With all of the doom and gloom that hit the country in the wake of the Brexit vote, there has since been a lot of optimism in the UK and in particular the major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester & London.

The initial knee jerk reaction to Brexit was for companies to put everything on hold, especially those who have exposure to Europe and foreign currencies.

Since then though a lot of that has eased up, conversations aren’t as focused on Brexit as much recently (although when article 50 is triggered they well could be!) and companies are spending, lots of companies are getting new websites developed and the Online Marketing industry is still booming.

Consumers haven’t stopped spending, companies that get paid in dollars are getting a 10-15% bonus increase in the exchange rate whereas on the opposite end of the scale those companies exposed to the dollar have seen the same sort of increase in expenses when converting from pound to dollar.

The web design industry is still pretty strong, however some web design companies ho focus on the financial sector may be getting a bit of a squeeze, we have personally noticed that the demand from London has been dipping a little bit.

The great news is that online portals are booming, online estate agents are showing strength in the online market and UK property sector with Zoopla taking part in the buy out on a tech company to further strengthen their online position.

Some of the downsides of Brexit come with intellectual property – When Britain does leave the EU, how difficult could it become to protect data across the EU? Furthermore, will web hosting costs increase? As you EU based companies that store data need to do so on an EU based web host, this could become more expensive and confusing should new agreements need to be drawn up.

One (potentially) positive change could be the move to see the cookie pop up message vanishing, the cookie law currently states that any website that collects cookies must show a notice, much to the annoyance of users, leaving the EU could, although rather unlikely, see the removal of this requirement from UK websites.

Whatever does happen there is sure to be a little more uncertainty, but the early positive signs are that for 2017 British business is bullish on the future and the online world is sure to benefit from the growth expected the coming years.

This article was written by Craig Murphy of ALT Agency for the Brummies Blog.

[Image credit – Azaz Media]