Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

Strictly convenience, probably not. You can still have one of the free ones to show your hours, specials and new items.

Michael

Yes... Yes... Yes. You'll likely have several people tell you that no one would visit a website for a convenience store... But I would disagree as long as the site was executed well.

Regarding cost: You can setup an easy to administer professional looking website for very little money... Maybe $50 including hosting.

Regarding opportunities: I'm not in the convenience store business... But I am a big customer. There are several opportunities and it depends on what your business goals are. I could see you posting coupons, special offers, and sales on your website.

Offer an email sign up and start generating an email list of customers. Then you can send special offers to your email list to bring in more foot traffic... Or special offers targeted at referrals so your loyal customers push their friends and family to come in. You can use a service like MailChimp (https://www.mailchimp.com/) to easily setup and manage an email list.

There's even opportunity for using Facebook and Twitter... You can Tweet all of your promotions, sales, special offers, but you could also tweet about products and food. For example if you offer hot food or doughnuts in the morning you could post status updates or tweets about a special flavor offered only that day... Or a special coffee brand offered for a limited time. I could even see you posting things like "Red Bull: Buy on 12oz, get one free - Today Only". If people are subscribed to your Twitter feed, Facebook updates, RSS, or email they would get this update and swing by on their way home from work when they normally may not have.

All of this is around creating buzz for your store. If your customers get value out of their online interaction with you then they're going to be a lot more likely to go to your store... Even if sometimes it is not the most convenient. The key is that your website can't simply be an online brochure... To get the most value you're going to want to offer value.

Hope this helps,
Zack - Corporate Radical

If you just want to list your store's basic info for free (phone, hours, location, etc.), use: https://www.google.com/local/add/ (I wrote an article describing the service here: https://www.manygoodideas.com/2008/07/01/boost-your-stores-foot-traffic-for...)