I've been thinking about this for years. I used to do a lot of small client work in the early 00s, and it was clear to me that high-quality custom work does not make sense for small businesses; the ROI just isn't there. At the same time, the services targeting this market just churn out crap.
Solving this problem is tough because small business owners are an extremely diverse set, and the needs of different types of businesses vary widely. Combine this with a general lack of internet savvy, a lot of folk wisdom picked up from friends and family about the web, and a do-it-yourself mentality means that an MVP is very difficult to sniff out.
The hardest part, though, is support. The price of the service needs to be relatively cheap, but it needs to have good support, preferably 12x7 phone support. Economically this won't scale unless the product is simple enough to minimize support needs. 10 years ago I think this problem was intractable, but with the internet becoming more and more ingrained in our daily lives, it's only a matter of time.
So yeah, personally I think this is a great market to be getting into.
"So yeah, personally I think this is a great market to be getting into."
Why do you think it's a great market to get into? Is it the size of the opportunity? Your first three paras outline why it's a difficult market.
BTW: Your description of the small business market is spot-on. I have also done small-client work (and still do) and agree with your assessment. It's just that your last statement seems out of synch with the sentiment of your comment.
It was meant to flow from the previous sentence. The market has been hard to get into, but it's inevitably opening up due to growing familiarity with the web.
Local business is a huge opportunity on the internet.
However, it far from the last 'unconquered' sector of the web. There will never be an end to vast opportunities on the internet, because new solutions create new opportunities that never existed before, ad infinitum.
For example, and idea like grubwith.us would have seemed bizarre before Groupon, but now it seems like a straightforward evolution (and something lots of people would like to do).
We still are working with very basic forms of artificial intelligence, but as it gets better, the whole internet will be reborn.
I'm really glad to live in a time before AI makes programming obsolete. I shudder to think about the potential crisis of purpose facing the human race if AI develops to the point to automate all our needs. But that's okay, I'll die and make room for the generations to whom that is simply the unquestioned nature of reality.
Of course, that isn't considered a valid excuse if they engage in subpar accounting or marketing practices, so why should it be acceptable in this case?
I work as a developer for the online arm of a yellow pages provider in Europe. Thanks to regulated data and a more conservative populace, it's still a very profitable sector for a fairly simple and well known business model. None of "we come from the Internet" players, be it Google, Facebook, Groupon or otherwise has succeeded in making any real dent _yet_, although they're making progress.
One point that article starts to make well but then spoils with the Monty Python reference is this;
> Part of the reason is that small business owners are already doing everything they already know to stay afloat. Adding a whole new category to what they need to understand and stay up-to-date with is just too much.
...it goes further than that even. The more tech-savvy small businesses know a fair bit about SEO, Adwords and how to present themselves online but _they don't have time_. Even if you have the knowhow investing, say, 3 hours a day for a couple of weeks, getting a campaign running when you're a dentist doesn't make sense when there's a queue of customers waiting.
Three fundamentals for tech startups wanting to provide software and services to small businesses are something like;
* Leads matter: it's not about clicks, it's about customers. If you're helping a dentist keep their weekly schedule full with _real patients_, they'll be happy to pay for it. Groupon's success is all about this.
* You need people on the ground. If you want to reach small businesses, you have to talk to them face to face, no matter how smart your algorithm is. You're competing for their attention against their real work - that which generates income - and while some are tech savvy, many more lack understanding of what technology can do for them. Again Groupon have figured this out http://goo.gl/Zch2U
* Be _genuinely_ trying to help them make their business a success. Many have a hard enough time just staying afloat and there are plenty of sharks already out there trying to take their money - Groupon may be one of them.
Finally, for tech startups, don't group them all as "small business" but instead look at specific "verticals". While there are commonalities, the needs of a hairdresser and a dentist are not the same. Take a look at some of the yellow pages provides business category listings for example http://www.yellowpages.ca/business/ - each one of those is a vertical with specific needs. Do you think a company selling farm equipment like tractors is interested in an online shopping cart?
We couldn't agree more with the points you're making. In the U.S., the Yellow Pages has lost more than half its revenue in just three years so it may be a bit different.
