How

How do you decide what’s best for your online presence and offline marketing? You can either hire a specialty firm like Connecting Links Web Consulting (web firm since 1996) or take some time to learn to do it on your own.

For the do-it-yourselfers, we share most of our resources and a lot of our knowledge through our blog. For those who understand that time and knowledge is money and that often it's best to hire outside help, we are available.  We understand the decision to hire outside help, on often limited budgets, is important.

Our expertise is managing your web site: keeping content current, optimizing for search engines and optimal end-user experience, paying attention to details (we actually proofread and spell check!) and finding champagne solutions for your beer budget -- letting you do what you do best:  run your business.

Still undecided? Consider the following:

1. Assess your skills.  Do you enjoy learning new skills (HTML, coding, ensuring your site looks good in different browsers)? Have you asked your friends who've tackled their own web projects for advice -- and will they help if you hit a snag?

2. Write down each step in the process. The step-by-step process, once seen on paper, will be a good test right there. And remember some things are still better left to outside contractors who will have some special tools in their toolbox you may not wish to purchase for a one-time project or where the learning curve is too steep.

3. Evaluate your options. There is more here than saving money or the pride in "doing it yourself." Research and evaluation, shopping and the time taken to go it alone do add up. Take the list you made in Step 2 and make a detailed time assessment. If you can spend only 2 hours a weekend on your predicted 50-hour web project, well, do the math; then read a Tale of Two Clients.

Still undecided? A bit about Connecting Links Web Consulting:   We are small business marketing consultants & web strategists. We target your business marketing & bring your web site into focus invisibly.

We've been in web site and Internet technology since 1996 and in marketing, writing, and editing going on 3 decades. We make it easy for you to explore your options and uncover those that fit your needs. Connecting Links is a small Internet strategy and consulting firm in Bethesda, Maryland. Our business is about sharing our knowledge to make targeting your marketing simple and easy and to demystify the Web and technology. This site exists for the business owner, the nonprofit or municipality, who has a web site and who uses email, and finds web site maintenance and marketing to be one of the most time-consuming and neglected parts of business.

Champagne Solutions

A "save the animals" nonprofit hired a web firm, after doing due diligence, to customize a content management solution (CMS). Recommended to Connecting Links Web Consulting for a quick site update, we reviewed the entire site (our usual procedure).  Upon discovering their CMS leased to them at $4000 per month (and requiring the site owner to do all the updates himself), we recommended a different system for a total, one-time purchase of $175. The nonprofit uses the savings to further the mission of the nonprofit, including spay and neutering clinics.

Tale of Two Clients

Client One got the business opportunity of a lifetime: be the only corporate gift company in a major hotel chain in a major international city. The prerequisite? Have a web site. This was at the beginning of the World Wide Web. Prices for web design and development were extremely low. We were asked to bid on this project. Our bid was for a basic site (3 pages) at the then going rate. After receiving 3 bids in the same range (about $150 per page excluding original logo design and content), the client went on her own. A year later, she had an excellent web site (one of the best on the market at that time) and lost the exclusive, multi-hotel contract.

Client Two, the largest member nonprofit in its county, spent almost a year designing a web site by committee and members. After an RFP (request for proposal) period and more vetting by committee, the organization hired a young, hip, new on the scene web design/development company, gave them a membership (the original RFP denied bids by committee members), and 3 years later, the site is not launched.