Not serving your users

Customers don’t care about your website, they care about their own problems.

So when I go to Yahoo Yellow Pages to look for a local Dominos pizza takeout or a Sears department store I’m expecting to find information local to me, and not only local to me, but specifically what I’m looking for.

Yahoo! Maps and Yahoo! Yellow Pages has become so “advertiser” focused that when typing in “Dominos pizza” for a very specific Zip code within the Los Angeles area I am presented with pizza “restaurants.”

Many of whom don’t actually deliver.

I know.

I called them to find out if they deliver to my area.

“No” was the resounding answer.

Not only not to my area, but for some “restaurants” not to any area.

“We are a sit down restaurant, sir. We don’t deliver. I suggest you try Dominos.”

So I explain “Yes, I did, that was my search on Yahoo! Yellow Pages, “Dominos Pizza” but apparently you consider it important enough to usurp my search by presenting your business as a viable alternative but can’t actually follow through on the promise.”

The situation has become so bad that you have to page through two or three pages of “sponsored placement” for pizza restaurants as far as 90 miles from where I live — 90 miles as the crow flies, probably quite a bit further as a delivery driver having to take streets.

Many of these restaurants have nothing to do with Dominos, the national chain.

I wonder if Dominos knows that their brand is being misappropriated.