This morning I decided that it was time to find new customers.

My idea is to help small and medium businesses obtain a comprehensive web presence. The idea is to help restaurants in particular, since I believe that they need a website and they need to be able to attract more clients when searched on google.

You must agree with me that to find a restaurant we most commonly use google. What else? When I feel like having greek food I use a simple yet powerful tool…. I google “Greek restaurant near Pascoe Vale”, read some reviews, and I’m out the door.

DAY 1

Since I am familiar with the Ascot Vale/Moonee Ponds area I decided to go out this morning and try to find some new local clients. I must be honest, it didn’t go really well. I got off the train at 9.30 and went straight to union road where I knew of a few restaurants without any sign of an online presence.

As you can see Stratus 233 NEEDS Online and Offline Marketing

The first restaurant I visited was Stratus 233 on Union Road, the owner was there and he told me that they are working on a website and they will be going online in a week. He didn’t really want to know anything else about what I wanted to say. Never mind, I will find someone else. I am curious to see in the weeks to come if they are truly pulsing a website.

I walked up and down union road a few times and realised that monday morning was not going to be a good time to visit restaurants. Firstly, the majority of places I wanted to visit were closed.

After having spent quite a long time in Union Road I decided to walk to the busy Mt Alexander Road. There are a few new restaurants in the area, and I will definitely be returning to see if they are interested in my services.

While I was there I did however talk to the owner of a new place called White Coffee (530 Mt. Alexander), next to the newly opened Italy 528, whom have told me they are not interested in having an online presence any time soon (they must be crazy!). White Coffee is a nice little cafe, however the owner explained that they are already working on a website and focusing on google optimization. A family friend will be taking care of it in his spare time. I hope he will find time to think about your business. Oh boy I almost had enough of funny excuses, however, he seemed to know what I was on about which is a good start!

White Coffee is doing better than Stratus 233 and Italy 528

I then walked along Mt Alexander Road where I stopped by Smoking Joes, the owner was nice and we had a 5 min chat (it was a record)! Anyway, he said that someone is working on a website (of course). He was however interested in Search Engine Optimization. He didn’t quite understand though, that to implement Search Engine Optimization you need to start with at the least a website (a real website, not one waiting on a “to do” list).

I did learn a lot from these few hours around Ascot Vale:

• Don’t waste your time trying to find restaurants open on Monday morning
• The majority of restaurant owners are working on websites that will go online as soon as the end of the week. It is just a nice way to say, piss off I am not spending a dime for your services.
• Restaurant owners can be good at managing a restaurant but they don’t know anything about the online. The irony is, that if they truly are great managers they would understand how important this all is!

Italy 528 is playing hide and seek! Seriously I could not believe how invisible that restaurant is.

I believe restaurants need an excellent web presence! It was just the first day. I will write one blog post for every day I go out to find restaurants. Hopefully I will be able to report about a restaurant owner that understands the importance and business value of being online.