With growth comes change and we are no exception. This summer has seen AshWebStudio bring on it’s first “employee” (technically a sub-contractor on advice from our accountant – you small biz owners likely know how that goes), Blaine, who is going to be helping with many of the day-to-day tasks that are necessary in both the business and client sides of things. What exactly does that mean? Basically he is learning the entire business alongside Derek to help alleviate many of the time consuming tasks so Derek can regain his full attention on what he does best – helping clients create great looking, effective websites. From handling support requests from existing clients or doing internal tasks, Blaine is going to be an extremely vital component of the success here at AshWebStudio.

Not so much of a change, but an expansion. We are currently working on our plan for offering a new hosted content management system, AshWebCMS, in addition to WordPress. WordPress is a fantastic platform for developing client sites and we will continue to use it. However, we have learned that sometimes WordPress is actually bigger than what some clients need. AshWebCMS will be positioned as an even more affordable content management solution for our clients and we look forward to getting it launched soon!

We hope you have enjoyed your summer so far and look forward to working together to continue mutual growth online.

You may know that we run an online e-commerce store selling bird toys, food and accessories. We opened the store because we own a Greenwing Macaw and Erika worked at FreeFlight (an avian boarding and grooming place now also a non-profit organization itself) in college.

Somehow we became connected with the people at 911ParrotAlert and they told us how much they hated their existing site and had been through many individuals and companies promising to redo their site for free since they were a non-profit. Many years went by and nobody ever finished a site. We decided to show them that there are good web companies out there that will actually complete a project when they say they will and decided to help them out.

After many months of working together with their volunteers, we are very happy to say that we have finally launched their new website. We still have more ideas to help make their site more functional and also make reunited birds easier so this project will be ongoing for us.

Since we started AshWebStudio back in 2007, we have accumulated a lot of great clients. However, as we add more clients that means we support more clients. When we first started it was not an issue for one person to maintain our client base with an extremely quick turnaround (often times within minutes!). However, we do need to instate a new support policy that changes will be made within 48 hours of being submitted (not including weekends).

If you need a change done sooner than 48 hours, you can submit your support ticket and mark the priority as “Urgent”. However, you will be billed at our expedited change rate instead of our normal hourly rate.

(Officially) Introducing Blaine!

Blaine has started working with me as an assistant on various small things here and there on a part-time basis. However, the goal is for him to grow into more of full-time support of our existing clients. For those of you who have not yet had the privilege of working with Blaine already, you will find he is an extremely nice guy and will enjoy working with him.

Why this new method of support?

Like Basecamp for the initial project management, this centralized support area makes it simple for communication, keeps a record of all communication and allows more than just one person to easily join in on the updates.

When to use Basecamp vs. Support Area

If you have a website in which we are currently designing and building,
continue to use Basecamp.

If we are providing search engine optimization on a regular basis,
continue to use Basecamp.

If you have a website we have launched/put live,
please submit any change requests or questions in Support.

Once a website goes live, we will notify you about the switch over to using our new Support methods.

We started the store because we are bird owners ourselves. We have a Greenwing Macaw, Little Wing, and a White Bellied Caique, Ozzi.

What does this mean to you and your e-commerce store? Well, we’ve been there done that. We haven’t just designed e-commerce websites like most other companies, we actually run one. We understand everything it takes from the initial idea in your head to making a sale. With this experience we can help you not only design and put together an e-commerce website, but provide guidance, based on experience, from everything such as which merchant account to get and how to get your sales tax license. Of course, we bring an immense amount of experience in knowing how best to turn users into sales as well. Once the site is up, we got you covered with ideas on how to get the word out and go from unknown to known and popular. You name it, we have researched it, tested it and have some pretty good ideas on how to make a successful e-commerce website.

We are happy to announce the launch of AshWebMail to everyone, not just our current clients. AshWebMail has every feature you need for a successful email marketing campaign – and it’s really easy to use, even for beginners. If you don’t feel comfortable making an email template or using one of our great, free templates, AshWebStudio can custom design your email marketing campaign for you.

Head on over to AshWebMail.com and check it out!

“I believe that a significant portion of the reason he won was because of the website design that you put together for him. It has brought him an incredible amount of business, and he gets compliments on it all the time. He’s really proud of it.”

This is what we strive for – helping our clients’ businesses grow.

See the project details here

2007 has been a very exciting year for AshWebStudio as we’ve grown exponentially. We took on a record number of projects while being able to improve upon our quality and customer service. We are eagerly looking forward to what comes next as this new website is not only a fresh design, but a marker in taking AshWebStudio from freelance portfolio to a full-time web design and development company.

Any feedback is great, just drop us a line