If your business didn’t have an online presence or your website was a little underused at the start of 2020, that’s probably changed by now.

Businesses saw an increase in online demand as we all shopped, worked and socialised in front of a screen, and many that didn’t have an online shop or ordering system before have successfully (and quickly!) set one up.

Beaming supports businesses with internet, telephone and IT support services, so we’ve had a busy year of helping customers adjust to home working and accelerate the adoption of new technology. In addition to the expert guidance we offer our customers, we share our knowledge for all to take advantage of on our website, which means that looking at our online stats gives an interesting snapshot of the year.

9,456

Casting our minds back to the beginning of the year, if asked we’d have probably said that extreme weather and environmental issues would be the news story of the year – on the 9^th of February, views of our Hastings seafront webcam reached a peak, with 9,456 people tuning in to watch Storm Ciara hit the coast.

70%

As news about the Coronavirus pandemic became more serious and business leaders started to consider the idea that staff may have to go home to work, searches about flexible cloud telephones increased by 70% from February to March

24^th

From March onwards the year was dominated by Covid, and on the 24^th – the first day of the first national lockdown – we saw the most ever visits to our website as customers and internet searchers flocked to find out how to set up to work from home. Monthly views of our “10 essentials for the perfect remote office set up” blog increased by 230% from February to April.

39,328

Employees new to home working gained a renewed appreciation for their IT support teams as they set themselves up for working remotely. Our guide explaining how to use a local printer in a remote desktop session was read 39,328 times in 2020.

764%

For those that connected to their company systems using a VPN, our guide to mapping a shared drive to a personal PC proved extremely valuable and racked up a 764% increase in traffic vs last year.

177,000

We saw cyber attacks surge to 177,000 per business in our Q2 Cyber threat Report, so it’s no surprise that businesses were keen to find out how to improve cyber security. Our most shared Tweet of the year was this one from early July:

We asked Robert Nowill, Chair of @Cyberchallenge, Charlie Hosier from @EdinburghNapier University Cyber Security Society & @Jenny_Radcliffe, Director of Human Factor Security to explain how the #CyberThreat landscape has changed & how businesses should protect themselves. pic.twitter.com/61EE5iWhDP

— Beaming (@BeamingNews) July 8, 2020

263%

Our file transfer time calculator is always popular, but its use increased by 263% from 2019 to 2020, perhaps as frustrated home workers tried to gauge their broadband’s performance.

£8,500

Although the Covid-19 vaccine is giving us all hope for the future, the workplace has been changed forever, and with businesses seeing an annual saving of £8,500 for each home-based employee, many are keen to keep working more flexibly. In November we released our Changing Workplace Report to help business leaders adopt a happy balance between remote and office-based working so that we’re all prepared for whatever 2021 may bring.