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Adhost Blog

Is Your Web Site Frozen in Time, Forgotten or Just Plain Funky?

Web sites are often out of sight and out of mind – but busy keeping customers away because they’re unattractive, unclear, unusable, unfriendly – just pick your ‘un’ word. We’ve had the pleasure of hurting our eyes on many such sites over the years.

Recently, we were contacted by a firm with a site no one at the company had looked at – literally – for months. The marketing person with responsibilities for maintaining the site had actually been gone for some time and evidently hadn’t mentioned the site to their replacement. Fortunately, their old school e-commerce shopping cart was still taking occasional orders that went straight to the warehouse for fulfillment. Finally, someone realized these orders were coming from a web site and took a look at it.

After finding their shades and clicking around the glaringly out-of-date site, they started shopping around for some Seattle web development help and found Adhost. Our initial call revealed that they had TWO sites. A brochure web site – that no one knew how to manage or update (natch) -  was wrapped around a separate and very creaky e-commerce cart. It was a no-brainer to recommend an updated cart with Content Management Features that would allow them to manage all their content – brochure and product – from one consolidated web-based administration area. We got ‘em up and running in about 3 and half weeks. They aren’t challenging Amazon.com just yet, but the orders are coming in and now they don’t need shades to look at the sites.

Looking at the bill was not a problem either. We did this for less than the guesstimate they had generated internally. So, the lesson? I don’t know. The only things I can swear to are that sky is blue, sea is green and clam shells make great ash trays. However, I’m pretty sure that when it comes to ROI, a well-designed and promoted Web site can get your message out for much less than other media channels. And on the Amazon thing, well, we made some SEO and PPC recommendations to them and you never know…

Perhaps, it’s time to dust off your site and invest in a fresh Web design, an e-commerce solution, or a content management system. If so, give us a jingle. We’d be happy to put on our shades and look at your site. Contact the Adhost sales team at 1-888-234-6781 to discuss your options or visit the Adhost Development site.

Email Marketing Manager Upgraded

We’re please to announce that our Email Marketing Manager (EMM) platform was recently upgraded. Existing clients will no doubt notice these improvements:

• Second dedicated database server - provides increased performance through better database communication. 
• EMM realms operate on separate IP addresses - prevents the blocking of one realm affecting other EMM users.
• Spam reduction - the Content Analysis routines use Spam Assassin filtering to reduce the likelihood of messages being flagged as spam. 
• Throttling of messages - messages can be metered to reduce instances of being blocked by ISPs. 
• Quick reporting - enhanced report for opens, clicks, unsubscribes, hard bounces, soft bounces, and event stats. 
• HTML Design View (WYSIWYG) improvements - simplifies working with HTML design. 
• New video tutorials – located in the documentation menu. 
• Revised Help Guide – available with the new version.   

If you’re a current EMM client, your accounts is upgraded and ready to go with these enhancements. If you want to get started with email marketing, visit our Email Marketing Manager pages or contact Adhost Sales at 1-888-234-6781.

Spring Web Hosting Special

To celebrate the longer, warmer days of spring, we’re offering a Spring Web Hosting Special. We’ll waive the set up fee and first month of hosting on any of our shared hosting packages – be sure to check out our new data transfer and storage limits. Or if you need the flexibility of your own server, take a look at our dedicated server specials.

Mention this special when you email or call our Sales department at 1-888-234-6781.