

The last unconquered sector of the web - lloydarmbrust
http://seeinginteractive.com/newspaper-support-group/the-webs-final-frontier/

======
harryf
I work as a developer for the online arm of a yellow pages provider in Europe.
Thanks to regulated data and a more conservative populace, it's still a very
profitable sector for a fairly simple and well known business model. None of
"we come from the Internet" players, be it Google, Facebook, Groupon or
otherwise has succeeded in making any real dent _yet_, although they're making
progress.

One point that article starts to make well but then spoils with the Monty
Python reference is this;

> Part of the reason is that small business owners are already doing
> everything they already know to stay afloat. Adding a whole new category to
> what they need to understand and stay up-to-date with is just too much.

...it goes further than that even. The more tech-savvy small businesses know a
fair bit about SEO, Adwords and how to present themselves online but _they
don't have time_. Even if you have the knowhow investing, say, 3 hours a day
for a couple of weeks, getting a campaign running when you're a dentist
doesn't make sense when there's a queue of customers waiting.

Three fundamentals for tech startups wanting to provide software and services
to small businesses are something like;

* Leads matter: it's not about clicks, it's about customers. If you're helping a dentist keep their weekly schedule full with _real patients_, they'll be happy to pay for it. Groupon's success is all about this.

* You need people on the ground. If you want to reach small businesses, you have to talk to them face to face, no matter how smart your algorithm is. You're competing for their attention against their real work - that which generates income - and while some are tech savvy, many more lack understanding of what technology can do for them. Again Groupon have figured this out <http://goo.gl/Zch2U>

* Be _genuinely_ trying to help them make their business a success. Many have a hard enough time just staying afloat and there are plenty of sharks already out there trying to take their money - Groupon may be one of them.

Finally, for tech startups, don't group them all as "small business" but
instead look at specific "verticals". While there are commonalities, the needs
of a hairdresser and a dentist are not the same. Take a look at some of the
yellow pages provides business category listings for example
<http://www.yellowpages.ca/business/> \- each one of those is a vertical with
specific needs. Do you think a company selling farm equipment like tractors is
interested in an online shopping cart?

OK - TL no one read ;)

~~~
jeremymims
We couldn't agree more with the points you're making. In the U.S., the Yellow
Pages has lost more than half its revenue in just three years so it may be a
bit different.

These optimizations you mention (and significantly more) are in our pipeline.

------
dasil003
I've been thinking about this for years. I used to do a lot of small client
work in the early 00s, and it was clear to me that high-quality custom work
does not make sense for small businesses; the ROI just isn't there. At the
same time, the services targeting this market just churn out crap.

Solving this problem is tough because small business owners are an extremely
diverse set, and the needs of different types of businesses vary widely.
Combine this with a general lack of internet savvy, a lot of folk wisdom
picked up from friends and family about the web, and a do-it-yourself
mentality means that an MVP is very difficult to sniff out.

The hardest part, though, is support. The price of the service needs to be
relatively cheap, but it needs to have good support, preferably 12x7 phone
support. Economically this won't scale unless the product is simple enough to
minimize support needs. 10 years ago I think this problem was intractable, but
with the internet becoming more and more ingrained in our daily lives, it's
only a matter of time.

So yeah, personally I think this is a great market to be getting into.

~~~
thirdstation
"So yeah, personally I think this is a great market to be getting into."

Why do you think it's a great market to get into? Is it the size of the
opportunity? Your first three paras outline why it's a difficult market.

BTW: Your description of the small business market is spot-on. I have also
done small-client work (and still do) and agree with your assessment. It's
just that your last statement seems out of synch with the sentiment of your
comment.

~~~
dasil003
It was meant to flow from the previous sentence. The market has been hard to
get into, but it's inevitably opening up due to growing familiarity with the
web.

------
ziadbc
Local business is a huge opportunity on the internet.

However, it far from the last 'unconquered' sector of the web. There will
never be an end to vast opportunities on the internet, because new solutions
create new opportunities that never existed before, ad infinitum.

For example, and idea like grubwith.us would have seemed bizarre before
Groupon, but now it seems like a straightforward evolution (and something lots
of people would like to do).

We still are working with very basic forms of artificial intelligence, but as
it gets better, the whole internet will be reborn.

Carry on inventing everyone!

