Yesterday I had a low tire. It needed to be plugged (not patched, as I had requested and was corrected). I pulled into a Goodyear store. It was 5 pm, and I didn’t want to sit there for an hour for them to fix my tire, so I asked if they could do it quickly. “Nope, it would take us about 45 minutes.” I couldn’t wait that long (or rather, I wasn’t willing to wait that long) so I asked if they knew of any one else who could fix it. Their reply, “Probably not anyone this late in the day.”

I thanked him and turned around to leave the store. From the lobby of their store, I could see three other tire shops. I didn’t know they were there until I was looking for them (that’s a whole different blog altogether). I ignored his advice and drove to Bridgestone. Guess what? They fixed my tire in about 3 minutes, looked up pricing to replace my tires so I knew the price when I needed new wheels and they were extremely friendly and hoped that I could come back to visit them soon.

One company won a customer that day and an other lost a customer. Goodyear failed to notice that I had choices. They failed to notice that there were 3 other competitors within site of their lobby that would offer the same service, only 15 times faster.

It’s no different-actually it’s worse-on the web. If your web site doesn’t provide a solution to your potential customer NOW, they are one search or one back button away from being your competitor’s customer.

Don’t pull a Goodyear. Make sure your site is offering everything it should be offering and don’t assume your customer’s going to wait for you to get your act together. They have choices. Plenty of choices.