Tag: listings

Small business’ essential online ingredient

The story of Rene Bertagna and the Serbian Lion illustrates how operators in the hospitality industry need to be on top of their listings and online presence.

A Virginian restaurant, the Serbian Lion, went out of business because its Google Places listing was hacked, reports Wired.

The proprietor of the Serbian Lion, Rene Bertagna, wasn’t aware his online listing showed the restaurant as being closed on weekends and as a result customers stopped showing up, he alleges in a law suit against Google.

As a result of result of the drop in earnings, the restaurant entered a death spiral of falling service standards, declining customers and further cuts until the place closed down.

While it’s difficult to judge how true Bertagna’s claim is – it’s quite possible the listing was a mistake by Google’s data scrapers or an oversight by a customer putting the data into the services – the story does illustrate how important getting the correct information into online services like Google Places, Microsoft Bing and Yelp.

Bertagna himself appears to be a classic case of roadkill on the information superhighway with his claims not to be a computer or internet user.

Bertagna immigrated to the U.S. from northern Italy when he was young. He’s 74 now, and, he says, doesn’t own a computer—he’d heard of the Internet and Google but used neither. Suddenly, a technological revolution of which he was only dimly aware was killing his business. His accountant phoned Google and in an attempt to change the listing, but got nowhere. Bertagna eventually hired an Internet consultant who took control of the Google Places listing and fixed the bad information—a relatively simple process.

The sad tale of Rene Bertagna and the Serbian Lion illustrates just how important it is for operators in the hospitality industry to be on top of their listings and online presence. This is where the customers are.

Sadly, this story isn’t news – that customers are using the web to find local businesses and read reviews of neighbourhood establishments has been the case for a decade, the move to mobile has been obvious for over five years.

For all local businesses, it’s a core responsibility to make sure online listings are correct along with having an up to date website. If you don’t, you only have yourself to blame if the customers don’t show up.

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Why online listings are an essential business tool

Online listings with the major search sites are free and effective. Even more importantly, those listings form the basis for many of the location based services that are springing up on Smart Phones. You need to list your business on these sites to make sure they are appearing in the searches customers increasingly rely upon.

Online listings with the major search sites are free and effective. Even more importantly, those listings form the basis for many of the location based services that are springing up on Smart Phones. This article originally appeared on the 19 January Smart Company Business Tech Talk column.

Since Global Positioning System (GPS) equipped smartphones arrived on the market, we’re seeing all kinds of location based phone applications springing up.

Recently I’ve been playing with two of these services – Foursquare and Urban Spoon to find there are some lessons for businesses in how these products work.

These services are terrific at telling you where the nearest cafes, service stations or places of interest are, although at the same time I’ve noticed how inaccurate some of the business locations can be.

Often, particularly in the case of Foursquare, the wrong spot has found its way into the system because customers have taken a guess at the address, added the details while on the way to or from the business or just simply got the location wrong. Which can be awkward, particularly if your competitors are closer to the incorrect location.

So it’s worthwhile getting your businesses address correct on these services. Fortunately, it isn’t as hard as having to track down every single one of these new services and spend hours plugging your details into them.

The most important single service is the Google Local Business Centre, as many of these location based services use Google Maps. Every business should be on this already as the listing is free and the information also feeds into Google search results. If your organisation is correctly listed here, it will appear in all Google searches for your product in your neighbourhood.

Microsoft are in this market too with their Local Listing service which feeds into Bing results in a similar way to Google’s service. Like Google Maps, it’s free and listing only takes a few minutes.

The traditional advertising medium for most Australian small businesses has been in the Yellow Pages. Sensis also offer a free listing which will get you in their maps and directories (although to get a priority listing you’ll need to pay more).

So check your details are correct on all these services, it only takes a few minutes and given most customers, particularly in the business-to-business markets, use the web to research potential suppliers you’ll probably pick up a few customers just by having the right details online.

With mobile internet usage expected to overtake desktop surfing in the next few years, it’s critical your details are correct on these phone applications which customers are going to increasingly rely upon.

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