The Experience

“Products are made; services are delivered.
Products are used; services are experienced."
- Harry Beckwith, Author

The Experience

Your website provides online consumers with a valuable service. A successful online presence will clearly and accurately showcase a company’s products or services to motivated visitors. Make every effort to provide content that is both enjoyable and memorable. In short, your website should provide online visitors with a pleasant “experience”. Your design, content and marketing should be about creating a positive and noteworthy experience.

Let me relate to you a story I know.

In downtown Toronto there is a legendary bagel shop, affectionately known to businesspeople in the garment industry as “The Dirty Bagel”. This title clearly distinguishes it from a similar uptown restaurant named “The Bagel” which, “back in the day”, served similar meals to upper middle class women when they weren't taking their kids to the doctor, dentist or hockey practice.

As I recall, the downtown version was old, grimy, and well worn, while the uptown version was new, nicely lit, and... cleaner. The waitresses in the new restaurant were middle-aged, chewed gum, had pencils stuck behind their ears and called everyone "Hon." The waitresses in the downtown version were old, spoke with thick European accents, and were “just plain nasty”. If you asked for an extra pad of butter or more cream for your coffee, instead of getting a "Sure thing Hon" you would most likely hear something like, "Sophia, listen to Mr. Big Shot over here, he wants more butter. Hope he knows a good heart doctor..." and as she turned to leave, you would likely hear some Yiddish profanity spoken under her breath.

Why would rich, privileged citizens who owned their own businesses, wore expensive silk suits, and drove Lincoln Continentals, put-up with a group of nasty old ladies who tossed plates on the table like curling stones and treated them like inmates?

It was for the “experience”.

That is what kept them coming back time and again.

The loyal patron businessmen who attended “The Dirty Bagel” were old school, not an MBA in the lot. They survived the Depression and built successful businesses with little or no formal business education; profiting in conditions that were both hostile and perverse. No matter how successful they had become, they always remembered their beginnings and what was really important to them. These men were characters who built businesses by force of personality and shrewd decision-making. "The Dirty Bagel" offered them an experience that kept them grounded and reminded them of the bumpy road to success.

That is the power of an “experience” (and a quick lesson in humility).

How does this relate to the building of your website?

Consider this. Too many websites are sterile, functionally redundant, and generally impersonal and often lack any kind of meaningful experience for the online visitor. Business owners who spend an unproductive amount of time concerning themselves with driving consumer traffic to their website often discount what happens when shoppers arrive.

If your website provides its online audience with a unique experience, this is something your competition can't steal from you. On the other hand, if all you provide your visitors is a commodity, eventually somebody else will produce that commodity cheaper and faster. If this is the case, you will very likely find yourself eating at your own version of "The Dirty Bagel"; not because you want to remind yourself of where you came from, but rather where you're going.

Focus

To stay competitive in today’s marketplace, merchants must embrace the Internet and develop a symbiotic relationship with it. Look around, everyone engages in some sort of online presence; email, “Window-shopping”, and social networking to name a few. As Internet users, we only differ in our objectives. Your website or online presence must clearly define your objective.


Focus

If your website is going to standout among the rows of its competitors, you must adapt a narrow and specific focus. Develop a positioning or “Mission” statement to guide and articulate your Company’s motivation and its website direction. Limit this proclamation to 25 carefully chosen words that will be prominently displayed on your Home page. Furthermore, this information will become valuable in the future when selecting Meta-Tags and Keywords.

“…offer local merchants effortless expansion into the lively and profitable e-marketplace, while consistently providing online consumers a safe and comfortable shopping experience.”

Adding a regional component to your website is one good way to provide focus to your keywords and avoid a futile battle with corporate giants in the “Sandbox”. As the Internet continues to grow it has become increasingly difficult to achieve top 10 placement in search engine results; using today’s most popular search terms.

When developing our concept of an online shopping centre, we came to the realization that search terms such as “online shopping” or “lots of stores”, were monopolized by the corporate giants; i.e. Toys R Us, EBay and Amazon. With their Alexa.com or Google page rank, marketing teams and endless advertising budget, we were in no position to compete on the big stage. I’m a little shy and I don’t like the big stage anyway…time for reflection.

What if we can perform on a smaller stage, where our little show would look big? The answer was Cornwall, Ontario. By selecting the regional component of our website, we essentially removed the need to compete with corporate giants, globally, internationally, nationally or even provincially. It is very unlikely that EBay or Amazon would shift their advertising focus to Cornwall or even Ontario…Canada perhaps; nothing less. Furthermore, it is ridiculous to surmise that an Internet consumer from Beijing or even Vancouver, would type in the search term “online shopping” with an expectation that a website from Cornwall, Ontario would appear in the top 10 results. Their search would likely be more focused, like “online shopping in Cornwall” or “Cornwall online shopping”. What about “Cornwall shopping centre”? By selecting a regional component to your online presence, the choice of focused keywords and meta-tags becomes easier. The detailed process of committing to a regional component will effectively target your local online consumer and the valuable Search Engines. Thankfully, this will greatly reduce the number of unrelated or uninterested visitors to your website.

A carefully selected domain name (http://www.cornwallshoppingcentre.ca/ &.com), used in combination with effective keywords and meta-tags, which directly focus on your region, as well as the strategic use of proven and recognized industry terms, is certain to drive motivated, targeted, and local consumers to your website.

A Pioneer's Guide

A settler is a person who has migrated to a less occupied area and established permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. Settlers are generally people who take up residence on land and cultivate it. The word "settler" is synonymous with terms such as pioneers, colonists, or "colonials".

The reason for emigration of settlers varies, but often includes one or more factors such as: economic or personal financial hardship; social, cultural, ethnic, or religious persecution, or; political oppression and/or policies aimed at encouraging foreign settlement.

From the moment you first consider expanding your business into the bustling and profitable e-marketplace, you become a pioneer. You are migrating to a less occupied area- the Internet, with the intention of establishing a permanent residence- your website; and next you will carefully select the land- your domain name, and diligently work to cultivate it.

Why do this?

Economic and personal financial hardship, brought on by a form of social persecution- cross border shopping and a strong dollar; coupled with the aggressive marketing policies of big business will encourage (force) local and regional entrepreneurs to seek foreign settlement in the World Wide Web.

The Internet consistently provides a level playing field for small and big businesses. A local merchant can maintain the same credible online presence as an international firm; at a fraction of the cost.

As frightening as this journey might sound, your fears will soon turn to excitement as you see the endless possibilities your New World has to offer. Consider this, while you are sleeping, watching television, or eating dinner; your online presence is working for you. Currently, our innovative shopping community, http://www.cornwallshoppingcentre.ca/, averages a new visitor every 11 minutes, every hour of every day, of every week, of every...You get the idea. Imagine when this number is 11 visitors every minute, of every day, of every...

As with early the pioneers who came to this country, you probably don't have much money for the migration. Read this carefully. Do not pay alot of money for your first website. Take your time and do some research- survey the land if you will. Be certain to compile the very best text and images you want displayed on your website before you begin building. If you can save time, you can save money. Web design and web development can quickly become expensive if you are unprepared.

The following posts will guide you through creating an effective and comprehensive online presence that will properly represent you and your company. Most importantly, it will not cost you alot of money.