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If you have a “local” business with an out of date website…why?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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I love antiques. I really love them a lot. I love the smell of an antique shop and letting my mind wander to where some of the objects may have come from.

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I were driving along and passed a shop I wanted to check out to see if there was anything interesting inside (I have been there before and always find something cool).

Problem was, we couldn’t tell if it was open. (If you’re reading this in a reader, you might want to check out the actual blog to see the picture and get the full meaning here!)

Now…I don’t claim to be some marketing genius (okay sometimes I do) but this is clearly not a good move.

We stopped to take a picture and once we got closer we could see a dimmed out “Open” sign so we assumed they weren’t operating that day.

I’m not going to pick on this place too much. Obviously someone forgot to take down the open sign – or the closed sign – but we all do the same thing in our businesses in one way or another. It’s just not as obvious.

When you operate a business in this day and age, your website has a major role to play. Like it or not, people are looking for you online and unless you want your competitors to do better in your market than you, you have to cater to web surfers.

Website visitors have no attention span and they have a million options thanks to Google.com to find a better site than yours to get what they need. If you’re lucky enough to get them to your site in the first place, that’s great but you have to keep them there.

That means you have to:

• Have content optimized so web surfers can find you.
• Have content written in a “web-friendly” manner (with headings and  easily scannable copy)
• Keep your online information current, compelling and engaging.
• Narrow in on their pain points as much as possible.
• Make no assumptions.
• Tell them what to do.

See, you never know which page of your website a visitor is going to land on, so you have to give a piece of your story on every page, and make it clear what you want them to do. Should they contact you for more information? Should they visit your blog? Peruse your services?

You have to make it easy for people to do business with you because a web visitor’s attention span is not long enough for them to bother with you if they don’t have to. Lay out your information concisely and clearly because unlike a retail store where you can be assisting customers, your website content and navigation has to do it all.

Imagine how you would have felt if you were me, standing in front of a shop you wanted to visit but there was an open and closed sign in the window at the same time.

Now imagine someone visiting your website for the first time. They look at the “Welcome to our website” headline, the standard “hope you enjoy our website” content and are bored to death. You don’t stand out, they don’t know if you can solve their problem and the information you do provide doesn’t have any logical sequence to it.

Be engaging, be compelling and be clear and concise with your message. If you can’t do those things, hire a copywriter to do it for you

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Two weeks ago, I scheduled an appointment with an exterminator to get rid of a crop of big black ants. I’ve been using a natural, organic bait and it just doesn’t seem to be doing the trick for this particular type of ant.

I didn’t want to call an exterminator because I don’t like the thought of the harsh chemicals they use, but I figured that I just couldn’t share my house with these insects anymore, so I picked a name out of the yellow pages, checked them out online and made contact.

They responded via email, gave me a price and told me what day they would be coming…Thursday March 25.

On Tuesday they let me know that they had double booked and would be here Friday morning instead.

No big deal, I work from home, I told them.

So this morning (Friday) I’m checking my email and I have a message from the exterminator telling me they’d be here around 10 am and that me, my kids and my pets would have to be gone for a few hours during the treatment and a few hours afterwards.

That email was sent at 9:30pm last night.

My husband and I are sharing a car today, I work from home, I have two children under the age of 4 and an indoor cat.

Now, keep in mind that one of the email exchanges we had was about my concern about the chemicals that would be used as I have young children and an indoor cat and all I was told was the name of the chemical and that when applied by a professional it is very safe.

So why didn’t he tell me at that time that we would need to be gone during this process? Holy bad customer service, Batman!

I’ll tell you, this company has lost a customer. First the double-booking thing and then the no-notice thing. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions, but I think someone in a business like this, while they likely assumed that I would know we’d have to leave the house for the day, should have a list of guidelines and information sent to their customers before they treat for whatever pest they’re going to be eliminating.

This man is clearly a solopreneur and he’s probably a very busy one. He should have a virtual assistant fielding his calls and emails. This person could systematically send an email with information to each customer to avoid this problem, which must have led to some loss of business. I can’t be the only one who can’t pick up and leave at the drop of a hat!

I’m sure we all make assumptions in our businesses, but it’s a dangerous thing to do.

This guy obviously assumes that everyone knows they have to be gone while he’s treating, but he’s wrong. I didn’t know and I’m really smart.

Could you be doing something like this in your line of work?

I know I’ve done it. I’ve assumed before that when I start writing optimized content for someone that they will know what keywords they want me to optimize for. Not always the case.

Part of my job as a writer and part of Buddy’s job as an exterminator, is to educate our clients. Whether we like it or not, it’s important that we explain our process before we start.

I suggest you sit down with a piece of paper and a pen then write down your process from start to finish. Write down everything no matter how obvious it should be.

I mean, if you’re a painter, don’t assume that someone will know they need to take down the old wallpaper before you show up to paint.

Identify the gaps, the items that you should be discussing with your clients before you start work, and document them. Put together an information sheet…something that you can send to people before they work with you.

If the exterminator had done that, I’d be packing up my things now and headed to Nanny’s house for the weekend. But he didn’t, so instead I’m sitting here angry, writing this blog post, preparing to wipe down all of the old ant bait and put down some fresh.

I’m going to take my chances with the ants because I think I might end up better off than with all those chemicals anyway. At least for now. And if I do decide to call an exterminator it will be somebody different. Call me crazy, but when I’m leaving my house with a stranger in it for hours with harsh chemicals I want someone I can trust. And sorry, but two strikes is more than enough to be out in a game like this.

Moral of the story…never make assumptions about what your customers know or don’t know because you will be proven wrong at some point! Bet on it.

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