New Feature Added to Our Website to Help Customers and Dealers

Hale Pet Door is pleased to announce that we have added a new feature to our website that we hope will help both our customers and our dealers. We have added a ZIP code search functionality which will enable customers to better find the dealers who are closest to their area and provide the services they are looking for.

There is nothing more frustrating as a customer than calling around to different dealers only to find they don’t come to your area or they don’t offer the type of services you need. There is nothing more frustrating to a dealer than spending time answering phone calls and questions from potential customers who are outside of your service area or who need a type of installation that you don’t provide. With this new feature we hope to alleviate those problems as much as possible and save everyone time and frustration.

To make this feature work as well as possible for everyone we are asking for a little help from our dealers. We have all the dealers currently set to a default service area with a radius of 50 miles. However, some dealers service more, some less. And some dealers cover entire states or regions. We also have dealers who do all types of installations but some who only do in glass or only do screens or only install if you purchase a people door from them as well, etc. All these things can be quickly communicated to potential customers upfront now to give our dealers better-qualified leads.

To assist us in making your listing on our website as accurate as possible, we have created a form that you can quickly fill out online and automatically submit to us. Then we will take that information and update your listing on our website.

Please visit the online form and answer the 11 short questions regarding your company and your service area and installation types. Once you hit submit it will automatically send it to us and we will update your listing on our website.

Below you can see examples of how dealer results look with and without this extra information.

We hope you see even better results with this new feature and we always appreciate feedback or suggestions from our dealers.

Hale Pet Door Launches New Website

October 4, 2019 Hale Pet Door dealers, internet marketing, pet door business, small business

new website on PC small

We are very excited to notify you that we have launched a new website. The URL is the same (halepetdoor.com), but the look is totally new.

We’ve tried to make the website more mobile-friendly and responsive for use with mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets as many of you have told us that you place orders while between jobs. The site does look different depending on whether you are on desktop or mobile but should hopefully be easy for you to navigate and find what you are looking for. The information is still there it’s just in a different place.

new website on phone

As you peruse the website there are some pages that have not been updated yet (including the dealer dashboard), so they have the old website look. We are continuing to roll out changes over the next few weeks so those should be switching over soon.

If you find an issue on the new website, please email info@halepetdoor.com and we will have IT check into it.

new website on tablet

We hope you enjoy our new website and quickly learn the new flow of it.

We also want to let you know that we are updating the information on the site itself so if you could take a look at your dealer listing and let us know if the information is correct or if you would like updates we would appreciate it. And finally if you are scheduled to attend any tradeshows, home shows, or pet shows this fall or winter or in 2020, please let us know the details and we would love to list it on our website as well.

Protect Your Online Reputation

July 15, 2011July 15, 2011 Hale Pet Door internet marketing, small business

social network by renjith krishnan/FreeDigitalPhotos.net — People are talking online--what are they saying about your business?

It’s great to get reviews—especially positive comments. But what if the rare disgruntled customer leaves a not-so-positive review online?

There are three options for dealing with negative feedback:

1. Ignore it

2. Tell the customer that he’s wrong

3. Encourage a dialogue and take the discussion offline

It’s pretty obvious that the first two options are not going to ‘win friends and influence people’. The third option is the best way to put out smoldering resentments before they turn into a wildfire of negative criticism.

Depending on the platform, you may be able to address the problem online. If you can’t respond online, it’s mandatory that you try to discover the identity of the unhappy customer and contact her to make the situation right.

When responding to a negative review online—for example: Angie’s List offers the opportunity to respond to all reviews—be sure to ask the customer to contact you so that you can make the situation right. As far as your response to the customer in the public arena it’s paramount to be respectful to the customer’s opinion. No matter how wrong you know the customer is about the situation, remember that other prospects are reading the review and if you come out swinging, your harsh words are bound to come back and hit you in the face. Once anything is put on the Internet, it’s like it’s carved in stone—it’s there forever in some form or another, so be impeccable with your words.

After you have corrected the situation, be sure to ask the customer to revamp the review to include the way you addressed their concerns.

That’s probably the easy part—correcting mistakes. The hardest part is finding those less than positive comments about your business. One way to see what people are writing about your business is by setting up Google Alerts for your company name, products and keywords. There’s a Facebook app that will do the same for Facebook posts and comments here HyperAlerts.

There are companies that work to push those noxious comments down in the search engine results, but taking care of your own Online Reputation Management (ORM) is undoubtedly the best way to find out what your customers are saying about your company while giving you the opportunity to put a positive spin on your customer service that the whole world can see.

How have you dealt with reviews or online comments about your business?

Let Your Customers Sell Your Service: Getting Reviews

June 23, 2011June 28, 2011 Hale Pet Door internet marketing, small business

You work hard to craft the perfect messages to market your business. However, potential customers will believe their second cousin’s ex-brother-in-law’s opinion over your ad every time.

The Internet gives customers a platform to share their opinions with the whole world. This can be very scary or the opportunity of a lifetime. So, how can you use the myriad of review sites to build business?

Firstly, be sure to have your guarantee and quality control in place, so that if you do end up with a less than satisfied customer, you can rectify the situation quickly and completely. In order to be sure every customer is a satisfied customer, you might ask them to fill out a short survey of your product and service once the project is complete.

The next step is to get those deliriously happy customers to leave a review on the Internet. Because Google believes that its sites carry the highest authority, the first place you want to see reviews is on Google Places. So make sure that your business has a completed listing on Google Places. It’s free and that’s always the best price.

Angie’s List is another great place to get a review, but it’s open only to the paid membership, so the number of potential readers is smaller. There is no cost for businesses to be listed as the consumers pay for the privilege of membership.

Other places to make sure you have listing so your customers can leave a review are:

Merchant Circle (merchantcircle.com)
Yahoo! Local (local.yahoo.com)
Yelp (yelp.com)
City Search (yourcity.citysearch.com)
Local.com (local.com)
Yellow Book (yellowbook.com)
Yellow Bot (yellowbot.com)

You can check your listings on several of these sites by going to Yext.Com and entering your business information. They have a service that will do it for you, or you can use the information to improve your own listings for free.

Marketing on the Web: with or without a Website

March 24, 2011April 8, 2011 Hale Pet Door internet marketing, pet door business, small business

WebMuted3 — Connect with your customers on the web

These days, it seems like you can’t be in business without a website, but for many start-ups, it’s the one thing that can be put off until some money starts flowing in.

So what can you do? Well, there are many marketing opportunities on the Internet that don’t require technical know-how or big bucks. If you can find a website and fill out some forms, you’ll have a presence on the Internet without the expense of ads or a website.

Add Your Business to these Directories for Free

Check out the directories below that encourage you to add your business – even if you don’t have a website. There are pet related sites in this list as well as general local business listings. And remember, this is only a place to start, there are more places on the Internet to create a presence for your customers to find you.

Market Socially

There are some businesses that take social marketing so seriously that they create their Facebook business pages and get active on Twitter before they build a website.

It’s a great time to be starting or growing a business with all these free local marketing opportunities.

We’ve been very pleased with the exposure these lists and directories have given us. What’s been your experience with listing on these or other directories?