On my daughter’s last day of preschool we asked her where she’d like to go for supper to celebrate. She wasn’t sure, but she knew she wanted garlic fingers.

There’s a spot within 20 minutes of where we live that my husband and I really enjoy. I actually wanted to go there on Mother’s Day but the website told us they were closed on Sundays and Mondays. I was impressed that the restaurant had a website because many small local business in my province don’t.

Anyway, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to go. They have an outdoor patio overlooking the water, it was a weekday evening so they’d be open and probably not overly busy.

So I pulled up the website to check out the menu (it’s been awhile since we’ve been there…I’m talking years!) to see what price range we were looking at. There was a special that looked very good – a 16″ pizza, 12″ garlic fingers and donair sauce for $24.99. You don’t get much better than that so off we went.

When we got there, a large sign read, “Now open 7 days per week!” Hmm. I couldn’t help but wonder when that took effect. I didn’t think much of it until we went to order and I asked for the special I saw on the website.

The server laughed and said, “We haven’t had that special in forever but it was a great deal.”

A lot of good that does me, I think.

Anyway, we are very easy going people and we ordered a different special. The food was amazingly delicious. Among the best pizza I’ve ever had. Service was great, atmosphere can’t be beat.

But the website. If you have a website and it’s never updated, it’s worse than having no website at all.

See, for Mother’s Day, if there wasn’t a website for this place I would have had to call to make a reservation or to find out what their hours were. Maybe it was open and we could have gone there. We would have enjoyed it and we likely would have been back sooner. Instead, I got information on the website that may or may not have been accurate but I took it as current and believed it. Much like I believed the special on a restaurant’s website would probably be something we could order at said restaurant.

If you have a “local” business with an out of date website…why? I can only assume that it’s because you either don’t think anyone is looking at it or because you can’t maintain it yourself and it’s too expensive to hire a web developer to do it for you.

If that’s the case, I urge you to go and find someone who can set you up with a website you can maintain yourself. Or hire a virtual assistant who can make the updates at a lower cost than your web guy probably charges.

Your website is your most important marketing piece. Please treat it with respect. Load it with good, search engine-friendly content, current information and details someone planning a visit/purchase needs to know.

Anyone else feel like pizza all of a sudden?

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I knew my husband was a keeper back when I was waiting tables and he noticed one evening that I didn’t have any clean work shirts hanging in the closet for my shift the next morning so he did a load of laundry for me. He thought it was funny that I found so much meaning in that simple little act, but it did mean a lot. It showed me he was thinking about me when I wasn’t there and that he did something to make my life a little bit easier.

In any relationship it isn’t the grand gestures that makes a bond stronger, it’s the little details woven in between that really matter and hold it all together.

I found a gorgeous pair of earrings on etsy (etsy is a commercial site for homemade and vintage-y stuff as well as arts and crafts supplies, etc.) a couple weeks ago. I have no idea how I ended up there and I didn’t know the seller from Adam but the earrings were pretty and sparkly and I could picture myself wearing them on a date with my husband with the candlelight dancing off of them. So I bought them.

I immediately received a standard, automated response from the system, thanking me for my order, but I also received a personal message from the seller, Laura, who owns the shop I bought my earrings from, Vintage Valise, personally thanking me for my order and telling me she’d ship it out that afternoon.

Then I promptly forgot about the earrings until I received them in the mail. They were wrapped in a lovely little box, tied with a ribbon, and this postcard was tucked inside the envelope they were mailed in:

Talk about a warm fuzzy feeling! I’ve been buying stuff online for a long time and very rarely do items come with a handwritten note, but when they do…wow! You really appreciate someone taking the time to do something like that.

I wouldn’t have remembered the name of the shop where I bought those earrings if I didn’t receive this card with my purchase even though I had received that email earlier in the transaction.

We get emails ALL the time. We never get a handwritten note.

They say that it takes 7-11 “touches” before someone buys from you. I don’t necessarily think that’s always true. When some of the touches are unexpected and delightfully personal, I think it can take less.

I think Laura is going to have a successful shop if she can convert every buyer into a repeat buyer like she did with me. All it took to make me love her was taking the time to write a thank you note that was personalized for me (noting my purchase and even spelling my name right).

The worst thing a small business owner can do is make his or her customers feel invisible. We all love those little details so why don’t we see more of them?

Do you do something personal like this in your interactions? Has it become part of your brand? Please tell me about it!

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There’s a restaurant nearby that keeps very irregular hours.

I’ve headed there for supper with my kids more than once, only to find it closed at 5:00 in the evening even though it had been open hours earlier for lunch.

For the past year or so, this eatery has been teaching us that you never know when you’ll catch it open so we don’t bother with it very much since with two young children, when we head to a restaurant we need there to be something there to feed them.

Of course, there’s no website for this restaurant so you have to call ahead for the hours and with no recording that tells you the hours, you have to assume it’s closed if nobody answers. The only other option is to just show up and hope for the best. With so many other options around for dining, this really doesn’t cut it.

Yesterday we drove by this restaurant on our Father’s Day travels and noticed it was open at supper time! But guess what? The parking lot was empty. On Father’s Day. Arguably the busiest day on the calendar for restaurants.

My husband and I had a pretty good idea of why there was nobody there and it’s proof that you can be doing everything else right – good food, good service, good prices – but if you don’t make things as easy as possible for your customers (keeping regular, memorable hours, posting a menu/hours/specials on your website or Facebook page) then you’re not going to do well.

If you’re reading this and you have a business with no web presence, you need to get in the game.

Even if it’s a simple one-pager with your hours, your contact information and key services/products, that’s better than nothing. Facebook makes it easy with their “pages” feature. They’re free and can easily serve as a make shift website.

Always remember that people are searching for you online FIRST and if they can’t find you there, you do not exist. It’s as simple as that. Give the people what they want – the chance to scope you out from their computer before checking you out – and you’ll be golden.

Operating a local business and not having a web presence for it would be like looking at a lineup of qualified customers in front of your store and telling half of them to go away, that you don’t want their money. You wouldn’t do that. Would you?

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