Can Directory Companies Like Yellow Pages Shift Into the Digital World? What small business owners need to know
When you need to find a local plumber, hairdresser, attorney, or even a dry cleaner, where do you do your research? If you're like most people, you jump online and Google what you're looking for, then click on the websites for service providers that appear in the search results. Your research is complete, and it was quick and easy.
Of course, the speed and convenience with which we search for, well, everything we need, didn't always exist. When you wanted to find a new doctor or restaurant that delivered pizza, you had to go to your enormous, heavy phone book: the Yellow Pages. You'd sift through listings, dial phone numbers, and slog through your choices for a significant amount of time.
The Current State of YP
Granted, times have changed, and even Yellow Pages has given nod to the digital world by rebranding as YP, and offering website creation services. As the digital revolution took hold, YP could no longer continue to strongarm businesses into paying hefty fees to appear in their pages. Very few businesses saw an advantage to advertising through phone books when hardly anyone continued to use them to search for services.
To be sure, YP has its strengths, namely in sales and marketing. Customers who deal with them are typically pursued by a sales team that pushes them to purchase advertising, with an upsell to website creation.
Unfortunately, technology is not one of YP's strengths. This becomes evident to customers who attempt to create a website with its website building tool. YP does offer a service that builds websites for its customers, but this website building service is outsourced, and customers do not receive attentive support or personalized attention.
The website that is created is little more than a generic sign or storefront, lacking business operations or tools to increase customer engagement.
Customers find that they are stuck in one-year contracts that they can't easily terminate.
A Better Alternative
You wouldn't hire a plumber to fix your roof, would you? From that perspective, why hire a company that doesn't specialize in website creation to build your website?
As a small business, you can't risk creating your online presence using a company that lacks in customer service and doesn't address your unique business goals. Your website is critical for generating new business leads and conversions, and helping you build relationships with current customers.
Instead, small business owners can rely on a website building platform, like Ocoos, which offers a concierge service who works directly with you to build a site that addresses all your specific needs.
The Ocoos platform incorporates valuable business operations tools, including a variety of online payment methods, CRM tools, contact management, appointment scheduling and calendar tools, as well as marketing reviews, and a discount manager. There is even a B2B recommendation engine that connects the websites of partner businesses, sending traffic between the two sites, which also helps increase sales and leads.
The Ocoos platform meets technology's most up-to-date standards and is constantly updated and maintained behind the scenes as technologies change. Your Ocoos website includes hosting and is optimized for SEO, browsers, and mobile devices.
After the concierge builds the website, small business owners are given full access to make any updates or changes as needed. Ocoos never outsources its work, and offers 24-hour, US-based support if questions or issues arise.
