Claiming your webspace
by Steve Gerencser
The web is full. No more room for your new website, or to even re-tool your old website. So don’t bother, spend your money on radio advertising instead.
Or maybe not.
Without a doubt the web has become a very crowded place. With almost every commercial business having at least some presence online, some businesses having multiple websites, and then the top of the heap, the megalithic websites like Amazon, Blue Nile, and eBay. We won’t even get in to the topic of affiliate programs that create hundreds, even thousands, of websites all selling the same product. With that level of competition why would anyone want to get involved with adding a second business to their already full plate?
Why do I need a website?
For me, the number one reason for a company, especially a small company, to have a website today is that fewer and fewer people are using the phone book to find what they are looking for. When someone picks up a phone book they are looking for a phone number. They already know what they want, pizza, movie times, how late are you open, and other similar questions. As people become more and more internet savvy they want more than a phone book can give them, they want to shop.
But what if you offer a product or service that has seen its market eaten up by outsourcing overseas like software development, or turned in to a commodity sold from lists in a database rather than as an actual product like diamonds? You can still compete. It’s been said by the people at Wal-Mart that you can’t out Amazon Amazon, but you can find an angle where you can compete on a local level, and as you grow in to your web presence you can begin to expand in to larger markets, or new products that will help differentiate you from the Amazon’s and Blue Nile’s of the world. And if you can pick up a piece of the global market on your way up, that’s just a little more icing on the cake.
Local Search to the rescue!
The easiest and usually best way to start elbowing your way in to internet millions is to stake out your local market. There may be thousands of people online selling Peeps but how many people are selling Peeps in Flathead County, Montana? I don’t know about you, but when I get a craving for pink bunny peeps I need them now, not 3 days from now via FedEx.
It doesn’t have to be Peeps. Maybe you run a small printing company, or you have a baseball card shop, or even a tanning salon. Whatever it is, the internet makes for the best phone book ad ever. It has everything a normal phone book ad has, phone number, address, etc., but it can also have your store hours, a list of products or services, maybe even an interactive way for your local clients to get what they need without even getting in their car.
So what do we do now?
The first step is to build a website that not only focuses on your product or service, but one that focuses on your local community. A site that is just as likely to rank well for your city’s name is it is to rank for your product.
Fortunately for both of us I have just signed up a new old client. I originally built their first website more than 7 years ago, and since it was built it has seen almost no effort put in to it. A common problem for small businesses with a lot of work to do and not enough time to think about that “web thing”. As long as the email works, they are happy. I’ll let you in on who this client is in a few weeks once we get things back on track for them.
I can tell you that they are in a very competitive industry that has seen it’s profit margins eaten away by advancing technology and cheaper labor costs in Asia. But it is still an industry that can, and should, have strong ties with the local community and should leverage that involvement in to a profitable website that serves as more than just a place to get their email from. We’ll find out together if it can be turned around and made in to a profit center rather than an expense.
