“Alternately you could pay a certified installer to do it for you. These days, installation is often cheap and sometimes free.”

As if you don’t have enough trouble remembering to create for your consumer what he wants and knows, the quote above comes from yet another reasonably well respected technology source called CNET telling your consumers what to think and want. As indicated in the first sentence quote, it is clear that CNET (600,000 plus Twitter followers) does not have your best interest at heart.

The article titled What should you look for when choosing a car stereo?, dated January 24, 2014 written by one Antuan Goodwin, seven pages long (in font size 10) went on to explain to readers and their friends (your consumers) about which head unit to buy depending on reader category; mechless heads, DVD, APPs, Navigation and budget car stereos. It mentioned a number of brands, all of which are available to your consumers at lots of low margin places. It also noted a number of features to look for, large color display, USB port, playback of MP3, AAC or WMA (compressed formats) and a 3.5mm jack.

In all seven pages the concept of audio quality was mentioned once and it was in conjunction with the onboard 50x4 deck power. That concept was summed up by this statement, “I find that for most stock and reasonably priced aftermarket speakers will perform well with about 25 watts RMS or about 50 watts max per channel...”. Go now and read a car stereo brochure or any of the bazillions of websites that teach your consumer that an in-dash powered head meets those needs very nicely.

Then of course the coupe-de-grass ending statement about the only thing you as an installing specialty retailer have as a significant differentiator from most of your competition, your installation skills... “Alternately you could pay a certified installer to do it for you. These days, installation is often cheap and sometimes free.”

I contend that this kind of statement does not support the notion that an installing brick & mortar specialty retailer should, will or even can add value to a consumer’s purchase decision.

NOW take a look at your web site. Ask yourself the following questions...

• Does my website focus on educating my target consumers about my store and the unique value that we deliver to the consumer that is not available elsewhere?

• Does my website come up near or at the top of the list when someone in my market searches for car stereo or the like? Or is Crutchfield or Sonic at the top of the list?

• Does my site offer the consumer an education about what we do?

• Is there a compelling message for a visitor to my site to actually visit my store?

  If you can honestly answer HELL YES to these questions, take the rest of the day off. You are one of the very few.

• If your answer is more like, well not really, you gotta go to work. Get somebody to help you improve your site in order to attract consumers as opposed to driving them elsewhere. Mitch Schaffer at Mobile Edge in Lehighton PA 610-377-2730, has done a terrific job and is worth talking to for help.