One thing that still amazes me about small businesses is their lack of understanding about the internet. Most of these business people just don’t realize how much business they are losing out on because they don’t put enough emphasis and focus on their website.
These people need to wake up. Everyone under age fifty is online. In fact, most people over age 50 are online to some extent as well. The vast majority of these people would prefer to look something up online rather than try to find someone to do business with in a phone book.
Think about it. If you don’t know who to call to fix a broken appliance, what do you do? You go to Google and type in “Maytag washing machine repair” or something similar. Very few people are still using the old fashioned thick yellow page books. Don’t believe me? Look at how much thinner that local yellow page book has gotten over the last ten years. Look at the stock price of the companies that produce those telephone yellow pages. People use the internet now. They look for businesses on Google, Yahoo and Bing.
It is insane for a business to not have some kind of decent web presence these days. Those who do not spend enough time and resources on building that image on the internet are leaving a ton of money on the table that could have been in their cash registers.
Some small businesses just don’t get it. Meanwhile, their competition is cleaning up.
I had a conversation with a business owner recently who had already hired someone to promote his website. He owns a family operated manufacturing company that manufactures furniture. This company does several million dollars a year in sales. He told me that 2009 was a record year for his business even though the economy had plummeted. The best part was that he attributed this massive increase in business to the extra investment they had made in their website. They lost a bunch of business from their regular customers because of the economy. However, they more than made up for it because of the increase in business they generated from new customers through their website. If their competitors knew about this, I can assure you that they would be making the same investments instead of laying off more people.
It costs a lot less than you think.
Another thing that amazes me is the value that a small business can generate from very little investment in their website. If a business has a web designer who understands (SEO) search engine optimization, then it is very likely that their website is very profitable. If not, then they should look for someone who does understand it and make the investment in them.
It is important to have a website that projects the image that you want to leave with new potential customers. It is also important to have a website that ranks well when people are looking for that kind of business. People in Chicago who want to hire a wedding photographer are going to go to Google and type in things like “wedding photographers in Chicago” or “Chicago wedding photographers” or “best wedding photographer in Chicago” or something else like that.
You want your website to rank as high as possible for those terms. If you can get to number one on ranking in Google, you will really clean up. Here is the breakdown on how many visitors typically click on a link depending on where it falls on the page in a search engine.
Position on the page / percentage of clicks it gets
| Position 1 | 42.4 |
| Position 2 | 11.8 |
| Position 3 | 8.4 |
| Position 4 | 6.2 |
| Position 5 | 4.9 |
| Position 6 | 4.1 |
| Position 7 | 3.4 |
| Position 8 | 3.1 |
| Position 9 | 2.7 |
| Position10 | 2.9 |
That means that roughly 90% of all Google searchers click on a result on the first page in Google. If your website isn’t on page 1 you are already being missed by 90% of potential new customers.
Can you imagine how much more exposure you are going to get if you can get your website to move from page 2 or page 3 all the way up to page one?
People just don’t realize how cost effective it is to spend a few dollars to get to page 1 in the search results. First you need to identify as many phrases as possible that people will use to find a business that does what you do. Then try to get your website to rank high for those terms. I can assure you that for the vast majority of businesses it is well worth the investment. It probably costs way less than you think.
