Although small, Delaware is fast becoming a hot bed for tech savvy website developers and programmers. The reason behind this shift of brain power is the amount of schools in Delaware that are catering to technology and design-centered education programs. Delaware State University, The University of Delaware, Delaware Technical and Community College, Wesley College and Wilmington University each have maturing programs and a lof of their graduates are staying right here in the state. 10 years ago, it was like pulling teeth to find a good graphic designer or code junkie, don’t even get me started about trying to find someone who knew CSS back then, but times have changed.

Thanks to open source software such as Drupal, Joomla and WordPress, technophiles can learn to code much easier than in the past, with a simple test server. A new install of Drupal or WordPress can be setup in as little as 5 minutes, this is a huge competitive advantage for companies who take advantage of open source website development solutions. This enables us to keep overhead down and focus on website marketing instead of expensive custom programming that is not necessary in the web world anymore, again, times have changed. There are still a few small website development companies around the state holding on to the dream of cashing-in on large, proprietary, complex, and inefficient content management systems, that hold their customer data hostage, but their customer pools are drying up fast as consumers are becoming more educated.

I ran in to the owner of a local Delaware marketing company in Wilmington last week and when we began to speak about website marketing, he confided in me that he couldn’t even send and receive email. This is a problem. This guy runs an entrenched marketing company in Delaware, with a few dozen medium-to-large clients who trust him to make decisions for their marketing and the guy does not understand technology at all. He has a Comcast email address and looked at me like I was an alien when I suggested that he purchase his own domain name so that his email address was more professional. My goal is not to bash the guy, he is awesome and he made some wise marketing decisions for his clients back when newspaper and billboards were “the thing”, but times have changed. Are you marketing to people where they are or where you want them to be?

During hurricane Irene this past weekend, a local news station, WBOC,  was posting updates to Facebook in rapid succession, but each post they made was preempted by a post from people on Twitter. This technology and information sharing shift is not going to change as millennials continue to make buying decisions based on their friends and family member recommendations, rather than psychological buying habits dictated by print marketing and television commercials.

As you shop around for a Delaware Website Design, Website Development and Website Marketing company, please be sure to speak to a human, ask a lot of questions, make sure they know what they are doing and more importantly, make sure they get to know YOU before they start telling you what you need to do. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions to marketing now. The marketing books are being re-written as you are reading this; those of us who are ahead of the technology curve are making money for our clients. How is your business doing?

Contact us today to know more about our Marketing and Website Development related services OR Call us at 1-302-526-0777 to start the process now.

Beware of these proprietary content management systems when you decide to have your website built.

We prefer open source content management systems like WordPress and Drupal. Why? Well, for starters, they have a familiar code base. This makes it easy to hire employees who are comfortable working with these platforms, in turn, the cost to our clients is a lot lower. Secondly, these open source Content Management Systems are easy to move from one hosting company to another. This is essential if you become unhappy with your vendor, if you can’t move your data, they are effectively holding your data hostage. Don’t let them tell you that you can “export your pages as HTML”, all this means is that your website will be broken, but you can keep the text. You will end up paying another website developer to build an entirely new website.

By building your website in an open source content management system framework, you can be sure that with a database and theme folder backup, you can move your website and be up and running on another hosting providers’ servers in a matter of minutes. How can anyone argue with that?

Here is a list of top 5 reasons why you should use an open source content management system:

1. Cost – The code is Free! If you install it yourself and select a theme, you only pay a developer for things you need help with
2. Functionality – WordPress and Drupal are extremely mature Content Management Systems that have been used for just about every type of site, including Government.
3. Flexibility – With thousands of modules, plugins and themes, there is nothing you can’t do
4. Security – Hundreds of Security Experts around the world test Drupal and WordPress for vulnerabilities every day
5. Freedom – Unhappy with your developer or hosting company? Move the site! No proprietary code or applications to worry about

Non-technical people flock to WordPress because it is simple to use, easy to administer and extremely simple to customize. In fact, proprietary website development and content management companies have been trying to copy the vast majority of the functionality in WordPress for years. We feel they will continue to do this for many years to come.

As with any content management system (CMS), security concerns with WordPress have been raised over the years. The security advancements in the past 2 years have made this CMS a viable option for most small businesses. This is because of the diligence of the WordPress security team. When a new security update becomes available, website administrators are notified by email, text and a message appears in the administration panel which prompts users to upgrade immediately. These updates are fast, friendly, and extremely easy to install in one click.

We have the tools to build custom websites, open source content management systems like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla or, we can recommend a proprietary system as well. Give us a call today so we can discuss your options and get you on your way to marketing success.

Christian Oestlien, the lead product manager for social advertising at Google, revealed that two-week timeline, and gave a few other details. It seems that MTV and Mashable are strong early candidates for the new pages, with “tens of thousands” of other applicants competing for a spot.

Oestlien is indicating that he wants Google+’s brand pages to include large, socially-active companies, as well as smaller entrepreneurs and startups. Essentially, Google+ only wants companies who really take advantage of the social web. Dell, for example, has apparently been hosting Meetup webcam chats on Google+, which has put the company in Google’s good graces.

So far, we like Google+, its fluid and lacks a lot of the distractions that Facebook currently has. With that said, opening Google+ to the masses and corporate influence will likely cause it to travel the same road as Facebook and we will probably end up with a split-camp of Facebook lovers and Google+ lovers. Right now, the Google+ crowd are geeks and technophiles who are quick to adopt new trends, but the market will speak in 2012. Here’s to having choices.

The company that occupied the booth was selling cosmetic products and olive oils. We recently built a website for a customer in a similar business vertical and we know from experience that the cosmetic industry has a very loyal customer base; they do not switch brands easily, so you must have a fantastic product.

What was so unique about this booth you ask? Well, they were giving away free samples of their flavored olive oils with a piece of bread (the white truffle oil wes very tasty). After sampling the bread (everyone else was, why not, right?) the young lady behind the table instructed and even demanded that everyone look at the variety of products they had to offer. These guys made just about everything from olive oil, and we were impressed. I witnessed multiple people make a purchase after tasting the oil covered bread and I had to applaud this tactic.

Getting your products in the hands of your consumers is key right now. I can’t tell you how many times we have told people that a website and internet marketing are not a magic bullet. Selling vanity products in these economic times takes a holistic strategy, and of couse, a good product. These guys did a fantastic job. I wonder how many customers visited their website after making the initial purchase or grabbing their business card from the table? I am positive that their website analytics would show a huge bump after this week at the festival! Give us a call, we have some pretty neat ideas for your business too, I promise!