Firm sweetens bid to get businesses online. Yarmouth’s Web offers free sites in effort to see all local companies on web PATRICIA BROOKS ARENBURG BUSINESS REPORTER [email protected] The Yarmouth area’s largest private employer is offering free websites in an attempt to see all local businesses on the web. “Our goal is to get 100 per cent of Yarmouth online, Karen Churchill, director of the Web centre in Hebron, near Yarmouth , said in an interview Friday. The Florida-based company, which offers web design and online marketing for small businesses, started working on the project back in the fall. It was in response to Yarmouth Mayor Pam Mood’s All Hands on Deck initiative, a sort of call to action for community members to help find ways for the town to prosper. For its part, Web set out to compile a complete online directory of all businesses in the town. A group of Web workers — the company employs about 250 — volunteered to drive around town one Saturday in the fall to find every single business, said Churchill. “If you had a sign on your house or building, we wrote it down, she said. The volunteers researched each of the 489 businesses in the town of 6,700 and found about half didn’t have websites. The results are similar to what the Canadian Internet Registration Authority reported in March, when it found that only 45.5 per cent of all Canadian businesses are online. But a strong online presence is a must for local businesses, especially with the much-anticipated return of the Yarmouth-Maine ferry service in 2014, said Churchill, also president of the Yarmouth and Area Chamber of Commerce. “I don’t know about you but when I travel now, if I’m going somewhere that I’ve never been, the first thing I do is Google, so we need to be online and we’ve got the tools . . .to do it and make it work. The company made its offer at an All Hands on Deck meeting in March: it would design and build websites, even secure domain names, for any business that wanted one. For free. On Friday, the company announced about 75 per cent of all businesses in the town are now either online or have new websites under construction. And they’re calling the rest individually to get them on board, Churchill said. “It really is a big deal, Mood said Friday. “It gives the rest of the world the opportunity to see everything that Yarmouth offers, and in the global world it’s just imperative that everybody is online. Yarmouth Links Golf and Country Club had an outdated website and badly needed a new one, said Eliott Feven, club president and long time member. The new website built by Web, where he also works, is easily customizable and has links to social media feeds making it easy to update, Feven said. It will be some time before the club is able to measure the effects of the new site, but he said that “it’s helped us engage and our page views have gone up two or three times. The return of the ferry service has boosted morale in the community and is helping revive tourism in the area , he said. “The benefit, when it comes right down to it , is with the new ferry — they’re trying to push tourism again, Feven said. “Without the online presence, how do you build, how to you get those bookings and how do you get those eyes on your company if all they have to go by is a phone book? “The website is great for (our) members, it’s great for the town but part of that has to be driving tourism and driving green fees and the money from out of town that wouldn’t be there otherwise. Web will maintain the sites for a year, after which time the businesses will need to pay monthly fees, which vary depending on the services provided, and pay between $15 and $40 for the domain name each year. Once completed, a link to the online directory (businessdirectory. ca) will be posted on the town’s website
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 14:04:33 +0000
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