u/FrostedTips-234

My husband and I own a pet grooming salon in Denver. We're a small business doing around $300k a year.

We've made it this far without a website. Most people find us through Google Maps, check our reviews (mostly positive), and then message us on Instagram or call to book.

Lately I've been wondering if we're making things harder than they need to be. People ask about pricing, hours, and appointments all the time, and I feel like having a website could answer a lot of those questions.

I brought it up with him, but he's not convinced enough people would actually visit a website to justify paying for one. He's a real people person and actually enjoys talking to customers, so he doesn't mind spending time answering calls and Instagram messages.

On top of that, an SEO company called Infidigit recently reached out offering to build the website, handle the SEO, and manage everything for a monthly fee that honestly seems reasonable.

Curious what other small business owners have experienced. Did getting a website actually bring in more business, or were Google and social media enough?

As an idea, weekend trips are great and are a nice way to sort of recharge yourself…but I don’t really feel so.

I want those week long trips when you can genuine switch off the outside noise and work pressure and everything else. Weekend trips get over as soon as they start (or else it feels like) 😅

I’ve done both and I always prefer the long trips even if it is once in a year or so. Still have memories of just chilling in Munnar or Goa, for a week doing nothing. For me, that’s what a real ‘getaway’ is. We have a club mahindra membership so their resorts are generally in a quiet location…away from the main city. That also helps!

I know it depends on the company and your interests as well? But what would you prefer? 6-7 weekend getaways in a year? Or two 7-10 day trips?

We moved from Magento to Shopify about 6 weeks ago. New dev team handled it. I specifically asked about redirects and was told "all taken care of."
But we're now sitting at 30% lower organic traffic…a bunch of 404s I'm still finding and clients losing their mind.

Currently working through the cleanup with an agency...they flagged about 140 redirect issues in the first crawl that the dev team missed entirely.
But I wanted to know if anyone else has been through this. How long did recovery take for you? Did traffic fully come back or did you permanently lose some of it?