A Business Card, a Sign and a Website That Disagree

Four versions of one business

The business card gives the full company name, with Ltd, and the owner's cell number. The sign over the door uses a shorter name.

The website still carries the logo from before the refresh and a tagline retired three years ago. The Google listing adds the town to the name, and the Facebook page lists the old office number.

Nobody chose any of this. Each item was made at a different time, by a different supplier, from whatever was to hand.

To the owner it is all obviously one business. To a stranger, it looks like four slightly different ones.

Where the details drift

• The name, with and without Ltd, the trade, or the town.
• The phone number, an office line in one place, a cell in another.
• The address, written three ways, one with an old unit number.
• The logo, current on the van, older on the website, stretched on Facebook.
• The tagline, retired years ago but still on the cards.
• The colours, close on print and screen but never quite the same.

The second loses work outright. A customer who calls the number from an old card and reaches a voicemail nobody checks does not usually try a second number; they try a second business.

What it costs with customers

Small differences raise small questions: whether the company on the van is the one from the website, whether the business has changed hands, whether the number on the card still works.

None of these is serious alone. Together they add friction at the moment somebody is deciding whether to trust you with a job.

Referrals suffer most. A neighbour passes on the name as they remember it from the van, the customer searches for that name, and finds a listing under a different one, or finds a competitor.

What it costs in local search

Search engines build their picture of a local business from many sources: its own listing, its website, directories, review sites and social pages.

When those sources agree on the name, address and phone number, the picture is simple. When they disagree, the search engine has to guess which details are current, and it does not always guess right.

Disagreement is also how duplicate listings appear. A customer adds the business under the old name, or a directory feeds an old address back into the map, and reviews end up split between two listings.

Decide the official version

The fix starts with a single written page, before anything is reprinted or edited.

On it goes the name exactly as it should appear in public, which may differ from the registered legal name.

Then one main phone number, ideally a business line rather than anybody's personal cell, and one way of writing the address, including where the unit number goes.

Then the current logo files, the tagline if there is one, and the colours, with their codes for print and for screen.

It is a dull document. It is also the one every printer, sign maker and web designer should be handed from now on.

A worked example

A family-run electrical contractor changed its name slightly when the second generation took over, dropping the founder's initials and adding the word services.

The newer vans carried the new name. The oldest still had the old one, the business cards gave the founder's cell number, and the website used the new name with the old logo.

On Google there were two listings. The old one, created years earlier by a customer, had the founder's cell and most of the reviews. The new one, set up by the new owners, had the office line and a handful.

Customers who searched the name on the old van found the old listing and called a phone the founder, now retired, rarely answered.

The owners wrote the official version on one page. The new listing was corrected and the old one reported to Google My Business as a duplicate, which took several weeks of back and forth.

The website got the new logo, the cards were reprinted with the office line, and the old van was relettered at its next service.

Online details first

Fix the cheap, widely read details before the expensive ones. Online corrections cost nothing but time, and they are what most new customers read first.

Start with the Google listing, then the website's header, footer and contact page, then Facebook and any other social profiles.

Then the directories: Bing Places, Apple Maps, Yelp, your trade association, and any local directory that lists you. Most let an owner claim the listing and edit it.

Print and signage on a schedule

Not everything needs replacing tomorrow. Anything with a wrong phone number or address should be reprinted now, because it is sending customers somewhere they cannot reach you.

Items that differ only in tagline, logo version or colour can be replaced at their next natural reprint: the next box of cards, the next van service, the next sign repair.

Keep a short list of what is still outstanding, so the last old item is not still on the road in five years.

The counter-case

Some variation does no harm.

Colours will never match exactly between paper, vinyl and a screen, and a sign maker's nearest match is fine. A business with a deliberate second name for a separate service is fine too, provided each name is consistent within itself.

A sole trader with one van and a referral-only client list loses less to a stray old card than a business that depends on search.

But the name, the number and the address should be identical everywhere, and the written version is what keeps them that way.

The order to do it in

1. Collect one of everything with your name on it.
2. Write the official version on one page.
3. Fix your Google listing first.
4. Update the website header, footer and contact page.
5. Correct Facebook and the directories from the page.
6. Reprint anything with a wrong number now.
7. Replace the rest at its next natural reprint.

Step two is the one that stops the drift. Without a written version, every new card, sign and listing is somebody's best guess, and the details start to wander again.

The logo files that page should list are covered in a logo that only works on white.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.