Imagine the following scene which isn't as far removed from internet advertising Glasgow firms as it first sounds - a busy Hair Salon on a Saturday morning, with skilled hairdressers, hot tea and coffee for the customers, gorgeous décor and a pile of the latest fashion magazines ready to consume. Now imagine 100 well to do ladies walk in, all intent on getting their hair done, they look around, and for whatever reason,

they leave without getting their hair done.

Now this happens all across your local city every single day. Hot customers walk into businesses every day, and for whatever reason – the temperature, the music, no music – whatever, they leave again. And you didn’t get their email address, phone number or postal address, so you can never reach them ever again.

Guess what – you just lost 100 hot customers. On top of that, all the friends and colleagues they might recommend to you. And it’s worse than that. My female friends tell me they’ll spend £60 every 6 weeks on their hairdo. To the salon, that’s £519 per year, per customer. You just watched £52,000 walk out of your premises!

And worse, they’ll probably go straight to Twitter and Facebook and tell all their friends how you ignored them! For the first time in history a business’s reputation is in the hands of the public.

In my Glasgow web agency I tell clients all the time "I don’t care how nice your website is". It doesn’t matter if it has gorgeous flash animation and the most expensive images you could buy. You can get 100 hot to buy

visitors per day – but if you aren’t capturing their names and email addresses, you can’t ever follow them up. Number of eyeballs on your page is irrelevant.

Right on your home page – get your webmaster to set up an opt-in box to get at least an email address. Better is first name too. Ideal is name, email and mobile phone number. Imagine if you got a text message and an email every time a visitor leaves their details. And what if the customer did too!? That’s one of the Glasgow web advertising techniques I offer to all of my clients.

You might need to give them something in exchange for their details – a free report, a download, a free gift. Some "ethical bait" to incentivise them into opting in. Remember that your money is in your list. Your two most valuable assets in business are 1] your mindset, and 2] your list of customers.