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 Today’s bride can smell outdated at thirty paces.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 What about you florists, those bouquets look a little out of date do they?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.

Here at the Agency we build websites for small, very small, businesses that are sick of paying some web guy to update every little thing on their site. We build websites for clients that don’t want to spend an arm and a leg but know they need a great site, which is connected to social media and does amazing things for their search. We build these sites for clients that aren’t web-heads, some of our client have barely mastered sending an attachment with an email.
So therein lays the one thing that makes us different: our sites are beautiful and functional on the front and elementary on the back.

The Proof is In Our Clients Reaction
Last night I had a client meeting to do the final tutorial and hand off on a site we had built for a wedding association with over 200 members. Everyone involved is an over worked small business owner that volunteers what little time they can to run and grow the association. One of their goals was to have a site that they could mange themselves. The also wanted some fairly heavy backside integration with membership subscriptions, a private blog and an integrated email newsletter system.

At the meeting was a florist, a transportation company owner and the associations one paid employee, a part time accountant.(hardly the most techie bunch) I had created a manual for the association with all their passwords and the how to information on all the different parts it took to put the site together. In under an hour, all three of the attendants were blown away by how simple the whole thing was to manage. From managing the member roster and the email newsletter to pulling reports about subscriptions (the money part) to updating and adding new content to the site my clients were having an “I could have had a V-8” moment!  Why had they not done this sooner?

We had already blown the rest of the members away with the look and functionality of the public side, now we had blown away the association officers with the stunning ease of the backside. SCORE!

“Thank You For Making This SO Easy”

That is what I love to hear and that is what they said when we were done. What your website looks like is only half of the battle, the real beauty of a website from the Agency is what you can do with it all by yourself.  For a long time I struggled with my
consulting clients trying to get a website that worked for them, so we began to build them. We know who our clients are and that is why we build them the way we do. We know their skill level and we know how little time they have to devote to their site. We don’t build sites for geeks; we build site for small business owners that already have their plate full and are sick of getting their pockets picked by traditional web design firms.

Let me know when you are ready to move your site to this new way of thinking.

See for yourself. TWESA.com

Announcing release of Kertesz² our new WordPress based full dialog website for Professional Photographers. Featuring an easy to configure landing page and impressive dynamic image content gallery Kertesz² offers style and ease of use. Kertesz² is an excellent full featured stand alone website, or ideal companion configured to enhance and increase the search rank of Flash based photographers’ template sites like Bludomain. Kertesz² is provided to you fully setup, tested, SEO optimized and integrated on the webhost of your choice. It can even allow your existing site to remain in place, while your new site is being completed.

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Photographers have long been considered visionaries of our industry in terms of internet marketing. They were among the first on the web and the first to see the value in the heavy use of images in marketing to brides. But in choosing their website platform they have faced a dilemma, select a Flash template like Bludomain for its optical appeal or choose a standard HTML type site sacrificing optics but getting much better search engine traffic. They know they need a visually beautiful site to show off their images and talent. But the brides, over 90% of whom use Google to help plan their wedding, never see the photographer’s website in the search listings. Kertesz² is the remedy

Building on the inputs of our clients and the advancements in WordPress over the last year we have totally reinvented Kertesz, with Kertesz². The code base is all new! (and 30% larger.) Fully compatible with WordPress 2.8 and using all the 2.8 features. Compatible with the past and even better, it takes advantage of today’s new features in an even easier to use and customize theme. If you are currently using WordPress it is easy to add Kertesz².

Using the technology of Kertesz² we have increased our clients website traffic 500% in less that 4 weeks. We have even taken brand new domains to front page Google search search results, also in less than a month.

Kertesz² retains all the features of the old Kertesz, updated. Better, more interactive, easier to design main page options, improved photo galleries and contact forms. Easier to style and with more impressive graphics. If you already have a Flash based website, like Bludomain, with the inherently poor search potential, Kertesz² can easily replace your splash page, making it easy to add search friendly content, integrate your blog and Twitter and Facebook feeds and rapidly move your existing Flash site towards the front of Google.

Regardless of your situation Kertesz² will increase your site traffic and prospective clients. If you have any questions just send me an email.

I had an interesting dialog recently with a baker. In looking at different ways their website could be set up to improve their search ranking I noticed that if you searched for them by the bakerery’s name you had to drill down at least six pages on Google for them to even come up, and then only as a link on someone else’s website. Read more

We got in a conversation here at the Agency as a result of a comment on Marc’s blog about the power of our WordPress platform for business. A photographer had commented that he was thinking of switching his site to a hybrid blogsite like Kertesz so of course we went to look at his current site. Read more

I have been telling you from the start that Kertèsz, The Premium Website and Blog for WordPress is all about how easy it is to customize. Well now it is time to show you. Three of our little progeny have gone live recently and I want to let you see what people have been doing with this new format. Read more

What an odd question. The truth is that they have something important in common, something you that you also need: a great, functional website with a killer Content Management System. As different as they are, all three entities have sites built on the same platform we use to build our client’s sites. WordPress Read more