mPower Consulting

I attend a lot of events from networking meetings and seminars to small group dialogues and one-on-ones with business owners and I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked the question that has become the title of this post.  Most all of us in business have realized that the Internet has changed the way that we conduct business and we all have realized that we need to get into the game by at least having a company website.  Now, that leads most of those that I meet with to ask me, “How much does a good website typically cost?”

Well, let me give you the short answer that I know you’re going to hate… it depends. Read more »

One of the most common issues I find with websites is what I call the “Build it and Forget it” syndrome.  In simple terms, it’s the website that you build today and do not change a thing for the next few years. This disease in websites is as prevalent as the common cold is in humans.  It’s cause is simple: it’s “old web” thinking in a “new web” world.  In the old web (say mid-1990’s to early 2000,) the idea was simply to copy and paste the content from your company’s brochure into your website and then you were set.  At that point, you were fine to leave it for the next few years and many businesses did just that. Read more »

I remember when I first started building websites over 10 years ago that all I had at the time was Microsoft’s Notepad application and a book titled “Sam’s Learn HTML in 24 Hours.” Piecing a website together was an arduous process that included lots of technical knowledge (or at least lots of reference books) and took many long nights with lots of caffeine to finish.  We’ve sure come a long way since then and today there are all sorts of free online tools where you can build your website in say less than 24 hours (it may not be pretty, but it would be a website.)  One of these tools is called a “content management system,” or CMS for short, and I want to spend just a little bit of time telling you what I consider to be the top four benefits of using a CMS tool to build your website. Read more »

I’ve spent the past 8 years of my life operating in the online world. Three of those years I was developing and managing the online strategies for the organization I worked for and three more of those years were at the helm of my current consulting practice teaching small business owners how to effectively develop and implement their own online strategies. In all my years of “living on the web” there are two things that completely frustrate me Read more »