Happy Tenth Anniversary, WordPress!

Tess Gadwa
CEO and Founder
Yes Exactly, Inc.

On May 27, 2013, the popular WordPress blogging and website platform celebrated its tenth anniversary. Founder Matt Mullenweg writes eloquently of the strength of the community which helped the software to grow and evolve:

WordPress’ strength lies in the diversity of its community. From the start, we wanted a low barrier to entry and we came up with our “famous 5 minute install”. This brought on board users from varied technical background: people who didn’t write code wanted to help make WordPress better. If you couldn’t write code, it didn’t matter: you could answer a question in the support forums, write documentation, translate WordPress, or build your friends and family a WordPress website. There is space in the community for anyone with a passion for WordPress.

Yes Exactly as a company would not exist without WordPress. Although we use other open source content management tools as the occasion demands, the usability and versatility of WordPress make it almost unmatched as a tool for rapidly deploying a full-featured, great-looking website that ordinary people can edit and add to on their own, without having to learn a new programming language.

Usability has been part of WordPress DNA since the get-go, and as Mullenweg recounts, it has occasionally resulted in some push-back from the occasionally cliquish development community. With over 66 million blogs in existence, WordPress is easily the most popular open-source blogging platform in existence today — and yet it is created and maintained in large part by a community of volunteers and passionate enthusiasts.

As Yes Exactly matures as a company, we hope to find ways to give back to the open source community that has given us so much. Chief among them, we are working on a set of tools to make it as easy for graphic designers to create great original custom website designs in WordPress as it is right now for bloggers to blog and programmers to write code using the same platform. The first designers will be testing an early release of the software later this week. We couldn’t be more excited!

I am a firm believer that the most powerful technology is not the slickest or the fastest or the most obscure and mystifying. It is that which can be got into the hands of the most people, to use and adapt as they see fit. Thanks again to Matt Mullenweg and everyone who brought WordPress into existence. You have changed the world for the better.

Just Launched!

www.colorgrid.net

www.informationcollective.org

Two new Yes Exactly client custom websites have launched this week — author and crafter Gail Callahan’s Color Grid and The Information Collective, a resource for journalists. The two sites are very different in style and subject matter, but both reflect the passion and expertise of the clients we work with.

Like what you see? Have a dream or an entrepreneurial idea? Contact us.

Beyond the Big Yellow Book

Help your customers find your brick-and-mortar business or service.

Why Main Street needs the Web, and vice versa.

Remember the Yellow Pages? You may still receive a digest-sized Yellow Pages every year or two, but you might be hard-pressed to identify its current whereabouts. (I think mine might be sitting on a lower bookshelf; it’s too small these days to be useful as a doorstop.) But some local businesses still invest money in Yellow Pages advertising, because they feel that there are enough potential customers still browsing the Yellow Pages to make that advertising pay off.

I’m not here to argue against use of the Yellow Pages* — but your online presence is just as important, if not more important. Customers who used to thumb through that “big yellow book” are now firing up their laptops or iPhones and typing your service or product, along with their location, into a Google search box.

Your customers may be looking for you online, not in their phone books.

What do I mean by “online presence?” You don’t need a fancy website full of bells and whistles. You don’t need ecommerce, or LiveChat, or a 24-hour streaming videocam. You need, at the very least, a page or two listing your business, your location, your hours, your contact info, and your statement about your products and/or services. Your site design should be mobile-friendly, so those customers on the go can read it on their smartphone or tablet screens. And your one or two pages should be search engine-optimized, so your future customers, searching “your product your city your state” in Google or Bing see your site as the top result.

It’s true that online Yellow Pages, other aggregators, and review sites like Yelp or Angie’s List, may already have listings for your business. But you shouldn’t let third party websites deliver your message about your business. Take control of your messaging: when your site is up and running, contact these third party sites, and others which could be relevant for your business, to add your website to their listings.

If you want to build out your site’s features, you can also:

• Add your entire product or inventory list, and make it searchable. This helps with search engine optimization.

• Link your site to a social media account, like Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare.

• Post updates about sales and specials.

• Add testimonials from satisfied customers.

• Feature an events calendar.

• Add a blog, or video.

• Promote other friendly businesses nearby.

We find that our most successful brick-and-mortar customers are those who use their websites as an information portal, to share information about events, sales, and other happening at their physical locations. The website draws visitors to the physical store, then visitors return to the website… the goal is to turn a single visit or transaction into an ongoing, mutually rewarding relationship.

Blogs, online mailing lists, social media, and events calendars can all help with this process. If this seems like a lot to keep track of, just make sure the basics are visible, so  that your customers can find you, know when you’re open, and what you have to offer.  Still not sure where to start? Yes Exactly can help.

*For a thoughtful overview of current trends for Yellow Pages use, check out this post from Chris Silver Smith.

Downtown Bluffton By Major optics (Own work by author) [CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons. Auckland Yellow Pages By Andrew Sullivan Kabl00ey (Own work) [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons.