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Not to knock them but it doesn't really inspire confidence in them helping small businesses conquer the web.
If people are finding out about these places using Yelp, Google, Groupon et al. is there really a need for a SEO friendly website? Many of these businesses don't care about a web presence because its effect would be negligible. I suppose you could justify the cost of building out a website for the local dry cleaner, but seriously, does that help it gain any new business? I doubt it.
- More than 80% of people search for local businesses and services on the web.
You better believe that where you show up in a Google search matters. The best way to do this is by owning your own website.
If people are finding out about these places using Yelp, Google, Groupon et al. is there really a need for a SEO friendly website? Many of these businesses don't care about a web presence because its effect would be negligible. I suppose you could justify the cost of building out a website for the local dry cleaner, but seriously, does that help it gain any new business? I doubt it.
If I just moved to a new town, I probably don't know where the nearest dry cleaner, or Thai restaurant, or carpet cleaner is. Rather than spend valuable time driving around searching, my first inclination will be to google it. If they get my business and do a good enough job, odds are I'll continue to patronize them for years. People rarely change service providers unless they move or there's a major problem.
We are doing something very similar for apartments websites. My assumptions where exactly the same but after two months it turned out the the easy sales were those made with the advanced business owners, not the ones who never really wanted to be on the Internet. The tech savy ones saw immediately the wisdom of a dedicated website builder compared to the great but too general wordpress or joomla. The others were stil…
A quick piece of feedback: On your home page, you should put a sign-up button where your login is now. As is, it's incredibly difficult to figure out where to sign-up. Put your log-in text or form in the upper-right hand corner: it's where people expect it.
One point that article starts to make well but then spoils with the Monty Python reference is this;
> Part of the reason is that small business owners are already doing everything they already know to stay afloat. Adding a whole new category to what they need to understand and stay up-to-date with is just too much.
...it goes further than that even. The more tech-savvy small businesses know a fair bit about SEO, Adwords and how to present themselves online but _they don't have time_. Even if you have the knowhow investing, say, 3 hours a day for a couple of weeks, getting a campaign running when you're a dentist doesn't make sense when there's a queue of customers waiting.
Three fundamentals for tech startups wanting to provide software and services to small businesses are something like;
* Leads matter: it's not about clicks, it's about customers. If you're helping a dentist keep their weekly schedule full with _real patients_, they'll be happy to pay for it. Groupon's success is all about this.
* You need people on the ground. If you want to reach small businesses, you have to talk to them face to face, no matter how smart your algorithm is. You're competing for their attention against their real work - that which generates income - and while some are tech savvy, many more lack understanding of what technology can do for them. Again Groupon have figured this out http://goo.gl/Zch2U
* Be _genuinely_ trying to help them make their business a success. Many have a hard enough time just staying afloat and there are plenty of sharks already out there trying to take their money - Groupon may be one of them.
Finally, for tech startups, don't group them all as "small business" but instead look at specific "verticals". While there are commonalities, the needs of a hairdresser and a dentist are not the same. Take a look at some of the yellow pages provides business category listings for example http://www.yellowpages.ca/business/ - each one of those is a vertical with specific needs. Do you think a company selling farm equipment like tractors is interested in an online shopping cart?
OK - TL no one read ;)
We are doing something very similar for apartments websites. My assumptions where exactly the same but after two months it turned out the the easy sales were those made with the advanced business owners, not the ones who never really wanted to be on the Internet. The tech savy ones saw immediately the wisdom of a dedicated website builder compared to the great but too general wordpress or joomla. The others were stil…
2. For the signup button use a color that contrasts more strongly with the rest of the design, e.g., red or green (vs. blue)
3. Don't redirect me to another, context-free page when I click the signup button
4. More importantly, get a native English speaker to proofread your copy. "Create easily your advanced apartments website right now" is very awkward, and both "easily" and "advanced" are essentially meaningless words.
Solve my problem, don't sell me features.
Completely off-topic (perhaps not) but at the top of the sidebar of SeeingInteractive's site, there is a sign-up section for a support group. The fields are _incredibly_ tiny. Checked on both Firefox 3.6 and Chrome. Not to knock them but it doesn't really inspire confidence in them helping small businesses conquer the web.
Most of our small business customers have no idea who we are since we use the newspaper brands. Way less than 1% of all Seeing Interactive traffic will ever pass through this site.
We hear you loud and clear and this and whole bunch of other stuff you probably didn't see will be fixed early in the new year.
"They need a good solid website that has been created with SEO principles in mind and they need to be able to easily update it." What small businesses really care about is cost effective customer acquisition. A new website without a marketing engine attached is a tougher sell and is a crowded marketplace - you'll wind up selling against Intuit, Yahoo and other giants that have a virtually unlimited inbound flow of le…
It works a lot faster than you might think. Sure, if you're setting up a new site in San Francisco or Austin this kind of thing will be a much harder sell. But in small-town USA where no one knows what SEO means, it's actually really fast. We've had people jump to #1, #2, and #3, of target keywords in under a week (we don't advertise this, btw, because it's unrealistic), but 30-45 days is very common. There are milli…
I work as a developer for the online arm of a yellow pages provider in Europe. Thanks to regulated data and a more conservative populace, it's still a very profitable sector for a fairly simple and well known business model. None of "we come from the Internet" players, be it Google, Facebook, Groupon or otherwise has succeeded in making any real dent _yet_, although they're making progress. One point that article sta…
These optimizations you mention (and significantly more) are in our pipeline.