These optimizations you mention (and significantly more) are in our pipeline.
"You need people on the ground." -- That's exactly why we have yet to sell this directly to consumers. We partner with newspapers who have the relationships in place, and the boots on the ground, to make the sale.
This last leg of the internet sale is not going to happen over the phone, it's going to have in person, and probably with someone the business trusts.
There are a lot of small businesses out there that don't need to accept any payment on the site or offer phone support, they just need an easy to update, modern looking site that gives a good impression of their business.
'Local' businesses will often have their websites checked out by customers who have heard of them through word of mouth or other Real Life means. They google the name of the business to understand the service provided and to help them decide whether or not they want to give them their money. They will then physically go down there. That's often what 'local' means. In this situation simply having a simple, modern-looking, easy to use site with fast load times will create a vastly better impression on prospective customers. Better than 1998's leftovers currently do for a lot of these businesses anyway. If a business doesn't have a web site at all, customers basically don't really believe it exists in this day and age.
Wrap this up in a CMS that automatically pushes new content to twitter and facebook, does good SEO and has a mobile skin and you're on to a winner. Well, it'll pay the bills anyway.
This is essentially low hanging fruit, and modern development and deployment tools make it all the easier to pick.
What a great way to acquire new customers. Post the worst websites you can find on Hacker News, bombarding them with hits and laughter, and embarrassing them into upgrading.
(I'd call them and ask why they haven't engaged Seeing Interactive, but I just don't have the heart.)
The truth is that we do not sell directly to SMBs. We work through local newspapers and they sell using their brand. If you called any of our SMB customers, they probably have never heard the name "Seeing Interactive"--which is how we can get away with using such a terrible name. :)
I think it's more about mediocre sites, if the site is just bad enough, that seems to generate a lot of traffic, too. You'll get mentioned in social media sites, and apparently enough people who come to gawk order something. yvettesbridalformal.com is allegedly doing quite well.
There's probably a business idea in there, too. But at what price?
"They need a good solid website that has been created with SEO principles in mind and they need to be able to easily update it."
What small businesses really care about is cost effective customer acquisition.
A new website without a marketing engine attached is a tougher sell and is a crowded marketplace - you'll wind up selling against Intuit, Yahoo and other giants that have a virtually unlimited inbound flow of leads (small biz that buys QuickBooks etc).
SEO is effective, but slow.
Google's new hyper-local search features are perhaps a faster payoff for SEO but there are plenty of localized SEO / SEM companies already out pushing that pitch like Real Local.
All that naysaying notwithstanding, there's a great opportunity to build something incredible in the small business space but it's not unconquered from lack of trying.
It works a lot faster than you might think. Sure, if you're setting up a new site in San Francisco or Austin this kind of thing will be a much harder sell. But in small-town USA where no one knows what SEO means, it's actually really fast.
We've had people jump to #1, #2, and #3, of target keywords in under a week (we don't advertise this, btw, because it's unrealistic), but 30-45 days is very common.
There are millions of businesses in markets less than 25k people, and those people are our targets.
This is directionally accurate in my experience. 90% of ranking for Ogaki Dog Care is showing up. (It is the same story as "American presidents bingo cards", essentially, except you'll have inlinks direct to that page.)
"What small businesses really care about is cost effective customer acquisition."
The other high order bit for small businesses is repeat customers. Loyalty programs on mobile could be the killer app that gets small businesses online.
I own two retail franchises. What I want from a loyalty program is for it to be passive based on the credit card and deeply integrated with my point of sale.
I care less about having a website than appearing favorably and accessible in search results. Mobile seems like more hassle than it is worth.
Now, in addition to owning two retail stores, I am a professional developer, including iPhone and android apps. My current project is BI for franchises.
Even before launching our system in Beta in October, I did some trips in which I tried to sell it.
I really needed to go out there and see what the market really wanted, not what was in my mind.
In order to minimize risks, and because the system itself was not ready (and is not ready) for the big shots, I wrote emails to small business owners.
I first did this in Morocco in May, during a two weeks trip (I mix personal travel and business all the time) and I wrote to Riads (local "garden" hotels) which are not apartments (my core business).
