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| ▲ | latexr an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | There used to be a particular restaurant I ordered from. It was a real restaurant, not a ghost kitchen. It was listed on Uber Eats and similar, but you could also order from them, which was significantly cheaper. We used to have an image of the menu and the phone number but eventually lost it. Because the restaurant was only listed on Facebook, none of us have a Facebook account, and Facebook aggressively tries to keep you out without an account, it was a royal pain to get the number back. But even after getting the phone number, it was WhatsApp only. Which I don’t use. Some of my friends do, so that was taken care of like that. There was another place which was on the brink of closing and kept shifting its opening hours and days. I went there on occasion but because there was no official web presence I couldn’t trust the hours online. So I called. Sometimes they picked up, sometimes they didn’t. When they didn’t, sometimes they were closed but other times were just busy and couldn’t come to the phone. So no, you can’t always find a phone number, and you can’t always call and ask. Having a roughly up-to-date web presence is very useful. It doesn’t need to be a bespoke website, you can use a platform, just don’t exclusively use closed garbage like Facebook and Instagram which walls you off from customers. | | |
| ▲ | I-M-S 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | From my experience, you can't count on businesses to update their website to correctly reflect their working hours at all times either (especially if it's a one-off change, for example being closed for a day) |
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| ▲ | LatencyKills 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > How do you know this place even exists without any information? You want to find an antique book store in another state. How do you find it? You search the web. And what information bubbles to the top of the search results? Answer: businesses with websites. If you are a business owner, you will lose customers without a website, because that is how most people will find you. You might not like it... but that is the reality. | | |
| ▲ | abustamam 44 minutes ago | parent [-] | | If I'm looking for a physical place I usually just look at Google maps. "Minneapolis antique bookstores." I'll look at pics, see if the vibe is cool, etc. Relying on Google SEO is a recipe for disaster in my experience because there's no guarantee that the bookstore is even in or near Minneapolis. Other people probably browse the web differently though. I honestly would not expect an antique bookstore to have a website, unless they let you buy their books online. |
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| ▲ | abustamam an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > You can't even find a phone #? How about calling and asking? Wait what? How does he contact the website if he can't find contact info? I don't disagree with your point BTW — not everyone needs a website. But at the same time, a business often needs to meet customers where they are. If they're OK with losing a small subset of customers because their business info is only on <insert platform here> and some people don't use said platform, then I don't see what's wrong with that. But if they're not OK with that, then they'll have a presence on more platforms which could include their own websites. At the end of the day I don't really understand why anyone's arguing about any of this. If a business finds value in a website and it serves their business interests, they'll probably have one. If not, then they won't have one. No amount of philosophizing over democratizing the web will make my local café make a website. |
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