Joy Basdeo , a wedding planner in Grand Cayman emailed me not long ago about a new website. Joy had a blog in one place and 2 different website on other urls and nothing was working. She couldn’t update anything but her blog, and she wasn’t getting much SEO traction on her websites because of the way they were built.

Well, in no time flat we had Joy on a shiny new WordPress blog site built on the Genesis framework. If you haven’t been paying attention, Genesis is just about the slickest thing going in the land of WordPress. In terms of SEO, ease of use and security it at the top of the heap.

What a wonderful experience it has been working with Joy.

I took a couple of the child themes, pulled them apart and played Frankentheme to create Joy’s site. I hope you like it as much as Joy does.

If your website isn’t doing what you need it to, give me a call and I’ll fix you right up.

Click on the image to visit the site.

This was in my PR file this morning.

The Dessy Group Introduces Wedding Planning Tools Online.

Now why would a bridal fashion house take the leap into planning? Or, more correctly, to become a

“one-stop shopping” wedding site

I can think of two reasons why.

The big one, at least on the surface, is to keep brides on their site as long as possible. Any couple that decides to use the Dessy suite of planning tools has to do it through their website. Everytime they log on to use the tools or update their wedding website Dessy has the opportunity to expose them to their product line. That is pretty self evident.

The more important piece of this puzzle is that if it catches on, Dessy will now have access to a very deep level of information on its target market. I have a hard time imagining that a company as large as Dessy would have built this thing with out including a few algorithms to pick the data apart. When you spent as much of your marketing budget to build something like this what’s a little more to be able to fully mine the results.

I think that is the the key behind this project. Data.

Will it work? Good question. Wedding planning tools are a dime a dozen on the internet. These are going to have to be pretty spectacular to even get noticed. Had they done it 6 or 7 years ago, maybe.

On a personal aside, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meeting for this. I’m sure it was never mentioned that they would be taking on the Knot, Wedding Wire and Brides.com. Just sayin’

I just love what my clients have to say.

Debbi, My Personal Cantor, was recently asked who built her website. Here is what she said…

“Her name is Christine Boulton, and you can reach her at …thinklikeabride.com

She’s amazing.  And it was very reasonable.  What’s more, is she specializes in WordPress blogsites, which are the best.  They are so simple to maintain and add content to, and are meant for constant updating, and content additions, which makes Google love it more.  Then – she is very hands on in making sure you know how to use it and administer it.  She’s really a client advocate.  the WordPress site I originally had was built by someone in Canada, and once he got paid for the final version, it was impossible to reach him at all.  Christine is always there for me if I have questions.

Tell her I sent ya!”

Aww, gee. Thanks Debbi.

I include a testimonial page in all the websites I build. You would think I would be smart enough to include one on my site. Oh well, the cobblers children…

This website that went live last week was a little outside of my usually area of expertise, but I think it came out nicely.

The client wanted a place for teachers to post their stories.The mandate was to create a site where anyone could add submission that could them be edited and moderated by the site admins. The client also wanted a fun, masculine look to the site; something that said, we are here to have fun, not share saccharine.

I look forward to seeing how it develops as he starts the process of gathering followers and interesting posts. If you know any teachers, please pass this along. Thanks.

I just handed off the new site for Front Porch Farms.

This one was a blast to work on, Kathy Best, the client knew exactly what she wanted. Her venue is simply beautiful and the images she sent made it easy to capture the fabulous look of the house and grounds.

I am always telling people that you need to know how to read the stats on your website. Today I want to share a great practical application.

I was chatting  with Sarah. Last year I designed a new website for her bridal salon. It seems that she has been watching the patterns emerge in he web stats. She can now tell by her traffic on Tuesday and Wednesday how busy her shop will be on Saturday.

She tells me that she now uses that information to decide how to staff her shop for the weekend. How cool is that?

Tracking your stats is really all about patterns. I have been uploading all the member content for Think over the last few weeks, every time I do my stats skyrocket. So now I am uploading a couple a day instead of spending a day and uploading in bulk.

If you follow the pattern, you can adjust the way you do thing to maximize the benefit.

I thought you might like this site that went live over the weekend; Healthy Solutions Medical Weight Loss.

I know it a bit outside the wedding industry that I usually deal with but still fun to do.

The site went live on Sunday and by Tuesday they already had new patients coming in with their forms already printed out and filled in! The staff loves it, especially the ones that answer the phone.

I love happy clients

What could a new website do for you?

Do you realize how important the images on your website are to your search traffic?

I was speaking to a regional conference of ABC members recently and was telling them about the way their target market searches when planning their wedding. In the early stages they primarily are searching for images.

