Web Site or Yellow Pages?

Picture this scenario:

You’re at work and your spouse calls to tell you the water heater is hissing and water is dripping out the bottom. You say “Give me a few minutes and I’ll call  you back.”

What do you do? Do you ask if anybody at work has a Yellow Pages so you can start looking for water heater repair company or do you do an internet search for “Water heater repair?”

Say you are thinking of going out to dinner at a local restaurant and want to see their menu. While you’re at it, you wonder if there are any coupons available. Do you go to the newspaper or Yellow Pages or do you google the name of  the restaurant to see their menu?

In both of the above, you probably use the web for the information. Your customers are doing the same thing about you and your product or company. If you don’t have a site or your site is boring and lacking any decent content, you are missing out on a possible sale, a potential long-term client and the referrals and testimonials that could result from a new relationship.

Note: I’m not suggesting, “Don’t have a Yellow Pages ad. Many people still use them and many companies still get a large number of customers from them. If you are going to have a YP ad, be sure that you are tracking results and getting  positive return on the investment.

• Your business needs a web site because your customers and prospects will look for you online. No site = missed opportunities.
• Your site needs to be optimized with the proper title, keywords and description. That means it needs to be set up in a certain way for the search engines so that when a client searches for your product, service or company, you come up on the front page
• If you are a small business serving a local area, you need to appear on google, Yahoo and the other local map sites. If not you are missing opportunities for new clients and sales. Even your existing customers are going to look for information about you online.
• Your site needs to be updated regularly with new information and content to keep it interesting. People most frequently search for content so give it to them. Don’t know what to write about? Write down the questions customers ask you and answer them. ANY business with customers gets questions. If one person asks the question, you can assume others have similar thoughts.
• When you are talking about your business, tell people what you do FOR THEM, not what you do.

While your site doesn’t need to be a masterpiece of internet technology, you do want it to be somewhat professional. Taking a Word document and making it a web site is a start but they usually miss the mark and look pretty amateurish.

There are a lot of great templates out there from which you can select or you can always simplify things and have me do it for you! Contact me to see how easy it can be to be online with a small business site that will make you money.