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Are you really connecting?

Ray Allegrezza, Editor-in-chief -- Furniture Today, March 23, 2009

It's always a good thing to be connected to your customers — current and potential.

But in this current economic climate, being disconnected from your customer is not just risky business, it can be deadly business.

And while the majority of us would like to think we are in touch with our respective customer bases, a new study, jointly conducted by Nielsen Online and WebVisible, a West Coast company specializing in local interactive advertising, seems to indicate otherwise.

For the purpose of this study, which is called The Great Divide, 4,000 U.S. Internet users were surveyed about the tools they use to find local businesses in order to purchase from them.

While more than half the group said they conduct online searches for local businesses, the results of the study clearly indicate that local business owners are missing opportunities to connect with potential local customers online. Here's why:

The report shows that only 44% of small businesses even have a Web site.
Of those small businesses that do have a Web site, 61% said they spend less than three hours a week marketing their sites.
Additionally, more than half of the small businesses that have a Web site believe both the quality and ability of their site to acquire new customers are either “fair” or “poor.”
Half of the small business owners surveyed said they spend less than 10% of their marketing budget on Internet advertising while 30% do no Internet advertising at all.

Now, look at those statistics in light of the following:

92% of Internet users surveyed said they have researched a product or service online, and then purchased offline from a local business at least once.
82% of the users surveyed said search engines were among the tools they used to find local businesses.

The picture seems clear to me. As consumers continue to adopt local search terminology, their local shopping intent becomes clearer. Simply put, when consumers want to find a local business, they use clearly defined search terms. Forty percent said they use a location-specific term when they search, such as “furniture store in Chicago.”

She's out there and she's looking for you. This is not the time to play hide and seek.

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Web Summit: Furniture industry needs to connect

Feb 9, 2009

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