E197 – Keeping Your House in Order

Oh sorry, we know Google has the wrong hours - so why not fix it? Oh sorry, that schedule/PDF on the site was from Spring Break and not Spring 2021 - then why is it still on the site and why wasn't the dates clear? Why are there no hours or photos (mini golf course on hotel's website) - hotels are awesome examples of doing this poorly. Dave found so many "bad" examples while on a recent trip.

Outdated Info = Loss of Business

You could be losing short and long term business based on how people react with your site, social profiles and more. It can be a pain to keep things up but for a user the goal is to make it easy for consumers to spend money with your business.

Photos, addresses, hours, etc. - this isn't about Local SEO. This is about having someone trust the information and understand what is open, where you are, and just what is going on. People want to get out, they want to travel but if they go out of the way to visit you and you are closed. Why would we try again?

Make it Easy

Show photos on your site. Let people see the seating, hours and just the most basic information. Hotels and Casino's are notoriously horrible about this. They tend to have one page "microsites" that give no information or help. Think about what questions visitors have and make sure your pages answer them.

Be customer service without having to be customer service!!!

Plan out Profiles

For whatever websites and profiles you have for your business, create a list. Not just one of social profiles but anything that has your hours, information, and reviews that you care about. Have a list and keep it updated so that you can easily go through a checklist to update hours, menus, and so on.

Full Transcript:

Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt  and Dave roar. Hey guys, uh, excited to have you join us on another one of these business of digital podcast episodes. Yeah. I know that you have a, uh, you know, you have a reason why you came up with this one, but, uh, as we were chatting, as we tend to do before we wrap up.

Uh, it got me thinking about how important this topic was. And basically, um, it may be tedious for business owners to go in and make little updates, uh, to Google with the correct hours, or if they have wrong hours and fixing it, you know, you know, what are your hours for spring break or this or that or whatever.

And I know that, you know, this idea came to you from a recent vacation that you were on, but it got me thinking Dave, about how, you know, I recently. Uh, took a trip to the big island and, uh, um, this was like, uh, uh, towards the middle of may I think. And, um, you know, there were still a lot of COVID well, I mean, there's still to this day, a lot of COVID restrictions going on on the Hawaiian islands.

And so it was no different when we were there. And so this was a big deal because, um, when we were going to make, um, reservations or we were seeing if certain things were open, Um, you know, it, it made a difference of where we booked or where we ate or what we did or who we called, because, um, if I could see that a business owner hadn't really touched their accounts in a while, or didn't give any kind of COVID update or is there any kind of outdoor seating area?

Are we still open for outdoors? Uh, take out or we, you know, like exactly how are we doing it all? Um, you know, those businesses got passed up and they got overlooked. And then also it was frustrating. Cause there was some where, you know, they would say one thing on the website and then, then we did get to their place and, um, it was completely different or you had to have a reservation, but they didn't say anything on their listing that you had to have a reservation or you'd be turned away.

And so that's the kind of stuff that frustrates people and that's kind of stuff that gets negative reviews written, uh, about you. And so th