Websites Under Your Control Blog

Unless web geeks are your best customers, keep it simple, avoid the costly flashy stuff, and never, ever, have a starting page that says "click to skip intro." And write for your customers, not your own ego!

One of our oft-repeated messages to our clients is, focus your web site toward those people and businesses you feel are most likely to become your best customers.

Some want a website that tries to be all things to all people. That may sound like it would get more potential business, but you are diluting your appeal to your best prospects, and inviting time-wasting inquiries you don't want from people you can't help.

You are also dramatically weakening your Google appeal.

If you have a site that proclaims "anything for dogs" but you only sell jackets for dachshunds, you’re going to compete with a vast number of other sites for Google ranking.

Great Dane owners will find nothing to buy, and  your best customers will probably never find your site.

However, if you aim your site specifically toward wiener-dog owners, you’ll be more likely to get prominent Google ranking, even without any other special efforts.

But there's more to life than Google...

How much time do you want to spend with the wrong people? How about, precisely zero?

So in addition to what you say, make sure that you keep your best prospects in mind when you decide how you say it.

By way of example, since you are already here, look around our new website  (update long overdue, but you know about the shoemaker's children...)

Rather than design a garish, overblown site with fireworks and an organ grinder just to prove we can, we designed it as we would for any of our customers. We kept it simple, easy on the eyes, and informative.

Our decision to keep the tone light was based on our own personalities, plus our preference to work with people who think like we do. We want to inform, not preach. We’d rather joke than complain.

This is who we are, not who we want you to think we are.

We think a web site should be individual and personalized. It doesn’t have to scream to be heard.

Sometimes people listen more closely when you whisper.

 

Need help? That's what we are here for.

Congrats on the grand opening of BARK - The Boutique Hotel for Dogs! Bark Hotel for Dogs is conveniently located in Mckinney, TX near Hwy 121 and US 75.

Whether it be a private suite for an overnight stay or a romping day of play, their canine utopia offers all-inclusive luxury amenities with the sole mission of providing a safe, clean, and loving environment for your beloved pet . . . one wet nose at a time.

The owners of Bark Hotel for Dogs are not new to this business - they created and ran another upscale pet facility, before turning their attention to this new venture.

Congrats again, and thanks again  for asking us to do your website and design your printed marketing materials!

The unofficial results are in, with our client Patrick Fallon winning 57% of the vote for Frisco City Council.

As with most local elections, especially in "off years", the election depends on a very few voters, and yet the opportunity for a candidate to spread a message is limited, since broadcast and print media typically give little attention to elections outside the "big city".

So "getting the word out" was especially important, and a website, together with email marketing, supplemented Patrick's many other efforts to do so.

As with all the sites we set up for clients, this one allowed Patrick and his team to go in and make updates, add campaign news, and monitor effectiveness on a daily basis.

When HRchitect decided to sponsor a professional conference, they were already familiar with the features of our Online Business Partner™, used on their business website.

On their HR Show website, they also wanted to register event exhibitors, sponsors, and attendees, as well as have the ability to rapidly make changes to the site.

As with their corporate website, HRchitect asked us to build a website with a custom appearance, add blank pages and navigation, and let them provide the text and images.

Snowball Express is dedicated to helping the children of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces since 9/11.

On December 16th through December 20th of this year, Snowball Express will host 2000 children and surviving spouses in Southern California, from all across America, for an all-expense paid holiday gathering none of them will ever forget.

The Snowball Express website not only needs to tell their story and communicate with those involved. It also provides the mechanism for families to register, for donors to donate, and for the non-profit organization to thank its sponsors. 

We were glad to donate our efforts for this project.

The Frisco Chamber of Commerce decided to kick off the national Chamber of Commerce week with the unveiling of its new website, which uses our Online Business Partner™ technology.

Chamber President John Land had us develop a custom design for the new website and build the initial menus and pages. Then his staff took over, and added additional pages and created their own material right in the website, thus letting them manage their costs as well as their site content.

Some of the information displayed on the Chamber of Commerce website resides in a different system, and the Chamber did not want to convert all of that information at this time. To allow for a fast and smooth transition, the data in the other system is displayed on the Chamber's new site through "iframes" or windows within a web page that display the content of a different web page.

While this reduces the level of control available for managing the presentation of the data from the other system, it allowed the Chamber to launch their new website without any time or attention whatever paid at this time to the format and management of the date stored on the other system.

Even though the Chamber did not make any announcement to its members, several hundred people per day discovered it on their own, starting with the publication of the site late on October 20th.

(The graphs here are taken from the standard graphs provided to every owner of a site using our Online Business Partner™ technology.)

By the way... the visitors in the first week were not just from Frisco, not just from Texas, and not just from this side of the globe!

It looks like there were visitors from nearly every state in the US, from Mexico and Canada, and quite a few from all over Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia as well.

In fact, with this much global traffic in the first few days, we would not be surprised to see visits from pretty much the rest of the world when we look back after a month or two!

(We know Frisco is a great place. But how do all these other folks know it? And why haven't they already moved here, now that they do?)

Our brokerage client wanted to allow his customers to search online for the basics of the listings he had for sale, but his clients did not want their addresses or details made public.

We set up a site with a searchable directory so that site visitors could find listings that matched their interests. The site visitors then request access via an online registration form.

Our client's office staff receives such requests, and with about three mouse clicks, can enable that specific visitor to have access to a specific listing for a specified duration (or forever). In addition, if a request is not acted upon within a specified period of time, the office manager gets notified so the visitor's request never falls through the cracks.

Our client wants to be able to respond instantly to certain types of inquiries. Our Online Business Partner™ sends a text message to his cell phone immediately when those inquiries are sent, so he can have a deal already locked up before his competitors get around to reading their email.

The website for Strategic Glass describes the commercial glass contracting and consulting firm to their target market of contractors and property management companies, as well as local, state, and federal government facilities.

The company asked us to create a consistent and attractive header for all pages, and they would then develop and insert the text.

They also asked us to create a "slide show" to display automatically on the home page and on the projects page, to illustrate some of their recent projects.

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.