Sriram “Ram” Natarajan is now GIA’s senior vice president of laboratory operations and is based out of the lab’s headquarters in Carlsbad.
The Smart Lab: Why Your Website Is an Integral Part of Reopening
It is an online representation of your brand and the perfect place to launch your store’s reopening campaign, Emmanuel Raheb writes.

But first things first, it’s important to have a proper reopening campaign.
Whether or not your business has been able to operate online during the pandemic, your customers need to know that your brick-and-mortar store is back up and running. Without a campaign that reaches them, it’s safe to say they will assume you’re still closed.
Your website is the perfect place to launch this campaign, and here’s why.
Websites as a Path to Success
In general, an informative and navigable website is important to the success of any business.
This, in part, is largely due to the increasing trend of online shopping, which has only gotten more and more popular the last few months as the pandemic has kept people away from physical stores.
Considering your website is all the general public has had to look at during this period, it’s probable that these computer habits they’ve built these months will continue, making your website the premier location for updates on your business.
While an updated and respectable website is Business 101, it’s even more crucial now since our months-long dependence on websites has increased their general importance and relevance.
Websites as Brand Representation
Because of this recent reliance on a website to make most purchases, not only are people shopping online more than ever but they’re also expecting more than ever from websites.
With consumers unable to visit your brick-and-mortar store these past few months, your website became your strongest source of brand representation.
Hopefully, you understood the importance of a website during COVID-19 and invested time and effort into making it better.
The short-term effect: having built your website as a representation for your brand during an online-heavy time means that you’re already on firmer footing regarding outreach when you utilize it for your reopening campaign.
The long-term effect: even though your website upgrades were born out of necessity, the work you put into it during the pandemic will be something for which you’re eternally grateful.
Websites as a Marketing Tool
For shoppers who haven’t been on your website for a while, this is a great chance to have this new and improved version of it be part of a larger reopening campaign.
This will increase the hype surrounding your reopening and hopefully, in-store foot traffic as well.
What better way to let people know that you’re back in business than with a bang?
And that’s where your website comes in, drawing more and more people toward it, having it be something more than just a landing page, and letting that speak for the passion and ingenuity behind your brand.
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