lizmicik.com

No, absolutely not every small business needs a website.

At the beginning of March I wrote the first part of this series where I concluded that “yes” every business could benefit from a website (read it here). But we both know that isn’t technically or exactly true.

The gas station or the convenience store on the corner may not see a whole lot of return on their investment in a traditional website. Nor will the barber who is planning on closing his shop when his clients no longer need him to shave their heads into their current bald style.

But…

(and yes it is a huge but)

They do need the Internet. More specifically, there is a class of businesses out there that could benefit more from Internet technology and the way it has changed the ways people shop than any other. Our examples above probably will.

A website geared to mobile devices, or a mobile text marketing plan will become more an more important to the gas station or convenience store owner as “there’s an app for that” spreads. My son is proof.

As a 16 year old, broke high school student, he admitted he almost ran out of gas one night. His friend looked for the best gas price on his iPhone and while they made it to that station, and did save some money, he said they were driving on fumes.

For just a moment imagine you own a gas station and ask yourself these two questions. Isn’t your station a little closer? Shouldn’t you have been on that map?

Getting yourself “on the map” is what you have to do to succeed online. And it’s the very first thing you should do…literally.

• Before we talk about setting up a website (or a version that looks good and runs fast on the smartphones)
• Before we set up your text messaging campaign reminding people it’s time to get their heads shaved
• You have to be on the map so people can find you

I’ll be showing you exactly how you can do that in just a couple of weeks. If you can’t wait, email me today.

Do any of these situations sound familiar?

• A small engineering firm that has built its business on word of mouth networking finds out they lost a potentially large client because the buyer searched for companies to invite to bid online.
• A local gift shop in the strip mall went out of business after a very disappointing Christmas season.
• A local hair salon owner worries because her clientele is getting older faster than she is.
• A local realtor spends hundreds of dollars per month on advertising and photos and video tours of his listings that he posts online to his company web page, but there’s a reason his company “can’t” tell him how many people saw it there

Each of the business owners in these situations had heard over and over again that they “should be on the web.”  Each of them were told that the Internet would be the answer to all their problems. But even though there are plenty of statistics that prove that the Internet is making huge sales inroads in nearly every industry, these business owners didn’t buy in to that idea.

A website takes computer skills, or the money to hire people with computer skills, that they never wanted to learn or spend. More than that, it takes time that most small business owners don’t have. Even if they do have time, most would rather spend it where they could be reasonable sure they would be adding to their bottom line today. To add insult to injury, it takes even more time or money on an ongoing basis to write new content, or make changes to what’s there or to fix things that mysteriously stop working at the worst possible time.

All of that could and would be dealt with cheerfully if the return on a website investment could be guaranteed.  Sadly, it cannot.  As the local realtor above could tell you, “if you build it, they will come” is only a Hollywood ending.

Even more sadly, people like this realtor who have tried one or two things on the Internet without enjoying much success are just as likely to conclude that “the Internet doesn’t work” for local businesses, or personal service businesses, or just them, or anyone else for that matter.

Or does it?  There is a way that any business can take advantage of the Internet to drive customers to their offline business without knowing all the coding, or paying web developers hundreds of dollars per hour.  It will still take time to do, however. Like so many aspects of business, it’s still a two out of three proposition. It will either:

• Cost you nothing in money, have a learning curve to start with, and take plenty of time
• Cost you money, but no time,  to have someone with specialized knowledge and time do it for you
• Cost you a little time to learn how to do some things yourself and cost you a little money to pay others with specialized knowledge to complete more complicated bits

“It” is a “new” kind of website. No, not even that. It’s a different platform you can use to build a website. And even that little definition is more technical than it needs to be.

The website that all of the small businesses mentioned above—and many more—could set up and use to promote themselves very simply and inexpensively, is a blog. Once set up it can be very fast and easy to maintain yourself, even if you don’t add to it for months.

More than this whole website is built on a blog platform; my whole business relies on it. I wouldn’t do that if I wasn’t sure of the foundation, flexibility and functionality it gives me. It can do the same for you.