Well, that depends. But for small business owners who provide services and not products to sell online, it shouldn’t be $6,084/yr. That is exactly how much my brother, a physiotherapist, was recently quoted by a very well-known listing company and all he wants is a simple brochure site. Here is what they tried to sell him.
Online Products
- Website – Management fee – $110 / mo
- Sponsored Placement – Online Positioning with Logo, with Call Tracking – $159 / mo
- Mobile Sponsored Placement – Prestige, with Call Tracking – $72 / mo
Print Products
- White page listing – $0.00 / mo
- Service regular listing (heading 1)- $0.00 / mo
Advertising Contact
- Service regular listing (regular) – $0.00 / mo
- White page listing (town) – $0.00 / mo
- Service regular listing (heading 2) – $0.00 / mo
- Illustrated Ad, 2 Columns, ½ page (heading 3) – $166 / mo
My brother lives in a small town in Eastern Canada with a population of 3,000 where he has a physiotherapy clinic. He also has another small part-time clinic in a nearby town with a population of 9,000. He provides a service and does not require anything more than a simple brochure site. He is very good at what he does and so almost all his business comes from referrals and word-of-mouth. We discussed having an online appointment book and health questionnaire but he feels his clientele are much more small-town-personal and less technically capable, so it isn’t required at this time.
When he first approached me for advice on this I instinctively laughed at the quotation. My brother did not. It was at that very moment I realized there are still some web development and hosting companies out there preying on honest, hard-working, small business owners who aren’t overly web-savvy.
I advised my brother to pass on this and I offered to build him a nice shiny new WordPress site, complete with email, SEO, backup, etc…all for a bottle of scotch.
When he informed the listing company of his decision not to renew his service (yes, he was with them for years…did I forget to mention that?) and have me build and manage his site, the salesperson took one last shot at keeping his business. She used an old-school sales tactic, ‘confusion and fear’ as if their quote with ‘free’ services wasn’t confusing enough – aren’t most of the print and advertising services they listed free anyway? She asked, “Will your new site be responsive? Will it keep up with Google’s algorithm changes? How will people find you?”
My brother knows every single muscle, tendon, and bone in the human body, including what they are used for but things like responsive websites and Google’s algorithm is nothing he needs to know. As for how will people find him? Well, it isn’t in a paper book of company listings, that’s for sure.
When the sales person finally gave up she promptly took down his site, weeks before his current contract was to expire.
Well done, listing company! How to run a company into the ground 101: Overcharge your clients and when they want to leave, kick them on the way out the door.
Don Ruiz 