Sajo Farm Pool and Clubhouse

We are lucky enough to work with some awesome photographers on our projects and we always enjoy working with Chris Crumley. He took this photo of Sajo Farm Pool and Clubhouse at dusk for one of our favorite clients, The Terry•Peterson Companies at one of their new home communities, SajoFarm in Virginia Beach. Chris makes everything look easy. Taking evening or dusk photos involves more than just using your flash. This shot needed the right angle and elevation, property must be cleaned and prepared, lights scheduled to be on, pool furniture situated, sprinklers turned off, multiple lighting techniques used via voice radio and last but not least, calling the right day for good weather. It also involved complex post-production work to marry a lot of images together. Beautiful – thanks again, Chris!

First, you need to set goals, determine your audience and find a consultant to help. Communication is the key, and you can’t do it all yourself. Social Media marketing takes time and it is very difficult to measure your ROI (Return On Investment). Why bother? Because you will be connecting with people you may not otherwise have reached through conventional advertising. In turn, those people will tell their friends, colleagues and peers. What’s more, consumers today are trusting referrals before any other form of advertising. Wouldn’t you?

The bottom line is, it’s all about a new way to develop relationships with your customers. Lidija Davis of ReadWriteWeb posts: Marketers today are caught up in a jumble of buzzwords that mean very little.  It’s a confusing time, but to get the marketing right, you need to start thinking about relationships first.  “It’s not about selling something anymore; that might be the end result, but to get there, you need to work on the relationship.”

More to come on this hot topic, so stay tuned…

The first problem is that many sites are not designed -  nor are they built -  for search engine optimization (SEO). In addition, once the website is finished, owners think they can just sit back and the contacts will roll in. In reality, it’s only the beginning – there is much more work to be done. Think of your website as your car – it won’t get you anywhere unless you keep adding fuel and continue to maintain the engine. (I’ll bet car enthusiasts will love that one).

How you advertise your website is just as important. If you only advertise twice monthly in a newspaper ad, you are missing the boat. Online advertising, social networking sites, mobile media and blogs are today’s keys to your website’s performance. Monitoring your website hits through web stats is vital. Changing content frequently is also important for search engine indexing. I could go on here.

If you need an evaluation, give Maurice Design a call. What have you got to lose?

These “domain name renewals” are notifications that may be sent to you by U.S. Mail, fax or perhaps by email. These mailings are unsolicited and from unscrupulous domain registrars that are attempting to trick unwary domain owners into transferring their domain name to their services. They begin their letter announcing that your domain name is about to expire and you need to renew. These companies typically mark up the cost of the domain significantly beyond the market rate of domain names. As soon as you send a check or credit card payment, your domain name registration transfers to this company and you will pay additional costs. One recent mailing we received was from “Liberty Names of America” which has been given an F rating by the Better Business Bureau.

Please be wary of any notification you receive from someone who is not your current domain name registar. If you are not sure, contact your website host.

As a trustworthy, reliable, and capable web hosting provider, we find that when our clients host with us we are better able to provide for their needs by keeping software and security up to date with current standards. We keep a close eye on our servers for intrusion attempts, virus proliferation through our email services, and overloaded services. By providing direct hosting services for our clients we can rapidly and reliably address needs and requirements as needed for promoting their business on the Internet.

Why do the big companies seem cheaper?

The big brand hosting companies that are selling their services are typically over-selling their capacity. The most laughable examples of this are services that offer ‘unlimited’ disk space and transfer capability. If one just thinks for a moment you’ll realize this is an impossible proposition. In fact, one particular host at least states as much in the small print “Plan provides unlimited storage and bandwidth; storage subject to availability of space on a single server”. The space and bandwidth available is often much less than you might imagine. This is because all web hosting companies – every single one – provides shared hosting. This means you could be sharing your server space with hundreds and sometimes thousands of other web sites. The only way around these restrictions is to lease or purchase your own server which drives the cost up many times the basic cost of a shared hosting account.

What are the other disadvantages of the big brand?

With so many sites on a single server your chances of running into that brick wall with disk space, bandwidth, or even usability are actually quite measurably higher. The performance of your website can suffer, along with the presentation of your business. There aren’t many things that make people click away from a website faster than a slow or no loading web page. Not to mention – SPAM – What if your shared server suddenly becomes a blacklisted site due to no fault of your own? At Maurice Design, we educate our customers about SPAM tactics so our servers stay clean.

So what’s the bottom line?

To better serve our customers, Maurice Design’s web site hosting is for Maurice Design clients only. With a solid background in hosting, we have the experience required and take special care to make sure the servers are well maintained, secured and current with the latest in software updates. We keep our hosting business small enough so that we can provide very personalized attention to your company’s hosting and email needs. If you have any questions, give us a call – we’ll be happy to answer.