Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

ONLINE BUSINESS

Kamloops business owners take advantage of provincial program to improve digital presence

Mar 25, 2021 | 4:47 PM

KAMLOOPS — In early January we brought you the story of the Digitial Economy: Rapid Response and Resiliency program – DER3, for short.

All the spots in the program have been filled, and businesses are now working to improve their digital presence. CFJC Today caught up with one business owner who is hoping to find new ways to connect with clients through participation in the program.

“So this is the tank. There are 10 inches of water in there, and 1,000 lbs of Epsom salts.”

Image Credit: CFJC Today

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Business owners, like Janette Fessenden of Bliss Float Centre, are always looking for new ways to connect with potential clients. However, the onset COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a shift to online that was already occurring.

“I’m an in-person, service-based business,” Fessenden explains. “What do you do with that when instantly the world changes to operate almost exclusively online?”

Fessenden had a website that she routinely updated, but it became apparent that she needed to improve that digital presence if she wanted to draw more customers into her business.

“COVID has forced me to take a second look at my business, or look with fresh eyes,” she says. “Myself, everybody else had to do business differently.”

DER3 is about connecting small- and medium-sized businesses with so-called subject matter experts in all things online. Venture Kamloops was among several local organizations that helped make those connections.

“So we were that middle part,” Jim Anderson, Executive Director of Venture Kamloops explains. “[We would] talk to businesses we knew and directed them to service providers we also knew.”

The pandemic exposed how necessary it is to reach your customers when they aren’t able to come to you.

“In order to be in front of the consumer, a business had to be present on the web,” Anderson says. “When you, or I, or any consumer was sitting at home as they were supposed to and they had a need, they’d be able to see who was available to them in Kamloops.”

Through DER3, Janette Fessenden has been able to identify exactly what needed to do to bring her online presence up to speed.

“The team looked at my complete online presence and gave me a full audit report on it and some recommendations on where to move forward. Everything from my social media accounts to my website,” Fessenden says. “Right now I’m working with that team to fix my website and make sure my online presence is functioning as it should.”

While the DER3 Program is officially wrapped up, Anderson says business owners should continue to seek out ways to improve their online presence.

“In the absence of the DER3 Program, many of those same services are available through organizations that are here every day in Kamloops,” Anderson says.