If you are a business owner, then you probably want to be found online. The simple fact of the matter is that more and more consumers are going online for everything from buying shoes and groceries to seeing which local real estate agent is the best in their local town. Take a look a few recent statistics:
- 61% of global internet users research products online
- 44% of online shoppers start by using a search engine
- There are 12 billion online searches PER MONTH in the USA
- 50% of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding a local result, and 61% of those searches result in a purchase.
- 48% of users say that if they arrive on a business site that isn’t working well on mobile, they take it as an indication of the business simply not caring.
As you can see, if you run a business then being online is extremely important.
To further show this point, let me walk you through an experience I had this last week in looking for the menu to a good Mexican restaurant in my local town of St. George, UT. They make some killer asada and kick’n salsa, but because I couldn’t find a menu (and it wasn’t for lack of trying – I scoured their site, Yelp, Facebook, Tripadvisor, and everywhere else I could possibly find them) we ended up going to a competitor just down the road. The competitor had a website, I could see their menu, and they even offered an online coupon for a free $2.50 dessert – so I ended up spending my $60 their instead of the Mexican restaurant I had already wanted to go to.
You know the saddest part of this? I was already sold! I knew where I wanted to go eat, but because they didn’t have their menu on their website I went somewhere else.
Now, just for fun, go to Google and search a restaurant name in your local town. Before you hit ‘enter’, pay attention to the Google autosuggest terms that come up. You will invariably find the 1st or 2nd suggestion is going to be ‘
So what can we learn from this, and how can you make sure you’re not losing business like this restaurant is?
- Make sure you have a website, and that it looks good. Remember, looking good includes making sure your website is fully responsive (i.e. it looks good on a mobile phone) – otherwise searchers will think you don’t care, and most likely go somewhere else. In other words – having a bad website (or no website at all) drives people who should be your customers to your competitors.
- Set up your website to CONVERT. Once you invest in a website you want to make sure it does what it is suppose to – bring in new business. Remember that simple $2.50 coupon? It got me to spend $60 and choose them over their competitor. In addition, the coupon got me to try one of their desserts I would not have tried without the coupon. I have now gone back 3 times just to get that dessert. That is a very well spent $2.50.
While the coupon worked, the restaurant could have even done more than simply offer the coupon – they could have required that I sign up for their email marketing list and routinely send me out coupons and other offers aimed at bringing me back into their restaurant.
- Make sure you are found when people search your brand name. There are many times when businesses don’t rank #1 for their brand simply because their site is not set up to communicate properly to Google what their brand and products are. This can dramatically hurt a business, as we have found many times that for businesses, brand traffic is greater than keyword search traffic. For example, one of our clients is a jewelry store in a very competitive market. They rank #1 for a vast majority of the industry keywords, but still over 50% of their search impressions and clicks comes from people searching for their business name.
Do yourself a favor. Right now go to Google.com and type in your business brand name and see what comes up. If your website is not #1, then you have an issue that needs to be taken care of ASAP. Also, pay attention to what else is coming up below your site – hopefully you see your social profiles and other business listings and that they accurately depict your brand (i.e. positive reviews, correct name, address, and phone number, etc.)
If you are business owner and want to increase your online presence or build a website that helps you grow, contact Voxxy today. Our experience in both online marketing and development helps ensure your website is built with the end goal in mind – to help grow your business.
