The other week I meant to write about this, but it totally got away from me. Outdated websites can actually hurt your business in my opinion.
Being on the road means new towns and new places for us. And when we get to a new town we sometimes need to find out where we can get products or services. Two weeks ago I was in desperate need of a new ink cartridge for my Canon IP100. The Wal-Mart in town didn’t have them, so I thought I’d hunt up an office supply store. And I found one. Office Outpost (cool name).
Using my handy dandy iPhone I found the local business and made a call to them. Sure enough, they had my cartridge and let me know they’d be closing at 3 that day. So I hopped into the Titan and took a ride into town. I had their address, and even had an image in mind of what I was looking for (they had a photo of their store front on their website). Unfortunately the business had moved, and the site hadn’t been updated. I had to call again, find out where they were, and turn the truck around.
Fortunately in this case I found the business and they were literally the only game in town. However, in larger places I probably would have continued on to the next possible store. I’m glad they kept their original phone number, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to find out where they moved to. And yes, I’ve seen outdated websites that point to businesses long gone, or moved to somewhere else with no information as to where.
When I asked the woman at the counter when they’d moved she said, “Oh it’s been a few years now.” Yeah, their webmaster needs to get on a few updates to be sure!