Dang It! I Can’t Find It… by Ryan MacAlmon

Several times when surfing the net I often stumble upon websites that have huge, Grand Canyon size, marketing gaps that are super easy to fix but are never fixed. These gaps are not some elaborate textbook marketing theory techniques or fabulous design colors and typography; it is simply general information about the business. It is information such as phone numbers, mission statements, profiles on About Us pages, hours of operations, location, event dates, and plenty more.

I relate the lack of this information to my days working back at McDonald’s. As managers one thing we are instructed to pay close attention to is the cleanliness of the restrooms. About 86 percent of consumers cognitively associate the cleanliness of a restaurant’s restroom with the cleanliness of its kitchen and in which 75 percent would not return to a restaurant with a dirty restroom. This perception comes from the customer thinking, “If they [the restaurant] cannot keep the restrooms clean, then who knows what’s going on in the back.”

This takes me back to issue at hand with companies and organizations not filling in the information gaps. Let’s think about this for a bit, the purpose of the creating a website is to attract and to generate .buzz towards the product or services offered and one cannot create the correct .buzz without providing the needed information.

To me this is the first impression on whether I will use the firm’s products or services, therefore this definitely needs to be complete and being attractive is a plus. If a company cannot fill in these gaps then I think to myself, “Do I really want to use their product or service? How will they treat me as a customer? Will they lose my information?” As they say in the Tube in London, “Mind the Gap”, so companies should focus on getting these gaps resolved to help grow their business.

Buzz Creator Ryan MacAlmon is one of 17 University of Central Arkansas students participating in the 2014 Create.Buzz101 Program. We are pleased to present Ryan’s blog MacAlmon’s Mind as a buzznames.biz feature.