flyte blog: small business web marketing blog

…or, the cobbler’s children finally get shoes!

It’s been a long time coming, but flyte launched our new Web site late last night. We had been planning to revamp the site since the middle of last year, but kept putting it off because client work comes first.

However, we finally realized that if we didn’t treat ourselves as a client, it would never get done. So, we drew a line in the sand that it would be launched in time for our 10th anniversary celebration, which is Friday. So look at that, we actually came in a day early.

The new site is much more reflective of who flyte is today, and the direction in which we’re headed.

We design more than just Web sites these days, so we jettisoned our old portfolio that only showed Web sites. Instead, we created a Web design directory, which includes design examples of our Web sites, email newsletters, business blogs and more.

While the old site was mum on our Web marketing services, the new site has a big section on Internet marketing for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Now visitors can learn more about search engine optimization, email marketing, blog marketing, and other Web marketing opportunities.

When you visit the site you’ll notice some kick-ass photography that was taken in and around our home town of Portland, Maine. We hired local photographer Stacey Cramp to walk around Portland and take photos of the place we call home. I couldn’t be happier with her work. Right now there’s only about 8 photos on the site, but we plan on adding dozens more over the next few weeks.

Everyone at flyte was involved with the new Web site, whether through feedback, inspiration or picking up other work as our own site took on a life of it’s own. However, I’d like to single out two people (or is that double out two people?) who were instrumental in the success of the site and its launch.

The first is Ryan Goan, our creative director. Ryan designed the site based on some initial input from me. He nailed it; the final version is almost identical to the first round he showed me. Besides designing the site, Ryan’s tougher task was putting up with me and my constant flow of ideas. At least I didn’t tell him to make the logo bigger.

The second is Robin Lowell, one of our friendly neighborhood Web developers. Robin’s code is rock solid and table-free. And, in the next few days it will be printer-friendly. (We had to sacrifice some things until after the launch since I had set a such an aggressive launch date.) She also had to convert over 60 pages of terribly coded newsletter archive pages (my bad!) and build the 100+ page Web site under a tight deadline. (Man, I never realized how prolific I am.)

Robin also build the site in PHP, taking advantage of php includes to speed up development and update time. It also makes it easier to add programming into the site down the road.

Robin continued her impressive work after the site was complete and launched. Turns out we didn’t get all the information we needed from our host company as we upgraded to one of their newer servers, and were without email for about 18 hours. I was an all day sustainable business conference, leaving all the clean up work to Robin.

She got on the phone and trouble-shot the problems with one of their better tech support guys until our email was up and running. She also fixed a few key errors I created with some incorrect 301 redirects I set up. 301 redirects are the most search engine friendly way to redirect visitors to Web site pages that no longer exist.

I’d also like to extend a special thanks to Marya Baron who helped us get the nav up and running. Turns out that as simple as the navigation appears, it was actually a royal pain to get working. The different widths of the navigation buttons and the grey lines that separate each category made the coding more complex than we originally thought. Thanks, Marya, for turning Ryan’s vision into a working nav.

Anyway, we’re all pretty stoked about the new design, and looking forward to adding some tweaks and new photos as the days and weeks go on. If you haven’t yet taken a look at flyte’s new Web site…well, what are you waiting for?

Next up: our email newsletter and this blog!

Rich Brooks
Proud Papa

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Web Design & Development, Web Marketing, Web Site Launches, flyte news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.