Here is where I reveal one of my little neuroses—something that crawls so far up under my skin that I have to do a few quick deep breathing exercises to shake it off and move on.
Say you are searching for a service – doctor, therapist, stylist, tinker, tailor, candlestick maker, and Google gives you a link to someone that looks fantastic! Exactly what you are looking for! YES!
But . . . wait. You read the home page. Read the contact page. You click around and around and around, and . . . where the heck IS this guy? Is he here in town, or in another state, or in another country? Does this make you as crazy as it does me? Do I really have to fill out the contact form just to see if he is within 5 hours drive?
If you are a business that provides a local service – we need to know where you are, and we need to know quickly. There is no point in trying to convince us that you are the absolute BEST person to shorten our slacks or cut our hair or teach us to tango if you are not even in the same time zone. We are not your demographic.
However if you ARE local, finding that out as soon as we hit your site makes us much more likely to give you a ring, because we did not have to waste a bunch of time figuring it out. The more time you waste, the more likely we are to leave your site in frustration and look elsewhere.
What if you are not a locally-tied business? Maybe you run an online store, or sell a digital service? It shouldn’t matter then, right? Think again. On almost every site I visit, no matter what it is for, I look for the location. (I did mention a neorosis, didn’t I?) Why? Because I like to shop local. Because I don’t want to wait for something to be shipped from Canada. Because I want to make sure their business advice applies to me. Because what the heck, I’m just curious, ok? It tends to suck away a little bit of your credibility if you won’t even tell me where you are. What are you hiding?
We don’t need to know your home address or your shoe size – just give me a city and state please. One less neurotic tic for me, and a potentially big win for you. Done!
