Pizza On The Web
Tonight, I am wrapping up a 10-day business road trip where I have crossed the continent and tomorrow morning will finally return to the east coast. I travel a lot and this evening I discovered a reality of business travel in 2009…hotels are no longer supplying phone books in the rooms.
Why is this important?
What does a business traveler do when they want to order a pizza? In the past, I would grab the phone book, look for a pizza place with a tasty looking menu and place an order. Tonight, I could have called the front desk for a recommendation but rather decided to search the web for “Pizza in Downtown Calgary Alberta“. Do you know that most many pizza joints don’t have a web site? Oh, they appear on the Google local business directory…but many don’t have a site so they don’t have an online menu…this was a problem…
- what pizza places delivered downtown (near my hotel)?
- which ones had sites that had menus?
- what are the prices, delivery fees?
- Who also had chicken wings? (I wanted an appetizer)
Pizza places need to seriously consider getting on the web! They need to start thinking about serving people online. The “Yellow Pages” are dieing and being replaced by the web. In the past, pizza places would spend a small fortune on yellow pages ads to grab your attention when hunger hits. Why are they missing the boat online? Having a professionally designed web site is much cheaper than running a yellow pages ad and far more effective and relevant in today’s business reality.
Finally, and not easily, I found a pizza place with a decent web site and in the downtown business district. It made my choice simple and they got the business.
So, the moral of the story is this…think like a business traveler and get your pizza business online! Every business needs to think about who their target customers are and tailor their web site to meet their customers needs. Your business can thrive if you do this well.
So…thank you Vern’s Pizza! Your site isn’t perfect…but much better than most of your competitors!
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