Quarantine Shows Local Businesses Need Websites
We live in the forefront of modernity, on the cutting edge of easy to use technology, why don't local businesses have websites? Sure, they're on facebook, and they should be to engage their clientele, but facebook is for fake news and memes, not for making commerce.
In the history of the internet, websites have never been as easy to operate and maintain as they are now. In fact, you can just hire companies to do it for you. I know we offer websites through Townsquare Interactive, but this isn't a sales pitch. This is a pleading beg for local businesses to pull themselves into the current decade of technology because it will benefit the consumers. I can't tell you how many times I had to give up on finding something locally in the last month. No website to purchase from, so I just had to hop on Amazon to find it. And the only reason I'm half-kosher with Amazon is they cut the City of Lawton and State of Oklahoma a tax check every month. How the city council hides that money is a different conversation I'm working on for another time.
It's 2020. Local businesses need to make it happen before they finally fall to the convenient way of shopping from the couch.
Also, lets address another thing with online shopping... Stop sending packages to your home. The lowest forms of humanity troll the residential streets in hopes of scoring whatever you ordered while getting wine drunk last night. How many stolen package reports do you see on the local social media pages each week? At this point in time, if something is stolen off your porch, it's your own fault.
I understand the argument. For instance, I ship everything to the station where I work because during normal business hours, there is always someone to sign for it. I get that this might not be the situation you're in, but neither is my sister. She works in healthcare and can't have packages delivered to the ER in her town, but our parents are both retired and have been quarantining for a decade by now. They're always home, so her packages go to their house. I would suggest a PO Box service, but that's too expensive. Maybe you take my idea and run with it. Open a business where the only thing you do is accept peoples packages and keep them safe until the owner can pick them up in person. Charge a dollar or two per package or a flat fee and you'll be rolling in the dough. You just give me my 5% stake.