Friday, October 28, 2011

Are Instant Web Sites Really Possible?

May this newsletter find you and yours well. After a bit of rain
here in Tulsa, OK we now have a slight chill in the air and
beautiful sunny weather. Very nice Fall weather and a welcome
break from the obsessive heat that has occupied this part of the
country from last Spring to just a few weeks ago. The leaves are
changing color, and with that, so many ongoing changes are also
taking place in my life. I feel more blessed than I deserve.

The month of October has been the busiest month in almost two
years. It's exciting though trying to get back into the swing of
working 40+ hours a week is taking some getting used to -- but
don't get me wrong -- I am very happy to be so busy again. What
are people buying? Everything! Small web sites, big web sites,
sales copy, ebook covers. You name it.

One of the things I find interesting is the growing expectation
that you should be able to order a web site and have it up
instantly within a week. I'm not sure where this comes from, but
believe it may have something to do with commercials from Intuit
which show happy couples designing and launching their own web
sites with the click of a few buttons.

Now reality and past experience would indicate it really isn't as
easy as all that unless you have very simple needs, all of the
text and graphics lined up ready to go, and some sense of what
you are doing technically. Yes, you can get a site up in a few
hours, but you tend to get something that either looks lackluster
or a templated clone of hundreds of other sites. Frankly, when you
take the instant web site approach, it's hard to look or sound
compelling.

Of course, getting the site up and running is only one third of
the battle. You still need to do the promotion in order to
generate awareness and traffic. That's the second third. And then
you need to convert your visitors into leads, subscribers and
sales. That's the final third. So a 1-2-3 job it ain't!

That said, if you know what you are doing ... and I think I do
most of the time ... you can get a simple site up quickly using
tools like XSitePro. If you haven't looked at this tool yet, I
strongly urge you to do so now. It is easy-to-use and the most
powerful product of its kind on the face of the planet. You can
read more about it here:

http://www.webdesignassistance.com/XSite-Pro.html

Why do I like it? Once you get the hang of its interface, you can
select a template from its library, customize it, add a search
facility, a subscribe box, a contact form, navigation, ads, etc.
all within the matter of a few minutes. I had an interesting
challenge about a week ago, and XSitePro saved me hours of time.

A friend for whom I did a site for about a year ago called about
a small problem. I decided that rather than tinker with old code,
I would rebuilt the site in XSitePro and handle it all from
there. Within an hour, I had rebuilt the site -- everything from
the content to the navigation and the contact form -- in less
than 60 minutes.

I had another new client ask me to design and launch her site by
middle of next week for a major networking event she was planning
to attend. Truth is I am a little backed up with projects, and
there was no way I could go through the normal process of
gathering design and functionality specs and create what she
wanted in less than 7 days. Then I decided to see how fast it
would take me to prototype the site in XSitePro.

I found a formal looking template in their library that I felt
would be suitable for a small, one-person law firm. I removed the
original graphical header and created my own. I added it back to
the site template, created the pages she requested, copied and
pasted the content she provided, clicked a button to design and
add a contact form and Google map, and clicked one more button to
generate and publish the site to my HostGator web hosting
account. Probably took me a little over 3 hours. In fact,
creating an appropriate graphical header image was probably the
most challenging task. The result? I over-delivered and exceeded
my client's expectations ... and brought the originally estimated
cost of the site down from $1500 to $500.

If you need help getting a site up and running quickly, I would
be pleased to help you, but if you would prefer to do it
yourself, then please do click on this link to learn more about
this incredibly powerful and simple tool:

http://www.webdesignassistance.com/XSite-Pro.html

Until next time,

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Steven


P.S.: Have you visited the God Moments site yet? I want you to go
there and buy my client's $10 book or ebook. It is a fast read,
will make you feel good about life, and may get you to think a
little differently about God.

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