Websites Under Your Control Blog

The owner of Logan Teal Salon wanted the benefits of client-editable content, email marketing, and more.

She already had a website that we had designed in the past, and did not want to change much, so she asked us to merely re-implement her website using our Online Business Partner™ technology.

For less than the cost of a couple of small website changes, we were able to convert her site and show her how to make updates whenever she wishes, with no special software needed.

Creative people demand creativity in their websites, so when Next Step Dance opened their doors in Frisco, they had us design a look for their logo, their advertising, and their website.

Because we wanted to illustrate the wide range of professional-level dance training and performances at Next Step, we display the images on the home page in a slide show, changing every few seconds, and we display randomly selected images from their performances on each of the inner pages.

Carolini's Treasures creates and sells custom gifts, especially gift baskets of all sorts.

We designed the logo and look of the site, and built the site with the first few products. To illustrate the variety of gift baskets, we placed a slide show on the home page.

Carolini's Treasures also sells personalized children's books, so we customized the order form to obtain the necessary personalization for these items.

Once the initial site was set up, we met with the business owner to show her the work so far, and the steps for adding more material and products. Seeing how easy it was, the business owner decided she could add her additional website content and products herself, saving her over 60% from the original budget.

To accompany the opening of a new business, McKinney Gym Equipment had us design and set up a new website to display and sell his products.

Taking a very active role in the design and content of his website, the business owner had us develop a custom look to his online catalogs and product display.

Carrying Websites Under Your Control^® one step further, the business owner read through our online technical documentation, and did his own customization of the shopping cart layout and invoice layout.

The Frisco Bar Association's website includes a list of all its members, as well as a facility for visitors to the website to find members of the Frisco Bar Association who specialize in specific areas of the law.

To allow Bar Association members to keep their information up to date, we developed an option to allow each member to view and edit their own directory information by logging in to the secure "members only" area.

Make a great first impression, and you'll get the benefit of the doubt next time. Make a poor first impression, and it takes an awful lot of positive experiences to turn it around. (Now there's a blinding flash of the obvious!) Not surprisingly, this works with websites as well. What is quite surprising is just how quickly people get these first impressions when it's a website. Psychology researchers at Carleton University (Ottawa) followed the standard approach in researching such things.

1. Show a large number of people a handful of websites, and ask the people to rate the websites;
2. Show a separate large group of people the same websites for a shorter period, and get ratings on each;
3. Repeat #2 with an ever-shorter viewing period, as long as the ratings don't change.

Through this process, the researchers can determine the minimum duration of a viewing that will create such a lasting impression that the ratings don't vary significantly with much longer exposure.

1/20th of a second. To the astonishment of almost everyone, the impression gained in a mere 50 milliseconds, 1/20th of a second, was sufficient to remain "in control" of the viewers' overall evaluation of each of the websites for an extended period. Our websites need to create a favorable impression in the first blink of an eye. Otherwise, even if our visitors hang around long enough to look further, they will be doing so with a predetermined impression of what we have to offer. (Read the BBC account.)