~~~
dasil003
AI is the last unconquered sector of technology.

I'm really glad to live in a time before AI makes programming obsolete. I
shudder to think about the potential crisis of purpose facing the human race
if AI develops to the point to automate all our needs. But that's okay, I'll
die and make room for the generations to whom that is simply the unquestioned
nature of reality.

------
dwc
"They took their hard earned money and opened a pizza parlor or a garage or a
gift shop. They never really wanted to be on the Internet."

There it is. That will be right up there with "They never wanted to be an
accountant" and "They never wanted to be a marketer" and all the rest.

~~~
w1ntermute
Of course, that isn't considered a valid excuse if they engage in subpar
accounting or marketing practices, so why should it be acceptable in this
case?

------
JonnieCache
There are a lot of small businesses out there that don't need to accept any
payment on the site or offer phone support, they just need an easy to update,
modern looking site that gives a good impression of their business.

'Local' businesses will often have their websites checked out by customers who
have heard of them through word of mouth or other Real Life means. They google
the name of the business to understand the service provided and to help them
decide whether or not they want to give them their money. They will then
physically go down there. That's often what 'local' means. In this situation
simply having a simple, modern-looking, easy to use site with fast load times
will create a vastly better impression on prospective customers. Better than
1998's leftovers currently do for a lot of these businesses anyway. If a
business doesn't have a web site at all, customers basically don't really
believe it exists in this day and age.

Wrap this up in a CMS that automatically pushes new content to twitter and
facebook, does good SEO and has a mobile skin and you're on to a winner. Well,
it'll pay the bills anyway.

This is essentially low hanging fruit, and modern development and deployment
tools make it all the easier to pick.

------
Lucadg
Even before launching our system in Beta in October, I did some trips in which
I tried to sell it. I really needed to go out there and see what the market
really wanted, not what was in my mind. In order to minimize risks, and
because the system itself was not ready (and is not ready) for the big shots,
I wrote emails to small business owners. I first did this in Morocco in May,
during a two weeks trip (I mix personal travel and business all the time) and
I wrote to Riads (local "garden" hotels) which are not apartments (my core
business). I offered them "a riad dedicated website, easy to maintain and in 8
languages". I sold two, having sent maybe 40 emails and met 5 owners. One
bought it because she was tech savy (did her own websites and so on) and
immediately understood why it made sense, and the other one simply bought
visibility. She wanted to be "first in google" and did not want to hear
anything else. Did not care that she could edit her own prices and pictures,
she could pay me for this. Did not care about 8 languages, she wanted to be
first in google, that's it. I ended up selling her a "visibility results
based" package and got the deal for a few hundres euros a year. First money on
the project, I'd take any deal :)

Fine for me, but it made me realize that the less they know, the more they pay
only for certified results. Make sense. As the system grew, so I could target
higher, and it became much easier and profitable.

So, do I want to target the guys who "never wanted to be on the internet"? No,
they will probably be go with a webdesigner who sells a joomla website for
2000-4000 euro (in Morocco they spend a lot, even more than Europe!) and then
realize they are not "first in google" and spend 1000 more to be "first in
google" with a local "SEO" firm. I have no time and no need to explain how
things work to them, I better invest my time with the guys who, after 5
minutes, tells me "great idea, let's try it, how much?". There's many of them
and they will appreciate my project more than anybody else.

------
thirdstation
What is their differentiator from Yahoo! Web Hosting and similar ilk? IMHO,
any technological advantage will eventually be copied (by companies who care
to stay in the business).

Are they hoping to just take over as the new Geocities until someone else
comes along? Is this market segment, with this kind of product, worth fighting
over or does it get passed around when the current market leader gets tired of
dealing with it?

------
johndar
Strange that I've seen no-one actually side with the small businesses here.

It's true: small business are lagging behind in web presence, though it's
mostly _our_ fault.

When such business took a sneak-peak in the web, 10 years ago, there was
actually no strong reason to be on the web. The people behind the business
themselves didn't use the web as a resource-for-everything as we see it today.
They considered (and rightly so) a web presence just as a business facade.

Moreover, _that_ presence cost them a _fortune_ , for mostly what today we
consider as a flash nightmare.

I'm sure that now people realize what they would like to see in their website,
because that's the way they expect websites to be: an actual, useful service
for the people that come to their business.

That means more money to be spent however, and if you want a nice, decently
done website, probably with some sort of customized service behind it, and
considering eventual maintenance costs, it probably means spending the same
amount you spent 10 years ago, plus a yearly figure which is certainly larger
that what you're spending now.

Of course, it also means expanding your business on the web, for the _first_
time, really. I think that many people realize that, and with time (read:
money) they will move on. I don't buy the fact that people don't know what web
means anymore.

However, I'm quite confident that whatever new website they're building now,
it will require a complete re-do in another 5 years time due to changing
trends and technologies (which in customer's minds reads as "no real reason").
And that's exactly the reason I agree with them. You _really_ need to have a
strong business return in exchange for such a waste of time an money.

------
iandanforth
Seeing Interactive has a branding problem:

"We want newspapers to make money; we want newspapers to own local."

If I own a small business that doesn't speak to me at all, and once I realize
that 'local' means me, then it's even a little offensive.

I suggest that while the blog post is essentially correct, it should be on a
separately branded site, lets call it 'bootsontheground.com' (a terrible
name), with a more appropriate 'Manifesto.'

