One of the UK’s most popular songs of 2020 was Blinding Lights by The Weeknd, but perhaps Please Mr Postman by the Marvelettes better encapsulates life for a lot of us. Internet sales as a proportion of total retail sales shot up from more than 20% in November 2019 to 36% in November 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics.
It was an exceptionally tough year on so many fronts, but not one without silver linings: as life rapidly moved online, for small businesses that have been able to adapt their models to meet their customers at their doorsteps, it’s been a time of relative opportunity.