Google aids small businesses with websites

The Internet is where people research local products and services, but until Friday you wouldn?t have found websites for Mr. Bones Restaurant in Buffalo or Signature Cuisines by Design in Kenmore. These small businesses didn?t have sites.

?Fifty-two percent of New York?s small businesses have no online presence, but 97 percent of people get information about businesses online,? said Ken Norton, Google Group product manager. ?The Web is a very powerful platform for growing and enabling businesses, but if you?re not online, you?re invisible to 97 percent of people.?

Norton, a Western New York native, returned home Friday with a team of Google employees to give businesses free Internet visibility as a way to spur their growth. And they aided more than 450 companies in creating or improving their websites and armed them with tools and resources to successfully market their operations in cyberspace.

?New York Get Your Business Online,? a Google collaboration with local and national partners, aims to provide free websites, customized domain names, Web hosting for a year, plus listings on Google Places to the 52 percent of the state?s small firms that don?t currently have sites or an effective online presence. Three, 2 1/2-hour sessions were held throughout the day at the Embassy Suites on Delaware Avenue.

Norton, who grew up in West Seneca, said the Internet giant is interested in small businesses because their health drives the nation?s economy, noting that smaller companies comprise half of the country?s GDP and account for two-thirds of jobs that are created. Norton got his start at a local small business that prepared him for his career in Silicon Valley, he said.

But intimidation, cost and the perception that getting a website would be time-consuming, have kept smaller companies from reaping the benefits of online presence.

?It seems complicated and they think they?ll have to hire a full-time programmer,? Norton said. ?But the first step is to get them online, and they?ll leave here today with the skills to manage the site.?

Business owners created their sites in less than an hour with instruction from the Google team with an easy-to-use template designed by Intuit. And the sites went live on the Internet the same day.

?I had looked into getting on the Internet but it was $190 a month, just too expensive for me,? said Clyde Watkins, who opened Mr. Bones in 2007. ?So this is a great opportunity. A Web site will help me get more people to come to my business, especially in the winter time, when things slow down. I really want to keep my business going.?

After the first year, businesses will have to pay for Web hosting, which is $6.99 a month.

The city was contacted by Google to offer the program to 120 people. But Mayor Byron W. Brown said more than 450 business owners registered, and Google agreed to accommodate the larger number.

?When I heard about it, I signed up immediately,? said Malissa Jackson, a caterer who started her business, Signature Cuisines, three years ago. ?I know this is really going to help me reach a broader audience.?

The Google training attracted all kinds of companies in business for varying lengths of time ? from Clarence Center?s Creative Essence, which started less than six-months ago to Gigi?s Restaurant, the iconic soul food eatery that opened in 1960 in Buffalo.

Creative Essence had a website before Friday, but its traffic was slow.

?We?re just getting started and finding it more difficult to gain traction,? said Michele Beiter, co-owner of the crafting studio. ?I want to learn how to use the Google tools to get more traffic to my site.?

She learned that effectively using all of the tools will do the trick. For starters, she needs to get a Google+ page, get reviews on her Google Places listing and add more photos to her website.

?It?s all so connected,? she said. ?If you?re missing one of them, you could really be missing out and not get the traction to building your website.?

Local partners in the training project included the City of Buffalo, Empire State Development and New York State Small Business Development Center. Nationally, Intuit, Meetup, American Small Business Development Centers and the Small Business Administration?s SCORE program are Google?s partners.

esapong@buffnews.comnull

Source: http://www.buffalonews.com/business/article639650.ece

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