Is it Time to Rebrand your Website?
The New Year is a great time to update or rebrand your website. This year I am changing the copy, image and quote on my home page each month in addition to other updates. Take a look here  and see if that’s something you may like to do. It keeps your content fresh and you’re also current with monthly holidays or special occasions for your business. Is it time to freshen up your content? I can recommend Hunter Golden with Write Stuff Copywriting  to provide you with the right words for your website to attract your ideal clients. His phone number is 860.305.1684 and you’ll find that his rates are quite reasonable. Be sure to mention you are a client of The Web Muse & Co. If someone you know has said, “This is the year I must get a new web company!” then we’ll be happy to talk with them to see if we’re a good fit for their needs.

Phony Domain Renewal Notices
It’s that time of year again when those official-looking domain renewal notices are sent and they often are not legitimate. Look for the wording “This is not a bill and is a solicitation for services.” somewhere on the document as your first clue that it’s not where your domain is registered. If you have any doubt – feel free to email or FAX it to me.

Three Things Every Website Owner Must Know
1.  Know where your domain is registered, your login, password and when your domain expires. Make sure that your domain is registered in YOUR company name (not your webmaster’s) and that you receive the renewal notices.
2.  Know where your website is hosted. This is usually different than where the domain is registered, but it can be the same place if you’ve registered your domain at the same place you host the site. We don’t recommend the latter. As an example, GoDaddy is great as a domain registrar but we’ve experienced numerous issues with their hosting service. And those companies that are fabulous at hosting are sometimes not the best place to register domains because you’ll often pay a higher price.
3. Know the passwords for each email address associated with your website.

Larry the Cable Guy
Are you familiar with this comedian?  He’s originally from Nebraska and his humor really cracks me up. I was brought to tears when I learned of his $1.2 million donation to Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska. This extremely generous donation is going to help so many children and their families. My sister, Tami works in PR & Marketing at Madonna and she said he’s the most down-to-earth guy you’ll ever meet. He’s truly interested in talking with the people and hearing their stories. He’s always “in-character” and makes everyone laugh. Read all about it here. And that’s his wife, Cara on the left. It may just spark some inspiration on how you or your organization can “give back” this year.

Fat Witch
Tanya sent me some brownies for Christmas from this New York bakery and they were delicious! You’ve just gotta check out their website. You’ll be entertained for hours!

Personally Speaking
Almost every site we design or redesign this year will be done in WordPress.org. This allows you to do your own updates with limited html knowledge. Send me an email if you’d like an estimate for your site. It’s feasible on most sites, but there are exceptions. We’ll let you know if it works for yours.

You may notice we’ve switched from IContact to Mail Chimp. If you have 500 subscribers or less – the service is free. It has many of the same features as Constant Contact and IContact so we are now recommending it to businesses starting out with 500 subscribers or less. Their pricing is competitive when you grow beyond 500. For some reason I keep getting their name turned around and call it Chimp Mail. Fortunately, they must have thought of that and bought that domain too. It redirects to Mail Chimp.

We heard from many of you last year that were doing very well. Happily your websites were working amazingly well to bring you more business. Then there were those who had a downturn in business or sadly closed their doors. Here’s hoping that 2010 will be a great year for everyone!
~ Anita