It’s been far longer than it should have been since the last time Jebraweb released a blog post into the world.
(Replace the word “Jebraweb” with the name of your business, and I’ll bet that sentence might still be true.)
Just like you, we’ve been really busy. Since the last time we wrote — and it’s been many, many months — we’ve launched a dozen client sites. A dozen! That’s billions of pixels pushed across hundreds of screens, hundreds of meetings and emails and phone calls, and a huge number of hours, all in the service of getting our clients’ messages onto the internet with style, personality, and integrity. That’s twelve beautiful synergistic experiences of getting to know a business or organization and the people in it. That’s twelve times we kicked back in our chairs and watched a domain name propagate across the internet and a new web site get borne on the signals and terabytes that stretch all the way around the world.
On top of that, we’ve launched a website maintenance service. For our clients whose schedules are just too full to keep their software updated, their blog posts added, their announcements announced, and their job openings listed, we’ve been offering monthly maintenance packages that let them delegate all of it to us. They get a two-business-day-turnaround-guarantee, which keeps us hopping and their websites always up to date. These clients have renewed their contracts with us over and over, proving that it’s a great way to check tasks off their lists and free them up for the meat of their business.
No wonder we’ve missed a few blog posts along the way!
In the breathing space between projects and updates, we’ve been working slowly to build a new site for ourselves. Like the plumbers with leaky pipes or the cobblers with barefoot children, our web site has been stuck in 2011 for — well, seven years. The new site we’ve built has been a slow labor of love. We spent time asking ourselves whether we were still the same people we were when we built the last site. Do we still love woodgrain as a background? (Sadly, not so much.) Do we still love our logo? (Happily, yes!) Does the structure still work? Do we need more than two colors? Are the photos still resonating? Is our business model the same?
These are all the kinds of questions we ask our clients when we redesign their sites. We always knew that the answers took introspective consideration, but there were probably times that we felt frozen in space, perched with our mouse hands in the air, waiting-waiting-waiting for our clients to tell us: blue or purple? six menu items or five? blog or articles or resources? After doing this for ourselves, we remembered again that we can hold both sides of the project in equal esteem: the patient designer, waiting to design with all the facts in hand; and the careful client, waiting for clarity and inspiration.
(TL;DR version: Being a client is also hard.)
So, here you have it: our new site. Some things will feel very familiar, and some will be new. Styles change in web design just like they do in jeans — hopefully, though, big holes in web sites will never be a thing — and so you’ll see more big bold swatches of color, more measured use of photography, a teensy bit of animation, and the same playful tone you’ll get from us in person. We’re also still totally in love with our awesome host company, GreenGeeks.
The tools of this site are different, though. We’ve moved from Joomla to WordPress and are swatting away spam with the powerful plugin Akismet. Most exciting is that we’ve adopted the beautiful and versatile Divi from Elegant Themes. It’s the most usable, customizable, fun and spiffy development framework we’ve ever seen. And now we own a developer’s license for it, so we can use it for our clients, too. It’s amazing. Ask us to rave about it in person!
That’s what’s new with us: new clients, new offerings, new web site. What’s old with us is all the stuff you love: great client relationships, quick turnaround, clear expectations, and a love of mochas and cookies.
So why not reach out? Renew your site. Outsource your to-do list. Meet us for an espresso drink and a chat. Let’s catch up.