TRANSCRIPT
TRACEY COTTERELL: Hello, I’m Tracey Cotterell and I own and operate Matters of Taste Cooking School in Perth.
The video that’s playing is one example of many we’ve recorded for our online cooking club, built for customers who can access this via the World Wide Web. It’s an online cookbook that expands on a regular basis with new recipes and cooking information.
It’s been wonderful for us to be able to record our intellectual property and catalogue it in a format that’s easy to navigate and one we can now share with subscribers. It’s far more fun than a hard-copy recipe book because it’s so interactive. The search function will find you anything you want and we link from the recipes to pages explaining recipes and techniques. This is one way we use the internet to support our business.
Matters of Taste Cooking School has been operational since 1997. In this time I’ve seen a huge shift in the way small businesses use the internet, and the exponential embrace by the general public. We have learnt a lot over the years. The general public’s understanding of what a website is used for is proving its value over the recent couple of years as people become more aware of the ease and convenience of information found on the internet. Simply put, if you don’t have web presence, you won’t be found easily.
Everyone googles. We have search engine optimisation work carried out on our website and are now found by customers we want to find us as we’re appearing on page one of the search engines. This has done wonders for our corporate group classes as businesses tend to use the web as a tool to research everything.
Our website is kept up to date and is a reliable reference for customers wanting to book a class. It’s imperative not to have a stale website. If they can’t find what they’re looking for, people immediately go somewhere else—because they can at the click of a mouse—and you’ve lost business.
We’ve gained a name for ourselves as having current information available and have subtly trained our customers through our regular newsletters to use the site rather than calling us for information. This means we no longer spend time on the phone explaining to customers the class schedule, but now have phone calls from people saying, “I’d like to book for the such and such a class on such and such a date.”
I also create all the content for the site. It’s taken me time to learn HTML so I can troubleshoot if a page doesn’t load properly, and time also to try and perfect wording and the visual presentation of our web presence.
Remember your audience can get a good feel for any business, and make their decision on whether to utilise your service or product, just by looking at your information on their computer screen. Make your website clear, concise and easy to navigate.
As business evolves, we’re looking for solutions to ensure our business system is run efficiently and my next challenge is to add a flexible payment system to our website. There are many features we need and that I’ve dreamt up, and once it’s up and running it will bring advantages to us and our customers.
Keep your eyes and ears open. Like any technology, the internet will continue to improve and change and it’s your job to keep up with it. So, if you think you’re on the right track, don’t stay there, as you’ll more than likely get run over by the oncoming train. Thanks for watching.
[LAUGHING] Carving through meat! It’s a frozen chicken isn’t it!
[JAZZ MUSIC PLAYS]