They looked before they left the house
The search happened at a kitchen table, and whoever answered it got the drive over.
Retail & ecommerce
The basket is easy. Being found is not.
Against a warehouse you lose on price and delivery, and win on the one thing it cannot answer: today.
Your store, your product pages and your customer list stay in your name.
In stock, in your townPick up todayFound before boughtEverything in your name
Everything is online. Nothing says it is here.
Four ways an independent store gets treated online as a worse version of a warehouse.
The site does not know the store existsNo stock, no store named, no pickup. A small warehouse fighting a large one.
Product pages written by the supplierThe same paragraph as forty other stores. Search has read it before.
Nobody knows you are openHours, holidays, parking, gift wrapping. What people check before getting in the car.
One sale a year, to everybodyA discount blast to a list that has not heard from you since the last one.
Ask about the big-box gapYou will not out-spend a national chain. Ask how a store your size wins the eleven minutes instead.
One product page
In stock here, eleven minutes away.
The one line a national warehouse can never write. Take any part of it in turn to read why.
brinlowsupply.example/paint
What happens on the days you do nothing
No numbers here — three things every shopkeeper recognizes.
The warehouse answered first
Same product, an answer about delivery, and nothing on your page to answer back with.
The people who already bought went quiet
They hear from you at Christmas, by which time somebody else has been writing to them.
The first shelf we would move
Put the store on the website first.
Advertising before the stock is on the page buys clicks for a page that cannot close.
First
Put the store on the site
Live stock, pick up today, the address and the hours on every product page rather than buried on a contact page.
Why this orderIn stock near me is the only search where you beat the warehouse outright.
Second
Write the products yourself
Your words on the things you actually sell, not the supplier's paragraph everybody else pasted in.
Why this orderWhen your product page is the supplier's paragraph, search has read it before and has no reason to rank yours.
Third
Then advertise, locally
A tight radius, your categories, pointed at pages that say pick up today.
Why this orderPaid spend on a page that cannot close is the fastest way to conclude that ads do not work.
What exists at the end, on the shop floor
Not a strategy deck. Four things a store can point at.
Photographed and written
The product page
Your photograph, your words, and the line about your shelf a warehouse cannot write.
Not buried on contact
The store, on every page
Address, hours, parking and the door, where a phone can reach them.
Set up with the counter
Pick up today
The order that ends at your counter instead of on somebody else's truck.
Written, then sent
The letter
One a month to a list you own, not a discount blast in December.
The half of a store's site nobody photographs
Most of the job, none of the pictures, and where an independent store's site usually rots.
The hundred product pages
Twenty of them earn most of the money. The rest get a structure that does not compete with those twenty.
The register and the website
If the register will tell us what is on the shelf, the page can say so. If not, we do it by category.
Hours, holidays and the map pin
The half day before a holiday, the changed parking, the photographs. Checked rather than left to rot.
Where the sale actually happens
The internet did not take your customers.It just answered them first.
The door a search has to end at.
Three things we will not do to a store
All three are ordinary in this trade. We put refusing them in writing.
Most of what is wrong is the words, the structure, and a site that never mentions the store. None of it needs a replatform.
For clearing stock it has a use. As the business itself, it is renting a customer you will never own.
Spending on a page that cannot say in stock today is the fastest way to conclude that advertising does not work.
If you ever move the store
Your store, your customers.
Your store, your product pages, your customer list — in your account, exportable the day you ask.
The siteDomain and hosting in your name
The product copyWritten for you, kept by you
The photographsYour stock, your surfaces
The customer listExportable, always
The Google profileOwned by the store
The reportingYours to read without us
Everything above exports to a spreadsheet the day you ask, the customer list included.
Four services, one doorway
Four that earn it. Not everything we sell.
The page comes before the spend, which is why the list is in this order.
01Website design
A store, not a warehouse
Stock, pick up today, and the doorway on every page.
Read the page02SEO & local search
Found for “near me”
The map panel, the categories, and the products you actually stock.
Read the page
03Paid advertising
Spent inside your radius
Local, category by category, measured in visits and orders.
Read the page04Email marketing
More than one sale a year
A letter people open, sent to a list you own.
Read the pageShipping orders as well as handing them over the counter? Building the store itself — checkout, payments, postage and sales tax — is its own page.Online store
The questions a store asks before it moves.
Your current platform, live stock, the marketplaces, and what happens to a hundred product pages.
Do we have to move off the platform we are on?
Almost never. Most of what is wrong with an independent store's site is the words, the structure, and the fact that it never mentions the store. None of that needs a replatform. If the platform really is the problem, we say so.
Can you show live stock?
If your point-of-sale system will tell us, yes. If it will not, we can do it at the category level, which is enough for most people deciding whether to drive over.
Is a marketplace worth it?
For clearing stock, sometimes. As a business, it is renting a customer you will never own. We would rather spend the same money making your own page the one that gets found.
What if we have a hundred products?
Twenty of them earn most of the money. Those get written properly first, and the rest get a structure that at least does not compete with them.