Don’t Let Opportunities “Fly By”

I have been fly-fishing for many years now, and in the fall of 2009 I decided to start tying my own flies. I went to the local fishing store, bought the supplies I needed, and got started. The first few flies I tied left much to be desired and certainly would have insulted the intelligence of any respectable fish. With the aim of improving my craft, I did a lot of research online and found YouTube was an extremely useful resource, as were many other websites. Among many things I learned was the importance of getting high-quality feathers. Armed with this knowledge I headed out to the local fly shops, but none had them in stock. In fact, in both shops, the premium feathers had been on back-order for many months. One shop keeper said it would be faster if I ordered them online, so back I went to my computer to find the coveted capes and saddles.

Being in the business of building websites and web-based business applications, I try to pay special attention to my personal online habits and experiences in order to see things from an end-user perspective. I jumped online to find the elusive premium feathers, and began to research the pricing, quality, and availability of the product I needed. The first few hours I spent on the subject were all about educating myself about who the trusted suppliers and brands were and finding out what critical things made one product better than another. I took very little note of comparative pricing, other than to get a rough idea of what I should be expecting to pay. Once I felt I had a good idea of the type and quality of the products available, I started searching for a place to buy online. It was at this point things got a bit disappointing and sometimes frustrating.

I jumped over to Google and did a fairly focused search on exactly what I was looking for and the results came back with the expected ten “ka-zillion” responses and related advertising links on the top and right side of the pages. Scrolling through both free search results and the paid advertising links, I started to click around. It seemed there were two types of websites: those I would buy from and those I wouldn’t. The ones that fell into the second category probably out-numbered the sites in the first 50:1, which made the process of choosing that much more difficult.

The sites I felt confident about at first glance tended to be the big players. Their sites were well-designed and provided the same customer experience I would have expected if I had gone into their brick and mortar stores, and both had a product that seemed similar to what I was looking for. Their Big Box appearance, however, left me with a lingering question about whether their idea of “premium” would be the same as that of a specialty boutique-type store run by experts. I noticed on one site that the product had been ear-marked as “low inventory – may be back-ordered,” and I wondered if it would be a crap shoot to get exactly what I wanted. I also feared the return processes and the possibility that the inevitable delay would keep me from actually getting a quality fly tied before spring. What I really wanted was a boutique shop with a website that demonstrated the company’s business and product expertise, that carried exactly what I needed in-stock, and that made me confident and inspired enough to do business with them.

As I continued to search for a business that met these criteria, it became obvious many of them would probably have satisfied me if I’d walked into their brick and mortar stores; they simply looked amateurish and disreputable online. Unfortunately, all I had to go on was how they presented themselves based on their website services. Far too many of these businesses failed to provide a suitable experience for online customers. Some were even paying to advertise online – to me, ad dollars are wasted if the website fails to provide a good experience once it manages to attract customers. As I expanded my search, location and price took more of a back-seat to finding the right company to do business with.

In the end I found a supplier clear across the country that had exactly what I needed. Their site made me confident they are serious about their business and customer satisfaction. They were responsive to my questions and I had no qualms about buying from them then or in the future.

The moral of the story is, of course, that while a “good enough” website might make your accountant happy in the short-term, in the long-term it will cost you money and customers, which will only free up more of his time for fishing, rather than counting your money.