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Shop around the corner websites fail

the power of small retail websites is a clear goal

7 January 2007

But they shouldn’t have to. In this first article a look at shop around corner websites. Why do they fail? And more importantly, how could they be improved?

Missing a clear goal

Most shop around the corner websites focus solely on providing boring information and somewhere in a corner you can find their contact information displayed in 11px. Without thinking about why they wanted a website in the first place. They overlooked one of the most important aspects of a website. A clear goal. The goal of the website needs to be clear for the shop owner and the website developer, but most of all for the visitor of the website. Somehow, this type of websites manage to lack this very important aspect nearly always.

Defining the goal

When building the website the original goal of the shop, selling more bikes i.e., needs be used as starting point. The next step is to decide how this goal can be accomplished using the internet. Buying a bike on the internet is not very common, so people need to come to the shop. That’s all. We got ourself a goal already: Pursuing website visitors to go to the shop.

Achieving the goal

To achieve this goal the website has to make the visitor stands up from his chair, get his coat and go their. Their needs to be something that moves him. But what convinces him that he needs to go there? Service, price or something else? In the case of service the website visitor could provide the date and time when he’s planning to come to the store, so that the store owner can make sure the coffee is ready. Or in case of price the website could provide a discount coupon that can be used in the store. Just 2 of the many possibilities.

You succeed when a visitor of your website can tell you what your goal is. And you accomplished this goal.
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Comments

  1. Anonymous

    4 February 2007

    Very true. However, the context in which shops around the corner persist and flourish is a complex one. The key to their success is often ‘around the corner’, that is, they filter products and services locally in an incredibly exact way. This focus on a local, personal network unfortunately makes them aliens in the world of the web, causing the behavior you mention. Add to this lack of resources and time to tackle the considerable learning curve involved in familiarizing themselves with it. So they often buy into horribly bad, pre-packaged solutions, for example.

  2. James Boekbinder

    4 February 2007

    Sorry about that, I made the above comment, but forgot to include my name.

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