Finding A Home On The Web
In our previous post, we discussed the importance of a small business having a web site. In this follow up post, we want to probe that subject in a little more detail. Sophia Brodsky runs a spa in Philadelphia called Body Klinic. According to a recent article in the New York Times, Body KKlinic’s web site was fairly vanilla until a college student made Ms. Brodsky an offer she couldn’t refuse. He claimed that for $10 he could redesign her web site in a manner that would drive more traffic to her spa. The understanding was, if more business came to her spa, she would pay him more money. With that kind of deal, Ms Brodsky decided she had nothing to lose, so she hired the boy to redesign her web site. Today Ms. Brodsky manages three web sites which have driven thousands of dollars to her business. The rest of her story is contained in the following excerpts from the NY Times report–
“But small-business owners like Ms. Brodsky who have a Web presence are still a minority. In its first survey of small-business Web sites last April, Jupiter Research found that just 36 percent of all businesses with fewer than 100 employees had a Web presence. Still, the Web as an alternative yellow pages, along with blogs and social networking, is drawing increased attention. The Kelsey Group, a market research company in Princeton, N.J., estimates sales revenue from Internet yellow pages, searches for local businesses and searches on wireless devices will increase to $13 billion in 2010 from $3.4 billion in 2005. Those small-business owners who venture online say the experience is generally worth it though the learning curve may be steep. Recognizing this, online advertising companies with names like Yodle, Weblistic, WebVisible and ReachLocal are springing up to help in managing the sites. The Web was not on Ms. Brodsky’s mind when she put down $165,000 in 2004 in the Rittenhouse Square area for a spa that grossed about $6,000 a week. The spa was not even computerized at the time and had a staff of seven that she felt was not adequately trained for the upscale clientele she wanted to serve….
Ms. Brodsky said she used to favor winning customer recognition by developing new product offerings. But Mr. Stevens, the student who was starting an Internet company, showed her that a versatile Web presence was also crucial. Mr. Stevens created two Web sites that mirrored each other. One, www.thebodyklinic.com, features a local telephone number, and currently a picture of a brownstone and clickable foliage that leads to the spa’s various services. The site has generated a 10 percent increase in sales since Ms. Brodsky — now a Web convert — last redesigned it in October.
Its not-quite mirror double, www.thebodyklinic.net. features an 888 toll-free number and was intended to help track calls. Mr. Stevens and Ms. Brodsky agreed that she would pay him for each individual click on the site. Her phone calls on that line are monitored so she can tell how much customer traffic the site is generating. (Ms. Brodsky currently maintains a third site, www.thebodyklinic.biz, which she intends to use in the future.) Her Web budget has grown to about $1,000 a month, Ms. Brodsky said, but her weekly gross is now $8,000 to $10,000 a week, up from $7,000 in the last two years. Mr. Stevens took a leave of absence from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The company he started, now named Yodle, obtained venture capital and has expanded beyond Philadelphia to 17 other cities.
As we said in our previous post, having and maintaining a web site is no longer reserved for the biggest tech geeks in the country. Now anyone can do it, and, in most cases, they can start it for free.
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