Site Potion

When I say a lot has been going on in since the beginning of the year, I mean a lot has been going on. I’ve had a pile of changes in my personal life all stemming from being a first time dad. If that wasn’t crazy enough, I also have several big professional changes.

For the past two years I’ve had a great working relationship with local marketing firm, Silver Square. The relationship has been so successful that this month I joined the Silver Square team in an “official” capacity. (Here about kittens and fried chicken in my video introduction.) What does this mean for you?

The big change is that I can now offer all kinds of new services that I didn’t have the resources for until now. The one I’m most excited about is our communications audit. Have you ever sat down to focus some energy on marketing, only to realize that you weren’t sure what you should do next? Should you upgrade your website, buy a newspaper ad, or something else? Picture a team of marketing veterans thinking about nothing but your business and your marketing for a couple of hours. Then this team gives you some recommendations, including what isn’t working and what you need to be doing more.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Silver Square can help you figure out where the milestones for your business are and how you are going to get there.

Is Site Potion Gone?

Site Potion is alive and kicking. If you have a project in development with Site Potion right now (or expect to in the near future) don’t worry! The doors are still open. If you have questions about your specific project, just shoot me a reply to this email with any concerns.

photo credit: loganberrybunny

One of the clients I’m currently developing a site for is an Indianapolis remodeling and construction company, Maxson. The most important part of their site is the galleries where they show before and after pictures of remodeling jobs they’ve completed. Maxson is a great candidate for a content management system because they want to be able to regularly add pictures of new projects they’ve completed to the site.

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photo credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

If you live in the U.S. the time you are going to spend today checking your favorite blogs, rereading the emails in your inbox without taking action on them, and generally piddling around the Internet could be spent casting your vote. If you have already voted, then by all means kill as much time as you like. Otherwise, step away from the computer.

photo credit: orphanjones

Ah… the holy grail of business websites. A customer can find your site and give you money without never needing to speak to a soul. You just wake up in the morning and check your bank account to see how many people have completed a transaction. Usually, it’s a lot more complicated in this, but being able to do business with any number of customers at any time anywhere in the world is one of the benefits of the Internet. So what do you need?

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When you’re trying to reach a big goal, it can be a little daunting. So when you are trying to keep morale up, it’s helpful to have some sort of feedback system that reminds you of how much progress you’ve made (and how much more you still need). Fundraisers, blood drives, and other organizations will often employ the thermometer metaphor to keep people excited and engaged. It’s fun to know that your donation of time, money, or whatever is going to make the meniscus move.

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Time out. Normally I use this space to talk about how you can get the most out of your website to grow your business. In honor of Blog Action Day, though, let’s take a break from thinking about how to grow and take a look at what we’ve already got. I’ll go first….

• I have the freedom to start my own business and steer it any direction I want.
• I have high quality clothes and sometimes get rid of clothes that are in good condition just because I don’t like the way they look.
• I have thousands of movies on demand in my living room.
• I can get some of the best medical treatment in the world for anything from a cold to a life-threatening illness.
• I don’t doubt that my car will start when I go outside in the morning.
• I can travel to see friends and family whenever I want to.
• I’ve never had a Christmas or birthday go by in which I did not receive some cool material possession.
• I’ve seen shows on Broadway.
• I never go hungry.
• My cats never go hungry. (No matter what they try to tell you.)
• There are 5 computers in my home right now.
• I go to the movies at least once a week.
• I can count the number of days in my life where I have not access to potable water on zero fingers.
• I control the tempature of my house down to the degree.
• I wish I had a bigger attic to store all my stuff.

Your turn.

photo credit: dichohecho

Ever wonder where your website lives? It’s made up of images, HTML files, and database records, but where are all of those things? They are all stored on a computer somewhere. That computer is controlled by a company that you purchase hosting space from. There area literally thousands (if not tens of thousands) of companies that offer hosting, but some big names you might recognize are GoDaddy, Network Solutions, and LunarPages. The reason you need a host is that the demands placed on a computer that is hosting a website can’t be met by the computer sitting on your desk right now.

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Just a quick note this week that the teaser site for Patron has gone live today. I don’t really get into the nuts and bolts, but there is a screen capture of the interface you use when editing a page. It will look very familiar to my recent clients.

UPDATE: I jumped the gun a little on this. The DNS records had not propogated completely when I made this post. Some readers may still be seeing an old site (the background on that one is purple). My understanding is that by this evening everyone should be directed to the correct site. I apologize for the confusion.

photo credit: Håkan Dahlström

In the few short years that I have been running Site Potion, most of my clients have been small businesses. I expect this group will always make up a large part of my client base. The tools that I provide for site owners to upload photos and manage the content of their own site without needing a web designer isn’t going to stop being valuable to small businesses anytime soon.

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