Call or Email Us Today: (719) 573.0084

Filter The NoiseBlog

We blog about design, technology, internet marketing and business on the web. As the name implies, we aim to "filter the noise" and share only the most relevant information. Feel free to chime in anytime with your thoughts and comments. Established 2004 in Colorado Springs, Colorado by HighTouch Web Design and Internet Marketing.

Customer service: the key to your design business success

Kim Kolb - Wednesday, July 14, 2010

This post is by Adam Broadway of Adobe Business Catalyst.  We were asked to be interviewed to give our story on why we use Business Catalyst and what we could offer other Designers in their success. We loved sharing our story.. I hope you like it as well.

Dave and Kim Kolb share experiences in growing their business, Hightouchweb.com – ideas that could help grow your design business.

After meeting at a resort, falling in love and being laid off at the 2000 tech bubble burst, Dave and Kim decided it was time to build their own Web company.

By combining and complementing their strengths in strategy, design and marketing, HighTouchweb.com was born.

MP3 audio interview of Dave and Kim Kolb, has them candidly sharing:

  1. Finding motivation in each other and maintaining a "CAN DO" attitude, to get through the tough times.
  2. Have fun doing it - Love what you do and "whatever you do", do it well.
  3. Taking time to follow up with every client (Kim sends personal welcome cards to every one of their customers).
  4. Dave shares his feelings on building their own CMS and the pain of using lots of 3rd party open source plug-ins, that didn't always work.

In their words:

  • Keep it simple and excel at the basics.
  • Don't be all things to all people, you'll drive yourself crazy.
  • Know who you are and what you do.

A Business Catalyst feature that benefits their clients:

"We view InContextEditing as the strongest sales tool within the tool set that BC offers. You can take a mere mortal and have them updating their website in no time with little or no training. The power this gives the client is priceless. They feel like they are actually participating."

I hope you enjoy hearing some of their story as much as I did.

Adam :)

Click here for the mp3 interview of Dave and Kim Kolb.

Business Catalyst NOT-SO-SEXY Upgrades

Dave Kolb - Tuesday, June 01, 2010
The feature upgrades and enhancements from Business Catalyst (since the Adobe purchase) have been coming to us at a slow pace. BUT I LIKE IT! The code is cleaner and BETA looks like it means BETA, rather than ALPHA. Most of what's been released lately hasn't been all that sexy, but good none-the-less. I'd like to hear what you think. Please comment below, or contact us.

Here is a summary of the new Business Catalyst features:

Dynamic Menu Toggle
There is now a checkbox at the bottom of each dynamic menu item that lets you choose whether a menu item is displayed live on your site. Very helpful if you simply want to deactivate a menu item temporarily.

Site Search Technology was Upgraded
Both the Site Search (which searches forums, blog posts, web-app items, products etc) and Product Search (which searches products only) have had the technology that powers them upgraded. Search terms are now highlighted and results display much quicker!

DNS Management Tools
Ok, this one is probably the least sexy, but very useful. You now have the ability to manage DNS via your Domain Admin control panel. This is particularly useful if you want to simply setup sub-domains, like: blog.yourdomain.com, or shop.yourdomain.com.

301 Re-Direct Management Control Panel
So you've probably heard how important (especially when migrating a website to a new platform) how important it is to properly use 301 redirects to permanently redirect your old links to their new locations. A lot of companies use Javascript to redirect everything to the homepage. Search engines don't like this and you will inevitably lose all your "link juice" (inbound links from other websites. Again, a HUGE improvement, but not that sexy...I like it!

In-Context Editing (Beta)
Ok, I saved the best for last and this one actually has some sex appeal. In-Context Editing is (if you've ever used it) about the easiest, most intuitive way to edit you web content. The new interface allows you to edit as you navigate through the website. This feature has lowered our on-boarding time on website edits from about 20-30 minutes to less than 5 minutes. I still prefer the "feel" of an admin panel, but our clients (mostly the ones on the lower end of the tech scale), love it. Great job on this one Adobe and BC. Try a Demo of In-Context Editing and let me know what you think.

Adobe's CS5 Launch Video for Business Catalyst

Dave Kolb - Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Here is a preview of Adobe's CS5 launch video for Business Catalyst. Adobe director of product management, Bardia Housman demonstrates this new hosted application for building and managing online businesses.

Great Job Bardia and the Business Catalyst team!

1

RSS RSS Feed

Recent Posts

Tag Cloud

Small Business Success Index Checklists International Builder Show Surveys internet SEM Blog Software eBooks Social Media Analytics Tools HootSuite web design, marketing, strategy Small Business Buyer's Guides Yelp viral video Marketing Intelligence Customer Service Leads SEO Kirby Vacuums Google, Bing REDMAR Whitepapers Digital Immigrant Blog Text Message Marketing, SMS media Email Marketing CMS communications HubSpot Adobe ROI Inbound Marketing Fact Sheets Twitter design, mobile design InContext Editing Offers Outbound Marketing Email Campaign web design YouTube Business Catalyst Usability Facebook TweetDeck Web Analytics Statistics Digital Native Lead Intelligence IBS LinkedIn marketing Content Management Real Estate Websites,New Home Builders Landing Pages

Tag List

Archive