August was a very busy month with new clients, getting reacquainted with old clients and many new and interesting projects. The biggest trend I experienced were clients who were jumping ship from former web support and hosting teams.
I spent some time visiting with one of my programming partners about the growing trend for companies to outgrow their long-standing web solutions. Sites that started out with technology from a few years ago with companies just starting out have outgrown those initial plans and solutions.
As we know the rules change weekly, if not daily, of how to best present your company on the Internet. This has led to old technology sites to be hodge-podged as clients needs expand and go well-beyond the site's capabilities; more accurately the existing capabilities of the programming and planning.
A large number of my clients are quickly moving away from Flash dominated sites and moving back into content presented in formats that rely heavily on CSS to ensure they are visible at every opportunity and are able to be distributed with the fewest number of steps to get their stories out to the world.
The biggest need that last month's clients had were:
- Switching to a web solutions provider that actually listened to what the client wanted to present as their style, mission as well as the "ambiance" of their business.
- Switching to a web solutions provider that itemized invoices to better explain why there were being charged $1000 per month to send out 4 emails and update 4 pages. Goodness gracious!
- The need to reach out to their clients, potential clients and members effectively, tastefully without a huge expense.
- The ability to easily post new products to their site without having a full blown shopping cart. They preferred a smaller solution with PayPal buy now buttons. (We went with a blog solution).
- The ability to easily add content without a big CMS solution, but without it looking like a typical blog. This way they are able to enlist family members to assist in updating. Smart plan!
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