It was interesting to read the article in the Guardian/Observer which highlights how large stores such as Tesco are regretting their past decisions to open ever larger stores now that an increasing number of customers are abandoning them in favour of Internet shopping. I must confess I have little sympathy for these retail giants; I have always seen the building of these huge stores as a greed lead approach to business which often steamrollers across environmental common sense and the wishes of local communities to produced traffic nightmares and an unpleasant and time consuming shopping experience.
However, while these massive companies are using their huge resources to reinvent themselves the small businesses in our high streets are also suffering from the Internet but for different reasons. They are undoubtedly struggling to match the prices that the Internet-only businesses such as Amazon can manage but what is less obvious is that they are often invisible to the enormous number of potential customers who start their shopping via Google and other search engines.
Try making a mental map of the businesses in your local high street then pay a quick visit to your favourite search engine and see how many of those businesses have become invisible. Now repeat the exercise using your favourite Social Media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and FourSquare and see how well they have managed to hide themselves from the huge number of Internet-literate shoppers.
I am currently organising an event which offers businesses free publicity and thereby the opportunity to attract customers. The Internet and Social Media ‘invisibility’ of many businesses makes it harder to contact them, harder to make them aware of what is on offer and consequently harder to push potential customers their way.
There are many initiatives from the government and elsewhere that are trying to stop ‘the death of the high street’. Maybe some simple, and relatively cheap, guidance on the creation of web sites and use of Social Media may help them to once again become visible to their twenty-first century customers.
The Marston family, England