One young lady stood up and identified herself as a member of Gen Y. She then went on to say that not only was it true that  they were looking at images but that in truth, they rarely took time to read even the smallest amount of copy. Only if an image really caught them would they bother to find out more. Half of the time they never even bothered to visit the website hosting the image, just surfing though a panel on Cool Iris that matched their search.

How does your website fit into this pattern?

First off, if all of your images are locked into a Flash gallery, they aren’t search-able at all. You may have the most beautiful image of “Winter Candle Centerpiece” but if it in a Flash gallery it won’t show up in a Google (or Bing or Yahoo) image search.

Your images need to be labeled and described using related keywoods; including any long-tail keywords that apply. This is the sum total of what the search engines see; they don’t “see” pictures, only the words attached to them.

I see so many websites that are Flash that have been optimized to get the homepages to show up in search. They are  full of metatags and some even still have hidden text. I have news for you, that is not where most people land from a search, they usually land somewhere in the middle on a specific image, page or post. If we are talking about GenY, it will most likely be an image.

So, knowing all this, how does your web presence stack up?

If it doesn’t, give me a shout.

I was reading one of my favorite marketing blogs, Marketing to Women Online by the fab Holly Buchanan and this line jumped out at me:

“Men prefer subject matter that depicts “comparative advertising appeals.”    Women prefer subject matter that depicts “harmonious relationships.”

Well that got me thinking about how we market, in particular why don’t we use more co-operative marketing than we do. Look, we all know that weddings are a team effort and that the best weddings we do are partly a result of the phenomenal team of event professionals that has been put together. They are a result of the “harmonious relationships” between  pros that already know and understand each other working together. Why aren’t we using that more in our marketing?

Yes, I see that many of you have a list of preferred vendors somewhere on your website, but you can do so much more. Why not go a little bit further to formalize those relationships, maybe actually build a team and do a little co-op advertising? How about a page trumpeting your “dream team” that explains why you love to work with them. Talk about your relationships with these fine people. Talk about why you trust them.

As more and more brides opt not to use a wedding planner in a deluded attempt to save money, too often we wind up working with much less than a “dream team”. This make our jobs more difficult. This effort will not only appeal to the brides desire for “harmonious relationships” but also help us to do a better job more easily. Sounds like a win-win to me.

This is certainly a topic that I want to explore in more depths, so look for it to pop up on April’s Think Like A Bride. I’ll put some ideas together on how to use this in you marketing.

I had an interesting conversation with a new client recently. Part of my review of his marketing strategy included asking him when he last updated his website. His answer startled me; he hadn’t updated anything in over a year!

I’m sure you are thinking big deal but this really is a big deal. In the case of this particular client, a caterer, he hadn’t even changed the prices on the posted menus. If you have bought anything in the last year like oh say food or gas then you know what has happened to prices. What do you think having to live with year old prices did to his bottom line? Exactly.

When he told me why he was doing that to his business I was even more stunned. He hated to call the webmaster to change anything because it cost an arm and a leg. Sound familiar? I am dealing with the same situation with an organization where I am a member of the board. This is lunacy.

In today’s culture a website has to be a dynamic, current, ever changing entity. Today’s bride can smell outdated at thirty paces. I’m not necessarily talking about changing the over all look of a site, although that should be done every 2 to 3 years. I am most concerned with you keeping the information up to date.  Are you a wedding planner that only has pictures of weddings you did 4 or 5 years ago on your site? Why not the images from last weekends wedding? I know, the webmaster again, right? What about you florists, those bouquets look a little out of date do they? Are you representing your business to its best advantage? Probably not.

With the tools and products on the market today there isn’t any reason why you should have a website that can’t be quickly and easily updated BY YOU at the click of a button. If your web designer is telling you different he is holding you hostage to old technology and stuffing his wallet at your expense.

I also have clients that have come to me with a perfectly good site that was in fact built so they could update it but they never learned how. WHAT??  Come on, that’s such an easy fix I almost feel bad telling you. If you need to learn how to use the website you have, call whoever built it, offer to pay them for their time and have them sit down with you and teach you how to use it. How do you think I started learning all this stuff oh those many years ago?

I’ll tell you something else, most web designer will get a kick out of showing you all the nifty bells and whistles in your site. Remember, they are techies, this stuff excites them as much as that new source for the perfect ribbon or staffing solution or newest gown collection excites you. Let them show it off. Something else to think about, if you buy a new website make sure that a complete one on one tutorial is part of the package. That site doesn’t do you a bit of good if you can’t use it to its full advantage.

Technology is moving at light speed. The days of building a website and forgetting it are over. Remember, that is where you potential customers are looking for you.  Can you afford to show them you are outdated and out of sync with their world?

If you would like me to review your website, just drop me a line. If I get enough of them I may just do a column reviewing them next month, with your permission of course.