Do you know how your customers are finding you? Can they access your website and contact information on a smartphone or iPad?
I live in a small city of approx. 150,000. Our city is the “gateway” you might say to cottage country and ski country in Muskoka, Georgian Bay and Haliburton in Central Ontario – lots of tourists pass through here and weekends are crazy with traffic.
Yesterday, I was visiting someone north of Barrie and had to come back down the highway. It was a particularly busy time in the late afternoon and, with most weekends, people were returning from vacations and weekend getaways to get back to the big city. As I sat in a very slow line-up on the highway I noticed frustrated passengers around me were scrolling through their smartphones and tablets to relieve the boredom.
Many drivers just got fed up and got off the highway – presumably to travel through our City to avoid the overcrowded highway or even to waste a few hours visiting Barrie or grabbing dinner while waiting for the traffic to thin out and be able to continue their journey.
Undoubtedly, people everywhere check their mobile phones and tablets when away from home to find products and services in unfamiliar places.
Here is a checklist you may want to reference to make sure they can find your business too:
- A “mobile friendly” website. How does your website appear on multiple devices?
Is it easy to navigate through? Does it automatically resize to the devicesIt is being displayed on? - A Google Places listing. They are free. They are akin to the “Yellow Pages” of the internet.
- A Yellow Pages listing. Yellow Pages has updated their offerings well beyond Yellow Pages books. They offer listings that are specifically for smartphones and tablets. They offer contact information, maps to the locations and even a rating system for customers to use.
- A Yelp Account. Not only can you list your business but you can display multiple images of your products, descriptions of services offered, a map to your location, contact information, a link to your website and a rating system for customers.
- You can list your business, contact information, a map, and add specials and discounts. Anyone with a smartphone or tablet can access Foursquare to “check-in” at a location and offer feedback. When someone is searching for a specific business, their built in GPS system locates ALL the businesses who are listed on Foursquare in that region. A customer may be looking for a particular store or restaurant and up comes the listings for businesses all within the same area
How accessible are you to visitors trying to find you on their mobile devices?
This article was authored by Diane Coville and was originally published on Alternative Office Assistance Blog.