~~~
lloydarmbrust
I couldn't agree more.

------
code_duck
Absolutely, I see this all over. So many people want a web site, but they have
absolutely no idea what to do. So many small businesses have websites, but
they're very poor quality. Many have sites from about 2004 which are in
serious need of updating. And, there's still a lot of businesses who think
they don't need a website or it wouldn't be useful, and they'll be changing
their minds within the next 5 years.

------
Abid
If people are finding out about these places using Yelp, Google, Groupon et
al. is there really a need for a SEO friendly website? Many of these
businesses don't care about a web presence because its effect would be
negligible.

I suppose you could justify the cost of building out a website for the local
dry cleaner, but seriously, does that help it gain any new business? I doubt
it.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
It probably would. Remember that we're a very mobile society (in the US) and
towns have new arrivals every day.

If I just moved to a new town, I probably don't know where the nearest dry
cleaner, or Thai restaurant, or carpet cleaner is. Rather than spend valuable
time driving around searching, my first inclination will be to google it. If
they get my business and do a good enough job, odds are I'll continue to
patronize them for years. People rarely change service providers unless they
move or there's a major problem.

~~~
Abid
If you Google it, you'll get a comprehensive list of dry cleaners/Thai
restaurants with an accompanying map. And that list usually shows up at the
very top rendering everything below meaningless. Try it.

------
apedley
How did this even get on the front page of HN?

It doesn`t convey anything useful and is a blantant promotion for themselves.
I `don`t mind blantant promotions as long as there is something valuable for
me to look at while I`m there.

All they ramble on about is an untapped small business market. Hmm, or maybe
businesses that are becoming obsolete because they can`t keep up with the
rapid change in the business world.

The final frontier, I think not. How about a dying set of businesses making
way for the new small businesses that are changing with the times.

------
cshenoy
Completely off-topic (perhaps not) but at the top of the sidebar of
SeeingInteractive's site, there is a sign-up section for a support group. The
fields are _incredibly_ tiny. Checked on both Firefox 3.6 and Chrome.

Not to knock them but it doesn't really inspire confidence in them helping
small businesses conquer the web.

~~~
jeremymims
We have the very classic problem of working so much for newspapers and our
small business customers that our own website isn't nearly our best foot
forward. We've known it for months and we're in the process of doing a
redesign... so problems like this have gotten bumped.

Most of our small business customers have no idea who we are since we use the
newspaper brands. Way less than 1% of all Seeing Interactive traffic will ever
pass through this site.

We hear you loud and clear and this and whole bunch of other stuff you
probably didn't see will be fixed early in the new year.

------
Tycho
To be fair, I think it's only in the last couple of years that there's been a
sea-change in the quality of web aesthetics. Before that, hardly any websites
looked 'good.' They were either decent, or ugly. Nowadays I see a lot of
genuinely beautiful sites, but lots of people are still catching up.

