Scene: Nightfall in a small town. A weary traveler and his family, having driven many miles on the highway and through winding back roads, arrive hungry and ready to explore your town. His kids are starving and whining in the back seat. He pulls out his phone and searches for restaurants nearby. He is intrigued by your café and, after checking out your business’s profile on Google, your website and some reviews, he heads off, excited to try the delicious food people raved about on Yelp!
What’s this? As he pulls into the parking lot, he sees that the café’s lights are off, the open sign completely dark. In the dim light of the nearby streetlamp, he reads on your door that you are no longer open on Mondays for dinner. But unfortunately for both of you, your website and your Google Business Profile were never updated to reflect this change.
Just think — this tired, hungry traveler is now a tired, hungry, and cranky traveler who, during the next two weeks of vacationing in your quaint town, will choose to go to the other cafés and restaurants instead of yours. Because of this one simple thing you didn’t update, he gets cranky all over again whenever he thinks of your café. He and his family are lost business. They would not have had this negative experience if you had simply updated your ever-so important online presence. End scene.
The Importance of an Accurate Online Presence
With summer in full swing, millions of visitors are traveling all around the country for their vacations. More than 90 percent of travelers begin their research online, so if the information they find there is not accurate, it can really throw a wrench in their summer plans and in your summer business. With all the work business owners have every day, many forget, or don’t make time, to check whether their websites are still accurate. For the hundreds of thousands of people with their tablets and phones finding places to eat, sleep or play, the information they find online has become increasingly more important in their buying decisions. As a business owner, you want that conversion to be as easy as can be.
Simple Updates That Make a Big Difference
We know a website is never really “done.” There are always things to do like tweak the content, update your images and try to lower the bounce rate. We also know that you don’t always have time for all the changes you would like. Despite this, we cannot stress enough the importance of updating your site, so here are some easy tips to help make sure your website stays up to date!
- Review your Google Analytics to see what the most visited pages are and carefully evaluate at least those few pages for any necessary updates (though it is always better to make sure every page is up to date).
- See what your top keywords are and review any above-the-fold content to see if you can quickly (and naturally) add them to help drive a bit more traffic to your site.
- Double check your hours of operation and make sure you list your street address and not just a P.O. box. If someone is using GPS or an app like Google Maps to find you, they’ll need your physical address.
- Any changes you make to your website such as updating hours or operation, your business’s phone number or your physical location, should also be updated on your Google Business Profile.
- Ask a friend to review your site; sometimes a fresh pair of eyes will catch the most obvious errors that you may have overlooked.
These tips should help you eliminate many common website gaffes. Remember to always update your online presence before your location’s busy season, if possible, and do your best to stay on top of website updates throughout the whole year. With all this in mind, you can avoid creating more cranky travelers and instead make sure that they turn into promising customers. Good luck and we hope you have an excellent summer! For more tips on maintaining your website, check out our other blog posts!
