The plan was to grab sushi at a local restaurant near the Portland airport. As we set it in motion, a friend mentioned that she was baffled by the fact that the restaurant at which we were planning to meet did not have a website. That comment got me thinking about small businesses and how important it is for them to be connected to the online world.

Here are some basic facts that demonstrate why web presence is important for small businesses.

1. Your Customers Are Online

With today’s technology, having a solid online presence is becoming imperative for small businesses. Your customers are online constantly – especially those with 3G phones and other highly connected mobile devices. People are turning to the web and mobile device applications to find what they’re looking for both close to home as well as on the road. This sort of connectivity extends far beyond what was available five years ago.

This trend defies demographics including age, as users of all ages are flocking to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Large, clunky, space consuming phone books are quickly becoming a thing of the past; after all, it’s easier to hop online and do a quick search on Google, Yahoo or Bing, or do a quick search using the appropriate mobile application.

So your customers are online… why aren’t you?

2. Directory Listings Are Not Enough

Online directory listings are nice in that they quickly give the viewer options. After all, they are the modern version of the phone book – a barebones list of what’s available. But they occasionally include erroneous information like out-of-date phone numbers, old addresses, and broken links to expired websites. It is important to monitor the directories in which your business appears, ensure they’re up to date, and correct them when changes occur.

However, even with all listing information correct, consumers often need an added push to commit to choosing your company over the next. Mere presence on directories is not enough as the directory listing is a far cry from an adequate gauge of the business in question.

3. A Well-Designed Website Can Mean More Customers

When it comes to the final decision, having a modern web presence can absolutely be that tipping point. The term simple here does not necessarily mean basic. It does mean the site should be easy to find and easy to navigate; and you should be able to do this without breaking your budget.

Being easy to find and easy to navigate includes:

- User-friendliness
- Search engine optimized
- Visually appealing
- Organized & uncluttered
- Modern in layout & functionality

If you’re a restaurant, there are a few basic elements to include. Adorn your site with clear, quality photos of your most popular dishes and include sample menu prices. The site should reflect the atmosphere inside your business – utilize a complimentary color scheme and feature imagery from inside and outside your restaurant, highlighting what makes it a unique and desirable meal destination.

Just as important as creating a site that compliments your business is informing your potential customers how to find you. Pull an interactive map from Google Maps and put it on your contact page so viewers can easily get directions if they’re unfamiliar with the area. Add your days and hours of operation and include a phone number and email address so people can contact you with questions or make reservations.

And don’t forget to make sure your site works well on various web browsers and phones. The latter means using minimal (or better yet no) flash.

4. Search Friendliness Is Imperative

Obviously, a small business must think about how to reach its customers online. Search friendliness extends beyond mere web presence. While web presence can be the deciding factor, the consumer must first find your website. There are a few tips that can help:

- Search Engine Optimization
- Directory Listing Management
- Map Optimization
- Relationship Building

SEO can help boost your site on various keyword searches, but it can require regular and time consuming maintenance as search engines regularly alter their search algorithms – those web crawlers that scour the web and rank pages. Ensuring you utilize the words individuals may use to find you in the body copy of your site can help, as can minimizing flash elements (especially in the navigation).

The next two include the optimization of directories and maps listings. Having a website linked to from a directory or reviews site can mean a consumer giving you their business rather than your competitor. Spend some time to make sure the information is correct and has all the components needed to assist your potential customer in giving you business. Adding your business to Google Maps and optimizing it by highlighting specific search items may give you key rank positions in these searches.

Relationship building is the next topic.

5. Your Customers Can Help Spread The Word

The first four tips are all about creating and enhancing your online presence, but there’s a force out there that extends far beyond what you can do alone. Once you’re out there, you can now begin focusing on and developing an interactive strategy that will get your fans to do additional legwork for you. The nature of your business, the demographics of your audience, and your goals and objectives can help dictate and define this strategy. But without an initial presence, activating your audience will be much more difficult.

This area includes everything from blogger outreach to encouraging ratings and reviews. Blogger outreach for restaurants could mean searching for local bloggers that frequently or even occasionally write about food and seeing if they’d be interested in writing a review of your restaurant. It could also mean finding local raters and reviewers on sites like Yelp, which collect ratings and reviews of businesses like restaurants, and encouraging them to come down. You could even link to your Yelp profile from your website.

Why Web Presence Is Important: A Summary

These days, we as consumers are turning more and more to the web to find what we are looking for, a trend that is magnified by the growing popularity of highly connected mobile devices like 3G and 4G phones. Having a strong presence via a well-rounded and well-connected website can help small businesses turn potential customers into regulars, and it can be the launching pad to turn the regulars into die-hard fans who will help you spread the word.

Back to the beginning: my friend and I ultimately decided to forego the restaurant and instead met at Ikea. Had the restaurant maintained a viable online presence, we may have enjoyed a nice sushi lunch.

Last week the entire BrandQuery office attended Northwest Business Monthly’s Business Person of the Year Banquet. We were nominated “Best Small Business of the Year for 2008.” I am not sure who nominated us, but if you are reading, thank you – what an honor! As a business owner, I always hope we are providing a service and product our clients are proud enough to talk about with others. That may have been the case in this instance, although I am not sure we will ever know.

