Stranded in Paris, We Learned Why a Website Wins the Customer

The night before my birthday, my partner and I were in Paris. We had been traveling for over four hours. The plan was to push on and make it home, but home was another five hours by train. We looked at each other, exhausted, and made the call: we were not making it home tonight.

We found a hotel, collapsed, and woke up on my birthday in a city neither of us had planned to spend it in.

So we decided to make the best of it. We went to see the Eiffel Tower.

The Search That Decided Our Lunch

By late morning we were hungry. Really hungry. We pulled out a phone and searched Google Maps for a cafe or restaurant near the Eiffel Tower.

Here is the thing about that area: it is a tourist zone. We were nervous that the places around there would be full, or not taking walk-ins, or would make us wait an hour for a table. We were hungry, and we could not handle disappointment or a long wait.

So we set a rule. We would only consider a result that had two things:

• A Google Maps profile that looked like a real, good spot to eat.
• A website link that led to a booking page.

That was the filter. No website with a way to book, no table. We were not going to gamble on a walk-in.

We found a place that matched. We booked online in about a minute. We walked over, sat down, and had a great birthday lunch. No waiting. No disappointment.

The Lesson

That whole morning, we were not thinking about marketing. We were thinking about lunch. But we were doing exactly what every customer does: we searched, we looked at the results, and we picked the business that was easy to find and easy to book.

The businesses that showed up with a real profile and a website with a booking page won. The ones without a website, or with a website that did not let us book, lost us before we ever walked in.

That is what a website does. It is not a brochure. It is the difference between being the place someone picks, and being the place someone scrolls past.

Your customers are doing the same thing right now. They are hungry, they are in a hurry, and they will pick whoever is easiest to find and easiest to say yes to.

Get a professional website in 10 days

We build starter websites that get found and that let your customers book, buy, or reach you without friction. From $500, done for you in about 10 days.

E-commerce is included in the Starter Website. Payment gateway integration (connecting your bank's secure payment page) is an optional add-on for businesses ready to receive online payments.