------
Lucadg
We are doing something very similar for apartments websites. My assumptions
where exactly the same but after two months it turned out the the easy sales
were those made with the advanced business owners, not the ones who never
really wanted to be on the Internet. The tech savy ones saw immediately the
wisdom of a dedicated website builder compared to the great but too general
wordpress or joomla. The others were still asking for a guaranteed first place
in Google with no keywords specified :)

So, as the system grows we will more and more target the ones who know what we
are talking about. It will be interesting to know how it goes and I'll be
happy to share our experiences!

Luca

Www.adormo.com

~~~
jfarmer
Other (small) changes I'd make: 1\. Don't say "sign up" -- say something like
"Join free." In any case say something that indicates value to the consumer
vs. signing up, which indicates value to the site owner.

2\. For the signup button use a color that contrasts more strongly with the
rest of the design, e.g., red or green (vs. blue)

3\. Don't redirect me to another, context-free page when I click the signup
button

4\. More importantly, get a native English speaker to proofread your copy.
"Create easily your advanced apartments website right now" is very awkward,
and both "easily" and "advanced" are essentially meaningless words.

Solve my problem, don't sell me features.

~~~
lloydarmbrust
This is great stuff. We should start a former-YC-company consulting arm :)

------
troyk
The majority of my family are small brick & mortar business owners and an
interesting observation is how much they've become users of popular web apps
like facebook and google (for personal uses) and how much that has impacted
their openness to using the web more in their business. They are coming to a
state of mind that opening a browser and clicking things is easy while their
desktop apps are a major pain in the ass to use, maintain and backup.

------
poundy
In the UK, A few companies like Google and BT have come together to solve this
problem. <http://www.gbbo.co.uk/> They offer a free service (until 2011) for
businesses to create their own websites managed by Google Sites, integrating
with Google maps, places, etc.

I think in future Facebook pages will also play an important role in getting
small businesses online.

------
jetaries
I agree would agree with this based on our experiences dealing with local real
estate businesses. However, local small businesses are sector specific, a
pizza shop has different needs than a hair salon than a real estate agency,
etc.

In order to break into this, I think it needs a combined effort of different
sector specific providers + companies like yours and weebly.

------
edw519
_But small businesses are still behind. Way behind.
See<http://buddingtonsphoto.com/> as an example._

What a great way to acquire new customers. Post the worst websites you can
find on Hacker News, bombarding them with hits and laughter, and embarrassing
them into upgrading.

(I'd call them and ask why they haven't engaged Seeing Interactive, but I just
don't have the heart.)

~~~
lloydarmbrust
Trust me, we have way more examples than this.

The truth is that we do not sell directly to SMBs. We work through local
newspapers and they sell using their brand. If you called any of our SMB
customers, they probably have never heard the name "Seeing Interactive"--which
is how we can get away with using such a terrible name. :)

------
aresant
"They need a good solid website that has been created with SEO principles in
mind and they need to be able to easily update it."

What small businesses really care about is cost effective customer
acquisition.

A new website without a marketing engine attached is a tougher sell and is a
crowded marketplace - you'll wind up selling against Intuit, Yahoo and other
giants that have a virtually unlimited inbound flow of leads (small biz that
buys QuickBooks etc).

SEO is effective, but slow.

Google's new hyper-local search features are perhaps a faster payoff for SEO
but there are plenty of localized SEO / SEM companies already out pushing that
pitch like Real Local.

All that naysaying notwithstanding, there's a great opportunity to build
something incredible in the small business space but it's not unconquered from
lack of trying.

~~~
lloydarmbrust
It works a lot faster than you might think. Sure, if you're setting up a new
site in San Francisco or Austin this kind of thing will be a much harder sell.
But in small-town USA where no one knows what SEO means, it's actually really
fast.

We've had people jump to #1, #2, and #3, of target keywords in under a week
(we don't advertise this, btw, because it's unrealistic), but 30-45 days is
very common.

There are millions of businesses in markets less than 25k people, and those
people are our targets.

~~~
patio11
This is directionally accurate in my experience. 90% of ranking for Ogaki Dog
Care is showing up. (It is the same story as "American presidents bingo
cards", essentially, except you'll have inlinks direct to that page.)

~~~
gommm
And that comment is now ranked first on Google for Ogaki Dog Care :-)

~~~
lloydarmbrust
+1

------
healthyhippo
I think it is a bit shortsighted to imply that every sector of the web besides
small businesses has been conquered.

