It's another NEW Year - do you still have an OLD website??

Internet years are like "dog years", so if your company website has looked and functioned pretty much the same for the past several years, that's an ANCIENT website!

Since you don't get a 2nd chance to make a good 1st impression, consider the fact that your old outdated website might actually be hurting rather than helping attract new customers, retain current customers, and win back old customers?

Here is one recent example of "BEFORE" and "AFTER" - 2002 website (by another website company) vs 2018 website (by Cole WebMarketing).

Call us today at 704-456-WEB1 (9321) for a FREE Website Analysis and to discuss how Cole WebMarketing can transform your ancient and outdated website into a modern cutting-edge web presence that you and your company can really be proud of.

NOTE: Thank you for the 10,000+ views of this blog!

My Old Website: Do I Need Just a Facelift...or a Total Overhaul?

Sometimes an older website just needs some minor updating in order to give it a more modern look and feel.  

If the site navigation / content organization is still viewed as the best way to present your company and content, and the text and images within the site are current/accurate/up to date, perhaps a "total overhaul" isn't needed.

WEBSITE FACE LIFT: Changing up just the home page, or redoing the graphic(s) seen at the top of your site pages, adding a few new features to your site, starting or improving your overall web presence (blog, social media), etc. might be all that's needed. If your website is 90% good/great, then invest a few to several hundred dollars or so in a "website face lift" rather than investing a few to several thousand dollars or so in designing and developing an entirely new website/web presence.

WEBSITE OVERHAUL: On the other hand, if they site is more than 5-7 years old, much of the site content needs revising, the way the site is designed and developed needs improvement, and/or you're just really tired of the way your current site looks (especially if compared to those companies that consider you a competitor), then a total overhaul is probably warranted.

"Web years" are a bit like "dog years" - we're still building decks and sheds in our backyards much like it's been done for decades or centuries but... in the wild world of the web, internet technology changes and improves quickly and regularly.   A brand new website one year later can look and feel sometimes like it's seven years old, simply due to how fast things change regarding website design and development software, trends, site visitor expectations, etc.

So if you're thinking about updating your website, consider carefully if it just needs a bit of sprucing up, or if the better value and return on investment would be to tear the whole site down and start over from scratch.

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Cole WebMarketing is a Charlotte, NC based website design and development firm.
For more information, please visit www.ColeWebMarketing.com and then call us at
704-456-9321 for a free consultation.

Changing Website Trends - Watching VS Reading

Years ago, having a website that looked a lot like a simple "Word Doc" was the norm, and people (WebSurfers) accepted that.   A lot of text, a few photos or graphics, several pages linked together, and that was sufficient to say you "have a website".  Times have changes...a LOT...over the past few years.  

It's been said "web years" are like "dog years" and I agree.   Having a 5-7 year old website (without making frequent and/or significant updates, is like having a 5-7 year old dog.  It's "middle-aged"...and getting old fast.  Often, a site is considered "out dated" if it's been mostly the same for over 3 years.

That's why many companies totally overhaul (redesign/redevelop) their websites every 3-5 years.  Some do every year or tow, but I'm trying to share with you "the norm" or "national average".

VIDEO & PHOTO GALLERY: There are many ways to "spruce up" your website if you don't have the time, energy or budget to completely overhaul a site, and adding VIDEO (Video Gallery or Galleries) is one of the best ways to update your website.  Adding Photo Galleries (of your company, products, services, staff, etc.) is close second.

KEYPOINTS:  here's a few facts to consider when evaluating the value of adding VIDEO to your website;

• 1 hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second
• 60 hours are uploaded very minute
• YouTube gets 1,000,000,000,000 views annually

And it's not just people watching videos at their desk...YouTube Mobile gets over 600 MILLION views daily 

And people are not just WATCHING videos, they're SHARING them, and HERE is where the huge value for you a a business owner comes in.

• ONE MILLION YouTube Videos are shared on Twitter every year

NOTE: Data Collected SPRING 2012


Quantity VS Quality - sure, getting 100,000 or a million people to watch your video sounds impressive, but most of us would much rather get 10 highly qualified prospects watching a business video about our company, products, services, etc., than 100,000 people watching it because it's "funny" or "really cool".

PHOTO/VIDEO PRODUCTION: Cole WebMarketing offers professional and affordable PHOTO and VIDEO services. This includes on-site and off-site shoots with "nearly-pro" equipment.  Our main camera rig costs about $2500. We can shoot Hi-Rez still photos, as well as HD video.

We also have a variety of different "backdrops", plus "lighting umbrella's" and pic/vid lights that we can use on or off-site, to help give your videos a very professional "look & feel".  Voice-over Narration can be done post-production by you, or we can do that for you. > SAMPLE LINK

Once we take the photos and video clips, back in our offices, we edit both the photos and videos to produce very professional Photo Galleries and Video Galleries for your websites.  The video clips are usually 3 minutes in length (the recommended max. for website videos) and can be embedded into your website.

If your site is HOSTED with Cole WebMarketing, we can also carefully track the ROI - number of times your vids were watched, etc.

We can also LINK your website videos to your Biz Blog, Linked In account, and upload to your "YouTube Channel".  If you don't have a YT Channel for your company, we can create it for you.  If you have one already, we can help show you how to better manage and maintain it.

For more information about Cole WebMarketing Photo Services and Website Video Services, please visit ColeWebMarketing.com and then call us at 704-456-9321 (704.456.WEB1).