If you have a product or service that you offer and don’t have a on-line presence then you are missing opportunities every minute, hour, day, week, month, and year. Traditional word of mouth is still king, if you want the status qua, but If you are looking to grow or create new opportunities then you need to get your message to reach further.

We have a wealth of people, cultures, activities, and opportunities in Worcester. The problem is that up until 10 – 20 years ago, you could be a local business and succeed by making a few local customers happy who came into the store or made a phone call and opportunities would grow from there. That is not true anymore. Having a Spa at the bottom of the hill doesn’t mean people around the neighborhood will automatically buy your products or services just because you are a friendly person.

In today’s world most people looking for a product or service go on-line first by searching Google or Amazon. Maybe they didn’t even know they wanted something until they noticed a friend post a picture and link to some cool Sandals on Facebook. You just got an email from a coupon site like Groupon, so maybe that is how you just found out about a new restaurant on Shrewsbury St. I could go on and on, but I think you get it.

Maybe word of mouth is still king, but maybe it’s different. Facebook Shares or Likes, Tweets from Twitter, search result from Google, comments read on Yelp or Amazon, a video watched on YouTube are all necessary to succeed even if you are a small business. Having a central nervous system (web application) that can help facilitate the spreading of new word of mouth methods is critical to the success of modern businesses who offer products or services.

If you offer a product or service and still primarily rely on traditional word of mouth than please seek help. Facebook, twitter, YouTube, Google, and many others offer free accounts to get your message out. If you would like help please reach out to me  or search WorcesterBiz.com for “web design”.

I was going to get into some of the technologies that business can adopt to help improve their operations, but I’ll save that for my next article.

Johnson Software Solutions Inc., formerly JohnsonWebApps, is a full service software development company. We build custom web and mobile application. We specialize in data intensive applications and work with businesses that want to expand their on-line presence or to modernize their operations. Taking your idea from concept to production is what we do.