I encounter a lot of franchisor and franchisee websites in my daily life, both as a consumer and businessperson.  While some franchise systems have figured how important it is to build a well-branded, easy to navigate, action-oriented site, the vast majority still miss the mark. 

Here are a few “dos” for the consumer audience:

• Make the homepage simple.  Layout should be clean.  Information should be limited to what is most important to the consumer.  Page should load lightning fast.
• Allow the consumer to find the closest location, or for that matter any location, from anywhere in the site.  That, in addition to gathering information, is the most common reason for the consumer’s visit to the franchise website.
• Provide more than just address information for each location.  Add local coupons.  Add a picture of the store so the consumer can identify landmarks.  Add easy ways to get in touch with the local store, like store-specific emails, phone numbers or even click-to-call functionality.

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We all know that doctors don’t always have the time, knowledge or resources to market their practices.  That being said, there is one cheap, efficient, fast method that doctors can use to drive new patients, and retain current patients – local search listings.

For the sake of this exercise, we’ll use this new search engine called Google.  Hopefully everyone has heard of it.  Let’s assume I am looking for a pediatrician in Morristown, New Jersey – naturally, I go to Google and type in “pediatricians morristown nj”.  Although your results may differ slightly depending on location and your preferences, here is what most will see:

Google Search for Pediatricians Morristown NJ

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