The Internet Reflects Your Business

The lack of respect towards the Internet by both small and large companies constantly surprises me. In the process of searching for the ideal job, I needed a new suit. I knew it had to be a pretty good suit, so first thought of a local business in downtown Indianapolis. They have been in business for over one hundred years, advertise as making custom tailored suits, and my friend has done radio commercials endorsing them. He wears a suit everyday and always looks good, so it was my first choice based on people I trust.

I searched Google on my phone for the business name to get the address, and the first results that came up were customer reviews. If designed with the best title and description, the first or second links are almost always going to be clicked first, and that’s just what I did. I like customer reviews, such as found on Amazon.com, because they confirm my decision that this is the best product for my use.

The reviews were horrible. At least one of the owners is rude and condescending towards customers, the suits were overpriced for the quality, customer complaints were not resolved, measurements were completely wrong for wedding tuxes, they now have another company do the custom tailoring, and the general attitude the reviewers conveyed about the store did not make me want to go. I chose the store I had done business with before and was happy with the results. This local Indianapolis company lost business because of Google search results.

Granted, there are more people motivated to give a bad review than a good review, and I completely realized that and it still didn’t matter. If I read negative reviews, I am less inclined to make a purchase.

The sad part of the story is the company does have a website, although it looks like it was designed ten years ago and didn’t come up on the top of Google search results. A search today on my computer found two separate websites, the old site and a new site that has a better design, but a quick look at the meta tags made me wonder if the website designer was awake when he coded the site. The meta description and keywords were exactly the same, and consisted of “Company Name :: Company Address :: Tailoring, Mens and womens, tailors, slacks, skirts, tops, leather coats.” That looks more like a very long title tag to me, but it was used as the description and keywords, which didn’t help the search results for the new site much. This is probably why I visited their old website first, which should have been forwarded to the new website, but that is another issue for another time.

A combination of the following options would be a really easy way to increase and keep new customers:

• Redirect oldwebsitename.com to to newwebsitename.com (or preferably the opposite and use only the new site design)
• Consider switching to companyname.com, or also redirecting that domain name, because it is your company name (with the “s” at the end)
• Website redesign
• Search Engine Optimization
• More content
• Blogs with new and keyword relevant content
• Micro-sites with URLs containing Indianapolis, suit, custom, tailored and related keywords in the domain name
• Discounts for leaving positive reviews on their and other sites
• Videos of customer testimonials, the custom tailoring process and inside the store
• Local paid search engine advertising
• Advertising on local political blogs, social media sites, job websites, etc.

I am sure this established Indianapolis business is a fine company that makes great tailored dress clothes, after all they’ve been in business since 1905. However, it’s 2009 and they need to get with the times. Not only could they attract new customers, but they could also avoid losing business from the majority of people like me who now shop first on the Internet. Heck, I wasn’t even shopping, just looking for the address to buy their product.