Susan Heid came to me through Biznik, a Seattle based online organization for small business networking.  She was frustrated because she had a graphic design that she loved but her current web developer couldn’t implement it for her in WordPress.  Her designer Melody Hansen, had a very clear vision of what she wanted the site to look like.  Unfortunately the developer could only get close, and close wasn’t good enough.  Susan wanted to work with a local Seattle web designer so she could meet face to face.

We chose to develop the site using the Thesis Theme Framework because of it’s easy customization and superior SEO abilities.

The fun programing parts of the site were:

• Varying headers from page to page
• Page specific graphic taglines
• Multiple template options with multiple widget areas
• Widgetized footer

SEO Considerations

Thesis is well known for it’s excellent SEO functions.  We completely revamped the site’s SEO by:

• Giving all posts and pages SEO friendly URLs
• 301 redirects for existing page URLs
• SEO page titles
• SEO page meta-descriptions
• SEO post indexing by category
• SEO page indexing by page heirarchy

Sales Funnel

We reworked her sales funnels to make each one more effective:

• Consistently capturing valid email addresses during the process
• Capturing all relevant data prior to leaving the site
• Providing clear directions to clients about what happens next
• Providing follow up pages that guide the clients through the process

This was a fun and satisfying project to work on.  Both the graphic designer and the client were happy with the final product.

People ask me from time to time why we recommend using WordPress as the basis for developing a small business website.  After all WordPress is the blog platform that all the bloggers use isn’t it?  Yes, WordPress is used by hundreds of thousands of bloggers across the world but it powers millions of regular websites as well.  According to Wikipedia, in September 2009 there were 202 million websites powered by WordPress world wide with 62 million here in the US.

So why do we recommend it to our friends and clients?

WordPress is very easy to use

5 years ago most websites were created and maintained by web designers.  If you wanted to add something to the website or edit some of its content you would have to go to your consultant and pay them to make the change.   Today, as a web presence becomes more and more important to small businesses small business owners need to be able to keep their sites up to date without having to hire an expert.  Adding or changing content on a WordPress based site is as easy as using a word processor.

WordPress can do virtually anything

WordPress is a web application framework.  This means it can be easily extended to add functionality and thus can be any kind of site a small business might want.  It can be a portfolio site, it can be an email marketing site, it can be a specialized social network.  You can add a product catalog and run an e-commerce business with it.  It can be used for event scheduling.  It can be used to deliver video and podcasts.  And yes, it can be a blog.

With WordPress you are in control

There are lots of proprietary website systems out there that one can use to build a website.  However, those proprietary systems are dependent on you continuing to use the service provider.  You can’t pick up your Yahoo website and take it to your own internet host.  You can’t take those site builder sites anywhere else.  Once you commit to them all of your hard work stays with them.  With WordPress you can control who you work with.  If you start a WordPress site with BlueHost and later decide you don’t like them you can easily transfer your site to another host.

WordPress is always evolving

Yes, WordPress started out as a blog engine, but it has become so much more.  With each new release new possibilities are added.  And since it is “Open Source” there are thousands of developers writing plugins to extend its functionality.

Help is at hand

There are thousands of web developers and web designers who specialize in WordPress.  Is there some new thing you want to try with your site?  You won’t have to look very far for an expert.  And if you aren’t satisfied with the help that you’re getting from one you can easily find another.  WordPress is the reverse of proprietary.  You can take it anywhere, add virtually anything to it and easily find someone to work on it.

There isn’t any other web application like it.
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