Anyway, that is not the point of this post. The point relates to something the magazine publisher and a couple of the presenters mentioned. With what we are reading and seeing in the news these days it seems pretty bleak out there, business wise. Every day companies are laying off staff, engaged in Ponzi schemes, companies that are receiving our tax dollars doling out bonuses to their executives, and the list goes on. What we are not reading about are the good people, primarily small businesses going about their workday. They are still working to satisfy their clients, being good community stewards and ethically practicing their line of work. There are many of us out here, only a few of which were recognized last week. There are countless others that should be recognized but probably never will be. It’s just the way it is.

Recently I read about a couple of large corporations and their CEO’s (sorry, you know them but I cannot remember their names) that chose not to focus entirely on profits for their shareholders. They instead elected to continue their focus on the customer, their products and their services. Since choosing this path, these companies have continued to perform well and are actually profitable in this economy.

How admirable - focusing on the customer, product and service – maybe this is what Countrywide, WaMu, AIG and others should have been doing rather than prioritizing their wallets and the wallets of the shareholder. Also, have we forgotten Enron and the debacle of the Savings and Loan crisis of the 80’s? I have to say, it really bothers me when history repeats itself – is anyone paying attention?

Back to the banquet. There were kind words for the nominated companies doing business in Skagit County and how we all work together in this region. In addition to understanding our paths and how we got there that evening, it was expressed how many of us engage in our community, participating on boards, providing goods and services to non-profits and many other good deeds. I think you will find a common thread amongst all of the nominees - we all want our community to succeed both economically and socially.

So now, to share in our nomination: I asked Don Wick, Director of the Economic Development Association of Skagit County (EDASC) to introduce myself and BrandQuery to the crowd. To do so, Don wore the most colorful shoes I think I have ever laid eyes on! He said he did so as we are a creative company and that was how he would convey it. Don is a long time friend and client, thank you Don for doing such an eloquent job!

Our two tables consisted of family, friends and long-time clients Nancy and Kendall Gentry. My award winning speech went something like this:
I want to thank my Mother and Father for teaching me a strong work ethic and the importance of building relationships. They also taught me that a balanced life is important. Value family and friends and know that work is not the be all and end all, but when you work, do your best.

Thank you to my longtime mentor, Joann Ossewarde, who has provided her knowledge, experience and great advice to me since I was in college.

And of course, there would be no business if there were not great clients. I value the opportunities provided to us and the trust instilled in us to do good work for you. Some of our clients are here this evening: Nancy and Kendall Gentry, CPI Plumbing and Heating, and Employee Benefits Planning.

Thank you to our vendors for your working relationships and the products you provide.

Thank you to the team here at BrandQuery: Designer Derek Bryson, Designer Matt Fisher, Project Manager Andrew Fenstermaker and Office Manager Hilary Friedrich. These folks come to work every day with professionalism, experience, creativity, patience, humor, and good nature. The office is a fun place to be because of them.

As the evening ended, we found that we didn’t win Best Small Business of the Year in Skagit County. The next day we went back to work, doing what we do and trying to do it very well.

By the way, congratulations to our fellow nominees, Axthelm Construction, Truckvault and the evening’s Best Small Business award recipient, Skagit Valley Gardens.

I recently attended the Economic Forecast Dinner, hosted by EDASC. This event has been brought to the business community for many years and it is highly attended and anticipated. With all that has been going on of late, economically, this year’s attendance was impressive at just over 560.

We developed the logo for the Economic Forecast Dinner (among all other EDASC event logos) and it is definitely one of my favorites. I like the playfulness of it given the event’s serious nature.

This year, given our name change, we decided to become one of the sponsors. Don Wick, in his usual fashion, gave us great recognition. He is one of the best, if not the best, business promoter in Skagit County and is an asset to us all. The keynote speaker was Jim Paulsen, Ph.D., chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management and a regular on CNBC and Bloomberg Television.

I very much enjoyed his talk as it had a light tone mixed in with powerful facts. He stated that we are not seeing anything different economically than we have historically. What we are seeing however is unprecedented fear. He said “yes, we are in a nasty recession, we are not near a depression,” and I paraphrase… but because of this fear people/businesses are essentially frozen. We are not feeling confident enough to make decisions to purchase and/or moving forward with our business plans.

Much of this fear issue was created by the news media. Everyday for months they have been telling us how bad it is. We just went through a political campaign where each candidate told us how bad we have it. We are seeing huge layoffs in our largest industries. Banks and large financial institutions are failing and we are seeing unprecedented fraud. OK, that all does sound bad, but the other point he made is every decade financial institutions fail – what about the savings and loan failures of the 1980’s. The other point was that 93% of us are still working and we need to pay attention to the 93%, to help them feel confident as well.

When he made that point, something clicked in me - as much as we need to take care of our employees, we need to take care of our customers. This is a point that I always try to make with our clients. Take care of the customer first. They are the reason you are in business and probably the reason you are able to stay in business. This could be just touching base with them to know that you are still here to serve them. If you disappear (visually) in these kinds of times, they might think you have disappeared like the companies that are being displayed as failures through the media.

So I do have one regret for the evening. I really thought to stand up and ask him, “Are you saying that, in order to get this country back, what we need is a great marketing program to get people confident again?” but it seemed a little self-serving.

We see and talk to our customers every day. We are all tentative yet we keep moving forward. Don’t fall into to the fear factor trap. Innovation is always strongest following times of recession. After all, recession and necessity breed innovation and invention. And that’s nothing to be scared about.