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Why Local Businesses
Publish Websites
Your website is available 24 hours a day to the people in your community. If someone wants your service or product, they will find you on the web. Here is an independent view by Dave Watson the IT columnist for the Georgia Straight,
on why you need a website
Taking a Click Through the Neighbourhood
DOT COMMENT Georgia Straight OCT 20th 2005
by Dave Watson
Years ago, I believed that many businesses would never need a Web site or even so much as a lone Web page. Laundromats, corner stores, and newsstands are all places that offer goods and services to a neighbourhood population and would be
unlikely to profit from international accessibility.
They’re location-based, hardly the kind of establishment anyone would ever look up unless perhaps they were planning to buy a shop.
Customers don’t search for such places: you
either already know where they are or where you’re likely to find them. And if you ever found yourself in an unfamiliar area or needed a service for the first time, why, you’d probably grab a phone book and try to cross-match the alphabetical
listing with street names you recognized.
In theory, then, there are some businesses that don’t really need to remind existing patrons of anything; they just have to achieve awareness with newcomers to the neighbourhood. In the old
pre-Net days, that would mean sending out flyers, taking out an ad in the Yellow Pages, and maybe buying a bigger sign for out front. What could a Web presence offer? How many customers would you ever attract?
Probably none, back then.
Even with the first generation of the World Wide Web, the Internet population was too small and spread out to matter. That’s likely why early Web proposals to local small businesses generally involved the “city directory” format (the Yellow
Pages concept), often gussied up with a clickable map of neighbourhoods. Like the print media they copied, these sites were probably visited more by tourists and recent transplants than by long-time locals.
What’s changed? The Web’s
not just transcontinental, but microscopically local as well. So many people are now on-line that this density has, within the last couple of years, led to a big push to localize the Web by major search engines like Google and Yahoo!. That
means that a queries like “Vancouver pizza delivery”, “604 menswear”, and “V5N dry-cleaner” are actually viable search terms, provided there’s something there for them to find (specifically, Web pages that contain those words and area/postal
codes).
What’s more, if you use Google, the Local Results link clicks you through to the maps section, showing a zoomable street map complete with an icon showing the exact street address and (optionally) providing directions. If you
want, you can substitute a satellite photo for the map, or view both at once. Try it yourself: type in an address, why, type in “1700 Burrard Street, Vancouver”, and see what it looks like from space (maps.google.ca).
So, the
capability of providing localized results is there, and practically everyone’s on-line these days. Still, why would a small business need to put up its own Web page? Won’t the SuperPages site (www.superpages.ca) take care of your presence by
providing a searchable form of the phone book, also with maps (but no overhead photos)? All you need is for people to find out your store exists, and you’d think the central phone-number site would be a good place for that to happen.
Unfortunately, SuperPages.ca sucks. Even though it should be updated constantly, being electronic and all, it seems to take forever for new businesses to appear, so its timeliness is not much better than the annual phone book’s. What’s more,
the search function is awkward, literal, and a promoter of user frustration. Let me tell you a story…
For the past several years, I’ve been contracted to do some name-and-address fact-checking involving several hundred businesses,
large and small. Until about four or five years ago it was practically a weeklong process of checking phone books and calling Information for newer numbers. Then SuperPages appeared and it was a small blessing. Sure, lots of places weren’t in
there, but it did save some time, and besides, it could only get better, right?
But it didn’t improve and SuperPages gradually became a joke among my coworkers. Even though it’s had every opportunity to become useful, it has resisted
such modernizing: it’s never up-to-date, it’s got an clumsy form-based interface, and it’s completely inflexible about spelling. Sometimes it just seems to be toying with you. Here’s a suggested slogan: SuperPages...official database of Hell.
So, on this year’s project, I started using Google first. Just copy and paste some text into the search box and see what comes back. Freakishly often, it would be just what I was looking for, either via Google Maps or by providing a link
to the actual company Web site. Better yet, it lacked those forms to fill out, it had the ability to search using partial names and addresses, and the information was pretty current. I’d try SuperPages only if Google drew a blank. And Google
only seemed to blank out if the establishment didn’t have a Web site. End result? The task took less than two days to complete.
That’s one reason to post a page with your business name, address, and number on-line: it saves me a lot of
time, and I’d appreciate it. Presumably it would also help visitors and locals discover your business; I’m not the only one turning to search engines to get local information quickly. And the trend is about to make an exponential leap, now
that so many cell phones and other devices are supporting mobile Internet access. It’s one thing for someone to research businesses from a desktop before heading out; it’s another for them to be able to find your ice-cream shop when they’re a
block away just by typing three or four words into Google. Savvy businesses will probably conclude it’s worth $100 a year to be available to that potential market.
NOTE: At 235.ca I only charge CA$60/yr to host your site (CA$5/mo) HOSTING FEES HERE.
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