2020 has been a remarkable year for us at mode.law, as it has been for everyone else. The challenges and opportunities faced by our business reflect what we have seen in the small businesses we service. So, mode.law director Yule Guttenbeil thought he would take the opportunity to reflect on this strange year and give you some insight into what the team have observed over the last 12 months. Read on!
mode.law is based in Victoria, so the extensive lockdown restrictions placed on the State meant that we have worked from home for almost the entire year. Fortunately for us, we were already accustomed to conducting team meetings via zoom, and most of the team worked from home part of the week, so initially the changes to the way we worked weren’t too difficult. We’ll admit, the social isolation affected everyone in the team at different points, but overall, we maintained solid productivity through the pandemic.
2020 has been a huge year for the development of the mode.law platform. This was the year we really needed to leave the beta phase and really start to build mode.law into a robust platform. We also needed to hang our sign out to attract users and get their insightful feedback so we could improve upon what we started with.
The biggest decision we made was to make all subscriptions to mode.law free from April until the end of September, and then extending it to the 31st October. We really wanted to help Australian small businesses as much as we possibly could during the pandemic, while we continued to improve the platform. This pivot helped both our users and our own development. The users we attracted during this time were generally really happy with mode.law’s functionality, and it helped a number of small businesses through some tight situations. It also gave us more time and user feedback to focus on developing an update that would improve every aspect of the service which we were pleased to roll out in early November.
The feedback we’ve received from our users has been really heartening. Many of whom ask us how they can help get the word out. We even turned some of their feedback into blogs! We cannot express enough how much we really value the feedback of our users, especially when they spot issues or suggest improvements. So, I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who took the time this year to give us feedback.
Observations on how the pandemic affected small business
The effect the pandemic had on small businesses varied greatly depending on the industry. Businesses that relied on retail with foot-traffic struggled the most. Some managed to subsist on the JobKeeper program, particularly if they had been around for a while and had records of a reasonably stable income for at least the past year. It was new businesses that struggled the most. Not having a years’ worth of established, dependable income prior to lockdown to qualify for assistance, many of them found it extremely difficult to continue operating.
Businesses where staff could work from home tended to fair much better. Early on, we saw many businesses scrambling to set up technology and systems that would enable them to work remotely. However, once we got over this initial tumult, many thrived.
Professional services tended to do comparatively well. We also saw a lot of innovation in the healthcare and allied health industries. Some practitioners took great advantage of the move to remote consultations, doctors began providing telehealth services as standard, and even prescriptions could be ordered online.
A number of users were entrepreneurs who were starting new ventures after their employment was called into question due to the effects of Covid-19 had on their employer. With some being stood down because their workplace was closed, or they were simply laid-off, we saw a number of people start a new business designed to operate in the new normal. Generally, these have been businesses that provide services remotely that had previously been done in person. We expect this trend to continue after the pandemic, although perhaps at a slower rate.
So that’s our 2020 retrospective. Thank you to all our users, we really appreciate your support and level of engagement with mode.law. After all the challenges your business faced this year, we hope that 2021 is a year of growth, success and opportunity for you. The team at mode.law wish you all a merry Christmas and a prosperous new year.