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Fix Your Web Presence Before Thinking About Social Media – Perfect Case Study
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Social media is certainly a hot ticket at the moment when it comes to marketing with brands all trying to get ahead of the game. It’s a great cost effective way of marketing and engaging with your customers in a meaningful way and if done correctly the return on investment can be stunning. There is however a danger at times that people can jump on the bandwagon too fast. Brands and business try and drop everything else to get into social media forgetting some of the other basics. We always preach it here on the blog and advise our clients that any social media activity should only be part of an overall marketing strategy or form one strand of your customer service. Social media is not going to be all things to all men (and women). I came across an example of this in the last couple of days by complete chance and it could not drive the point home more effectively…
The Brilliant Social Media Idea
This is a brilliant campaign by Pizza Hut that gives out a code every time somebody scores against France in the world cup. It’s an Irish based campaign and is tapping in to the need for revenge after Thiery Henry cheated us out of a world cup place. Enter a code and you’ll get free pizza. Simple but pure genius. It’s attracted a lot of likes on Facebook, some good early engagement and a bit of a cult following. Awesome work here that should be applauded as innovative work through social media.
The Web Presence
Now in contrast to the brilliant work that is being done above I want to talk a little about Pizza Hut’s web presence here in Ireland (Click here for their Google results). When looking for a pizza menu to order from tonight my first stop was of course Google. So the first result that came up in the search engines shows….
Competition taking the piss
As you will see below not only do Pizza Hut have a very poor web presence where they are leaving lots of money on the table but they are also letting their biggest competitor Dominos take the piss out of them by running Google Ads against their own name without offering up any competition. There is no doubt that they are losing customers immediately here.
Search Result Number 1
So when I go to order a pizza in Ireland from Pizza hut this is the website that I first see. This is just not acceptable for a company that sell pizzas online with the web being their customer’s first port of call.
Search Result Number 2
This is the really annoying one. Although I have arrived on the site and it tells me I can order online (Not going to try it to be honest) the rest of the site is shocking. I have to download a PDF to view the menu and when I do download that PDF most of it is upsaide down! An upside down PDF!! The site has no information about toppings or basic menu information but they do of course have the standard link through to Facebook.
Search Result Number 3
Most consumers don’t really look past about the 3rd result on Google. Pizza hut for some very strange reason have their terms and conditions popping up for the 3rd search term. I am guessing the reason this page shows up is because the website is so poor and features so little text which is why this irrelevant page is ranking so well.
What Does All This Mean?
Well in simple terms Pizza Hut are losing business. I went to their website to possibly order pizza but became so infuriated by the process that I gave up. Many others will face the same dilema. We all have short attention spans online and in the time it takes to download an upside down PDF I’ll have gone and ordered with a competitor. We are a social media agency so I don’t want to talk myself out of work but I really feel companies should sort out their basic web presence before trying to tackle social media. I’m not having a go at their social stuff because they are doing great there but Pizza Hut need to realize that first and foremost their customers want to order the right pizza and find information about their products online. The really annoying part is that this could be fixed up in less than a day with a tiny budget and some basic SEO and optimizing of their site. It’s all about basic housekeeping and I think brands and businesses should try and do the basics right before they run off trying to tackle all the exciting new social media stuff that people are talking about! Fixing that website will increase sales. Simple as that. Once that is done it is time to promote your lovely new site and there is no doubt that handing out free pizzas through Facebook is a brilliant way of doing that!
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Nice post. Pizza Hut are really slacking compared to Dominos. Dominos site is so easy to order from and they even remember previous orders and ask if you’d simply like the same as last time. It’s that false notion of a seemingly faceless company remembering you or your preferences that endears you to them, and results in returning customers.
I really wish you’d said “Competitors taking the pizz”
Damm that would have been slick. You should be writing headlines for The Sun
Seems they heard you, I see a totally different website now.
We’re starting a social media campaign for our company this month. Good thing I stumbled on somebody’s RT of your post earlier today. Now I would need to double check our website to make sure that all the pages have relevant content.
As a frenchman living 12 years in Ireland, who has no time nor care about the new almighty dogmatic religion football, i find it very bad such a large corporation as Pizza Hut chooses to encourage such negative nationalistic vibes towards french people!
Couldn’t agree more. I was actually writing about a similar topic myself. It’s frightening how many clients want to jump in at the deep end without first getting their house in order. Pizza Hut should be ashamed.
http://www.chriskenworthy.co.uk/2010/06/get-your-house-in-order-first/
Yes! This is brilliant. I am working with a client now who has an awful website, but they “need” to go social now. This was great affirmation for my gut feeling.
Excellent post. Trying to ensure my client’s website links are working is critical for effective social media. There’s no point sending out posts if the links to the relevant sites don’t work. Without a robust website the messages are pointless.
On the other hand, the winner of Best Casual Dining in Ireland at the Irish Restaurant Awards last night (9th June), La Cucina in Limerick (and a favourite of Simply Zesty) does not appear to have a website displaying its wares/menus etc. (though it does have a food blog at http://www.italianfoodies.ie), yet it does have over 3,000 friends/fans on Facebook.com/lacucina. We are trying to get our website http://www.restaurantskilkenny.com redeveloped so that we don’t suffer in similar fashion to Pizza Hut with our (so far very limited) social media activity. See http://www.facebook.com/cafesolbistro
Pizza Hut is engaging in a hate campaign, pure and simple. I hope the French in France boycott all their stores.