-factor. Consumers have huge credit card balances to pay off. I think we are now entering a period when everything will be changing on the retail scene. Is this bad news for the independent shop? Not necessarily. Retailers are going to have to change quickly to adapt to the new situation. People will be much more careful spending money that they have earned rather than borrowed. And it will be much easier changing things round in a small shop than a huge chain.