When customers kept arriving at the owners house looking for firewood he was initially confused and frustrated. Why were they not going to the yard at his shop where the product was located? Well, customers can to the wrong location because that’s where Google navigation said it should be. It turned out that Google listed his home address as the business location since that was where the public records for the corporation were registered. Even if you never tell Google or any other search engine anything about their business, it gathers bits of data and sorts it out on its own. Often making errors like this. Facing the truth that he could no longer leave things the way they were, he decided to fix the online presence of his business. In the initial consultation several issues were identified.
- Create a website that could authoritatively represent his business, identify its location, and clarify its services.
- Claim and correct location listings in Google
- Provide a mechanism to monitor Google crawls and indexing of the new site
- Create an Analytics account that help the owner understand visitor activity on the site
- Move his email from a Yahoo.com address to an address under his new company domain
Before work on designing the site was begun we worked with the client to identify the primary business objective for the new website; generate leads. We then identified secondary functions the site was to provide, location, hours, details about services. Working as an owner’s advocate we helped the owner select a designer who understood and could execute well the project. As the work progressed we provided our expertise to the client helping him navigate completion of all work with the designer and the local search expert. When work was finally presented, we tested and audited the site, provided feedback and corrections to the designer and ensured that at launch the site was health and ready for indexing by search engines. Online listings were now corrected, customers stopped showing up at the house, and new leads were being generated creating a welcome growth in business.