Site Creator & Web Masterpieces

Q. Describe the most common types of jobs you do for your clients.

A. 1. Helping a person who is new in business create their website
2. Converting sites from old technology (Front page) into CMS
3. Nonprofit sites

Q. What advice do you have for a customer looking to hire a provider like you?

A. You need to be able to control your website and not have to rely on a designer at $30 or $60 an hour to make site updates. We offer a great service that allows you or your staff to do just that - at $12 a month.

More often than not, there are people who are penny-wise and pound foolish and don't understand that they have to make small investments in their business and its information technology.

Can you imagine a business that did not have a telephone for customers to call? We all know they couldn't survive. Businesses that delay in publishing a website are losing out on business every day.

You do not have to spend $500 or $5,000 on a high quality website with your own domain name. Many sitebuilders are out there for $40 a month. We offer many more features and charge only $12 a month.

No time to do it yourself? We can set up and publish your business website for $120 and you can manage and update it yourself. Nonprofit? We waive our design fees and even have programs available for website sponsorship.

Q. If you were a customer, what do you wish you knew about your trade? Any inside secrets to share?

A. BEFORE you design your site, take just a few moments and write out or type up (in MS Word or notepad) four paragraphs about your business, your organization, or about your profession.

Creating websites is really easy - especially when you are using a design platform like First Cup Site Creator. Writing about what your business or organization does and how it does it is much, much harder.

Those 4 paragraphs that tell us what your business is, what services or products it specializes in, and how a customer should contact you are very important.

We can help you design or publish your website, and we can train you in everything you need to know to conquer the web frontier. But we can't define your business for you.

No matter what you decide to do about your website, writing four paragraphs of text content will definitely help you. If you can get 8 paragraphs, well wow, you're way ahead. If writing is not something you are comfortable with, let us know and we can connect you to professional writers.

There is no technical obstacle to your website getting created and published in 20 minutes or less. The only real obstacles are planning, desire, and urgency.

Urgency is probably the most important thing in getting your site actually published. Stop putting off publishing a website and start a free trial today (go to www.firstcupsitecreator.com and click the red button) to see how easy it is.

Q. What important information should buyers have thought through before seeking you out?

A. Is your website for:
* a business
* a nonprofit or a charity
* a school?
* a professional service?
*Products, services, or both?

Q. Why does your work stand out from others who do what you do?

A. Personal service. We know all of our clients by their first name and take a real interest in their online success.
Our clients come from nonprofits and small businesses that have a real message and real services.
We offer premier design tools at a fraction of the retail cost to ordinary people. We help ordinary non-techies get real websites.
We think your website should be a masterpiece befitting your mission and message.

Q. Do you have a favorite story from your work?

A. The Doors are Still Open:
A nonprofit that I host had a crisis a year or two ago. They had lost an important grant and did not know how they were going to keep things going, and who would help out the women and families they've been assisting for some 30 years now.

They had a fundraising drive and made appeals online and offline. the website was an important part of this effort because it told donors that they really were out there and active in the community -- and many of these donors were out of state.

Donors these days often look at the website of the organization before donating, because they want to feel sure about where their donations are going and what kind of work it will do.

I'm very happy that we got many website "hits" or visitors during that fundraising drive and it was very successful. They were able to keep the doors open and continue helping young women, families, and babies.

The Busiest day Ever:
My other favorite story is about a restaurant. The busiest day ever? Mother's Day, about six months after their site first went live, and about a month after the website URL was added to their take-out menu.
For a small restaurant that does most of its business as delivery, I was stunned to see the amount of traffic their site got on Mother's Day. I called them and talked to the owner. She said it was their busiest day ever -- and if I wasn't ordering, she had to call me back because she had 3 people on hold!

Having a website when you jhave a great product makes for things like "The Busiest Day Ever".

This lady knows all of their customers, sometimes by first name, sometimes by voice, but most often by what they order. Really.

Q. If you were advising someone who wanted to get into your profession, what would you suggest?

A. Get a good education! being comfortable with computers and tools for example, is a de riguer requirement ( a "must have"). But it surprises me to see how many people have problems just writing.

A good course in how to write is something everyone should have, but often our schools don't provide it.

So no matter what happens in the industry, you can always learn new tools, but learning how to write well is a skill that is becoming more and more exceptional.