I offered them "a riad dedicated website, easy to maintain and in 8 languages".
I sold two, having sent maybe 40 emails and met 5 owners.
One bought it because she was tech savy (did her own websites and so on) and immediately understood why it made sense, and the other one simply bought visibility.
She wanted to be "first in google" and did not want to hear anything else.
Did not care that she could edit her own prices and pictures, she could pay me for this.
Did not care about 8 languages, she wanted to be first in google, that's it.
I ended up selling her a "visibility results based" package and got the deal for a few hundres euros a year.
First money on the project, I'd take any deal :)
Fine for me, but it made me realize that the less they know, the more they pay only for certified results.
Make sense.
As the system grew, so I could target higher, and it became much easier and profitable.
So, do I want to target the guys who "never wanted to be on the internet"?
No, they will probably be go with a webdesigner who sells a joomla website for 2000-4000 euro (in Morocco they spend a lot, even more than Europe!) and then realize they are not "first in google" and spend 1000 more to be "first in google" with a local "SEO" firm.
I have no time and no need to explain how things work to them, I better invest my time with the guys who, after 5 minutes, tells me "great idea, let's try it, how much?".
There's many of them and they will appreciate my project more than anybody else.
What is their differentiator from Yahoo! Web Hosting and similar ilk? IMHO, any technological advantage will eventually be copied (by companies who care to stay in the business).
Are they hoping to just take over as the new Geocities until someone else comes along? Is this market segment, with this kind of product, worth fighting over or does it get passed around when the current market leader gets tired of dealing with it?
Absolutely, I see this all over. So many people want a web site, but they have absolutely no idea what to do. So many small businesses have websites, but they're very poor quality. Many have sites from about 2004 which are in serious need of updating. And, there's still a lot of businesses who think they don't need a website or it wouldn't be useful, and they'll be changing their minds within the next 5 years.
Strange that I've seen no-one actually side with the small businesses here.
It's true: small business are lagging behind in web presence, though it's mostly our fault.
When such business took a sneak-peak in the web, 10 years ago, there was actually no strong reason to be on the web. The people behind the business themselves didn't use the web as a resource-for-everything as we see it today. They considered (and rightly so) a web presence just as a business facade.
Moreover, that presence cost them a fortune, for mostly what today we consider as a flash nightmare.
I'm sure that now people realize what they would like to see in their website, because that's the way they expect websites to be: an actual, useful service for the people that come to their business.
That means more money to be spent however, and if you want a nice, decently done website, probably with some sort of customized service behind it, and considering eventual maintenance costs, it probably means spending the same amount you spent 10 years ago, plus a yearly figure which is certainly larger that what you're spending now.
Of course, it also means expanding your business on the web, for the first time, really. I think that many people realize that, and with time (read: money) they will move on. I don't buy the fact that people don't know what web means anymore.
However, I'm quite confident that whatever new website they're building now, it
will require a complete re-do in another 5 years time due to changing trends and technologies (which in customer's minds reads as "no real reason"). And that's exactly the reason I agree with them. You really need to have a strong business return in exchange for such a waste of time an money.
"We want newspapers to make money; we want newspapers to own local."
If I own a small business that doesn't speak to me at all, and once I realize that 'local' means me, then it's even a little offensive.
I suggest that while the blog post is essentially correct, it should be on a separately branded site, lets call it 'bootsontheground.com' (a terrible name), with a more appropriate 'Manifesto.'
If people are finding out about these places using Yelp, Google, Groupon et al. is there really a need for a SEO friendly website? Many of these businesses don't care about a web presence because its effect would be negligible.
I suppose you could justify the cost of building out a website for the local dry cleaner, but seriously, does that help it gain any new business? I doubt it.
It probably would. Remember that we're a very mobile society (in the US) and towns have new arrivals every day.
If I just moved to a new town, I probably don't know where the nearest dry cleaner, or Thai restaurant, or carpet cleaner is. Rather than spend valuable time driving around searching, my first inclination will be to google it. If they get my business and do a good enough job, odds are I'll continue to patronize them for years. People rarely change service providers unless they move or there's a major problem.
