It’s my personal goal to make the most of this opportunity to serve my fellow Rotarians, our community and, if I’m truly lucky, the wider world.

I was hesitant about joining Rotary initially — after all, as one who thinks H. L. Mencken was an authentic American genius, I had an ingrained bias against the group.

It took a single meeting for me to realize that Rotary is an honorable institution, and one deserving of much praise. Besides being “this close” to wiping out polio worldwide,  at the local level our club last year provided the equivalent of 25,000 quarter-pounders in venison to those who would otherwise have gone hungry; gave over 750 turkeys to needy families at Christmas-time; and did a whole host of other projects for our community.

My thanks to past president (and soon-to-retire VP of Finance & Business Services at John Wood Community College) Alan Steigelman, who was a thoughtful mentor over the past year, and to the Board of Directors for their assistance.

Hancock County Housing Authority

They serve the residents of Hancock County, Illinois by providing subsidized housing for the disabled, elderly and in qualifying cases families and singles. Their main goal was to let county residents know of the availability of clean, affordable housing locally, and to keep those properties rented.

Each community in the county with housing has its own page, easily accessible from the main navigation, and from sidebar navigation within the community pages. Several photos of the interiors and exteriors of the properties are included to illustrate that the homes and apartments are clean and well-maintained.

An embedded and fully interactive Google Map for each community shows the locations of HCHA properties.

The Housing Authority’s phone number is prominently displayed across the top of every page, in order to make it quick and easy for potential tenants to contact the HCHA.

You can see the site here: http://www.hancockcountyhousing.org/

Marry J’s Quilting Scissors

When Marry J found herself making tedious precise, small cuts while pursuing her quilting hobby, she realized that scissors with a 1/4″ notch in them would make her life so much easier and her quilting so much more enjoyable. So she jokingly asked her husband to make them for her… to her surprise, he did!

The result are Marry J’s 1/4″ Quilting Scissors. Perfectly notched so they make an exact 1/4″ cut each time, these high-quality scissors make sewing and quilting more fun, and more precise.

Selling online was a natural choose for this website, and to make this as simple as possible for both customers and the owners, PayPal was chosen as the payment method. On every page is a large “Buy Now” button that provides a one-click link to the payment page.

Also on every page is an embedded YouTube.com video showing Marry J demonstrating the scissors with real situations as she sews a quilt. The finished quilts are also shown.

Take a look at Marry J’s website, and remember, these are great gifts for the quilter in your family!

http://www.marryjs.com/

Quincy’s wonderful “Avenue of Lights” is two miles of  holiday lighting displays winding through Moorman-Wavering Park. Getting the chance to develop a new website for them was a treat!

For various reasons the decision to move forward with the website was made just over a week before the Thanksgiving Day 2010 opening… a deadline that made we met with a day to spare.

A very visual site, it made heavy use of “lightboxes,” the nicely styled image pop-ups that grey out the surrounding background to let the images shine.

Take a look at the website, and don’t miss a trip through the “Avenue of Lights” in 2011!

After the dot-com bubble burst in spring 2000 it was Google that saved the Web. By making searches available that were unbelievably fast and returned relevant links, Google made it possible for users to find what they were looking for, and for businesses (online & offline) to get their wares in front of consumers.

With the advent of AdWords and AdSense, Google sustained businesses large and small, and made viable their main search product… and gave them the cash required to set themselves up as one of the few major players in the coming cloud computing revolution (which is, of course, on-going).

But… in the past decade it’s become apparent that as Google as launched new products (Google Maps, Google News, Google Docs, Chrome, etc., etc.) it has also let slip it’s primary interest — it’s search engine. And slipping with it is the Open Web and the long-tail of businesses that need fast, relevant and filterable searches to survive.

Google would be best served today to split into two companies — Google Search and Google Everything Else. It’s time for Google to re-invent Web searching, and for Google Everything Else (or GEE, to coin a term) to stand on its own revenues.

With that move, searchers (and the businesses that thrive on them) will have their open and available Web… and those of us who love GEE will benefit from newly focused business model.

We’ll see what 2011 brings — either a re-energized Google, or a brash young upstart that within several years will make Google Search as good a stock pick as MySpace.

Learn the basics of social media, or explore your options for creating a short or long-term social media marketing campaign. Social media usage has exploded and with it have the business opportunities — and the business obstacles.

Why does your company need a social media policy?

Even if your company doesn’t utilize social media, your employees do. And what they do on social media can reflect greatly on your business — and your bottom line.

It’s not just what they say about you and your company to their network of Facebook friends (and those friend’s friend, etc., etc.) it’s when they share it. Sure, you may have Facebook blocked on your network but does any of staff have smartphones? Some do — so you’d better have a policy about acceptable use of Facebook during the workday.

How is your business going to profit from social media?

Do you have a plan to profit from social media? Your competition surely does. Webcentric can help you set up a social media plan that’s small — or large — enough to meet your budget and time constraints.

Engaging with social media can be an assist to your marketing plans, or it can become the largest part of your marketing… together we can craft a social media marketing plan that’ll help your business make the most of social media.

Call 217-214-2757 today to schedule your FREE social media consultation!

A portfolio’s been added that will show the latest websites I’ve developed. Each will also have an associated blog post that talks a bit about the goals, needs and technical challenges of each website.

My hope is that these mini-case studies will help others think about their websites in a fresh way… who their audience is, what their goals for their website are, what features would be beneficial and which are wastes of time, etc.

Where possible I’d prefer to let my customers speak for me, so I’ve added a testimonial page. Please take a minute to read those to get an idea of what working with Webcentric will be like.

Once you’ve looked over the designs and read the case studies and testimonials, give me a call at 217-214-2757 or email me and we can discover the best way to use your website to make your business more profitable!

Adams County, Illinois’ oldest insurance company has the county’s newest website — www.obrieninsure.com.

When it became clear to Mike O’Brien that his agency needed a website he approached Webcentric with a firm idea of what he wanted out of it.

In addition to providing a way for new and existing clients to get the phone numbers for his offices in Quincy and Camp Point, Illinois, the website also needed to make it easy for his clients to make a payment directly to their insurance company. Graphical images of each company’s logo that link directly to their sites accomplished this requirement handily.

Keeping in mind the demands on his client’s time, Mike insisted on providing detailed insurance request forms on the website. Each is specific to the type of insurance request — auto, home, health, life, and business.

To Mike and his father George O’Brien, the connection between agent and client is a vitally important one. So each agent has a page on the website with a bit of information about them as well as direct contact information.

We’d like to thank Mike and his team at O’Brien Insurance Agency for selecting Webcentric to create their web presence!

And remember… I’ll hand deliver them to your door!

Rotary Fruit & Seafood Price List

Please take a look at the attached PDF flyer and order your fruit or seafood today! You can call me at 217-214-2757 or email me at dlavelle@thinkwebcentric.com… thanks!

RotaryFruit0001

Why pay me (or others) to make content changes to your website? Or even to add new pages? Shouldn’t you be able to do that yourself, here in 2010? Of course you should — and can!

Yes, there’s additional cost up front… but the improvement to your search engine rankings, your customer’s experience of your site, and your results will all improve with fresh, current and relevant content.

And, when you’re ready to add text to a page, it’s as easy as typing an email or into Word. Don’t let the idea of a “CMS” or Content Management System intimidate you… we make this as painless as possible.

Remember — if you can pound out your name on a keyboard, you can add content to your CMS-powered website.

Be different… don’t follow the crowd, lead the way & do it in style — your style.

Call us at 217-214-2757 today!