If you Google it, you'll get a comprehensive list of dry cleaners/Thai restaurants with an accompanying map. And that list usually shows up at the very top rendering everything below meaningless. Try it.
It doesn`t convey anything useful and is a blantant promotion for themselves. I `don`t mind blantant promotions as long as there is something valuable for me to look at while I`m there.
All they ramble on about is an untapped small business market. Hmm, or maybe businesses that are becoming obsolete because they can`t keep up with the rapid change in the business world.
The final frontier, I think not. How about a dying set of businesses making way for the new small businesses that are changing with the times.
Completely off-topic (perhaps not) but at the top of the sidebar of SeeingInteractive's site, there is a sign-up section for a support group. The fields are _incredibly_ tiny. Checked on both Firefox 3.6 and Chrome.
Not to knock them but it doesn't really inspire confidence in them helping small businesses conquer the web.
We have the very classic problem of working so much for newspapers and our small business customers that our own website isn't nearly our best foot forward. We've known it for months and we're in the process of doing a redesign... so problems like this have gotten bumped.
Most of our small business customers have no idea who we are since we use the newspaper brands. Way less than 1% of all Seeing Interactive traffic will ever pass through this site.
We hear you loud and clear and this and whole bunch of other stuff you probably didn't see will be fixed early in the new year.
To be fair, I think it's only in the last couple of years that there's been a sea-change in the quality of web aesthetics. Before that, hardly any websites looked 'good.' They were either decent, or ugly. Nowadays I see a lot of genuinely beautiful sites, but lots of people are still catching up.
We are doing something very similar for apartments websites.
My assumptions where exactly the same but after two months it turned out the the easy sales were those made with the advanced business owners, not the ones who never really wanted to be on the Internet.
The tech savy ones saw immediately the wisdom of a dedicated website builder compared to the great but too general wordpress or joomla.
The others were still asking for a guaranteed first place in Google with no keywords specified :)
So, as the system grows we will more and more target the ones who know what we are talking about.
It will be interesting to know how it goes and I'll be happy to share our experiences!
Other (small) changes I'd make:
1. Don't say "sign up" -- say something like "Join free." In any case say something that indicates value to the consumer vs. signing up, which indicates value to the site owner.
2. For the signup button use a color that contrasts more strongly with the rest of the design, e.g., red or green (vs. blue)
3. Don't redirect me to another, context-free page when I click the signup button
4. More importantly, get a native English speaker to proofread your copy. "Create easily your advanced apartments website right now" is very awkward, and both "easily" and "advanced" are essentially meaningless words.
A quick piece of feedback: On your home page, you should put a sign-up button where your login is now. As is, it's incredibly difficult to figure out where to sign-up.
Put your log-in text or form in the upper-right hand corner: it's where people expect it.
The majority of my family are small brick & mortar business owners and an interesting observation is how much they've become users of popular web apps like facebook and google (for personal uses) and how much that has impacted their openness to using the web more in their business. They are coming to a state of mind that opening a browser and clicking things is easy while their desktop apps are a major pain in the ass to use, maintain and backup.
In the UK, A few companies like Google and BT have come together to solve this problem. http://www.gbbo.co.uk/ They offer a free service (until 2011) for businesses to create their own websites managed by Google Sites, integrating with Google maps, places, etc.
I think in future Facebook pages will also play an important role in getting small businesses online.
I agree would agree with this based on our experiences dealing with local real estate businesses. However, local small businesses are sector specific, a pizza shop has different needs than a hair salon than a real estate agency, etc.
In order to break into this, I think it needs a combined effort of different sector specific providers + companies like yours and weebly.
Solving this problem is tough because small business owners are an extremely diverse set, and the needs of different types of businesses vary widely. Combine this with a general lack of internet savvy, a lot of folk wisdom picked up from friends and family about the web, and a do-it-yourself mentality means that an MVP is very difficult to sniff out.
The hardest part, though, is support. The price of the service needs to be relatively cheap, but it needs to have good support, preferably 12x7 phone support. Economically this won't scale unless the product is simple enough to minimize support needs. 10 years ago I think this problem was intractable, but with the internet becoming more and more ingrained in our daily lives, it's only a matter of time.
So yeah, personally I think this is a great market to be getting into.