Since 1999 we’ve done a lot of web development and online marketing work for a lot of different clients, and we’ve become more experienced in certain industries than others, namely; self storage, venture capital, and law firms. While we can certainly design a great site or provide SEO for any type of company (although there are some types of companies we won’t do work for…), we have some special expertise when it comes to these three industries. We just launched a website for Price Self Storage in San Diego which is a good example. There’s not much we haven’t done for this company. We reworked their brand just slightly, designed a new website, built a content management system, integrated the site with Centershift’s self-storage management software, and we’re providing ongoing PPC management and SEO services. Oh, and we designed and built an awesome Flash piece that allows users to choose the right size storage unit.

When it comes to venture capital, we’ve worked with almost every venture capital firm in Utah, and some outside the state as well. Plus I’ve had plenty of dealings as an entrepreneur with VC firms and angel investors and when I was a college student at BYU I won the business plan competition there, so I know a bit about the industry.

In the legal industry we’ve worked with several law firms providing everything from website design to SEO to content management. We’ve created micro-sites to bring in leads for a specific class-action lawsuit, and we’ve done overall marketing for firms like Strong & Hanni and Siegfried & Jensen.

Due to our experience in these three areas, we’ve created three new pages on our site to promote our experience and show off our work in those industries.

• Self Storage
• Venture Capital
• Law Firms

Once again, this doesn’t mean we’re only focusing on these industries and don’t want clients from other industries, it just means we have something additional we can offer these niches beyond the normal and phenomenal services we provide everyone else.

I’m not sure the last time I was so emotionally invested in the launch of a website, so I’m quite proud to unveil the new Price Self-Storage website. This site has got it all. A slight re-work of the brand, a new website design, Flash size chooser (check it out from the graphic link on the homepage, it’s pretty neat), content management system (still being finished up, actually), and integration with Centershift’s software for managing self-storage facilities. Price Self Storage has several locations in Southern California and one in the Bay Area, and now that the site’s launched we’ll be doing ongoing search engine optimization and marketing work to drive traffic and get as many customers signed up as possible.

Although we’re still ironing out a few kinks, it’s probably done enough that we can announce the launch of a new ecommerce site for one of our clients, TIW Jewelry, who is selling tungsten rings online under the simple brand “Tungsten”. We developed the branding elements, the website design, and coordinated the ecommerce integration for the website. The website, at TungstenRingsforMen.com, uses Magento for ecommerce.

I’m not 100% sold on Magento, but I have to admit I’m fairly impressed with it so far, especially since we’ve had some horrible experiences with other ecommerce platforms in the past. Magento was relatively inexpensive to implement, and is fairly simple to administer. It also includes a decent set of features to aid with SEO efforts, which is critical for this client.

We’ll also be doing ongoing SEO work for this client. Of course it doesn’t hurt to have a domain with some good keywords in it. We just barely started and their site is already #9 in Google for “tungsten rings for men”. Of course we really want to get the rankings for “tungsten rings” which they only rank at #85 for, but give it a month or two and we’ll see where things are at.

Many, if not most of our clients are using blogs these days to help them communicate with their customers but also to boost the results of their search engine optimization efforts. Search engines love blogs, and it’s one of the easiest ways clients can boost their SEO visibility.

We recently launched a blog for an eating disorder treatment center called Avalon Hills. The blog uses WordPress, and we installed and configured several WordPress plugins including the All-in-One SEO plugin and the Post Notification plugin.

We’ve been managing search engine optimization and search engine marketing efforts for Workforce Solutions for a number of years now and we just recently launched a new blog focused on the HR outsourcing market for them.

The blog uses WordPress, and we took advantage of several WordPress plugins including the All-in-One SEO plugin and the Post Notification plugin.

More important than anything we did is the fact that our client is actually using the blog and posting on it regularly. While we can build a great blog, if our clients don’t use it then it’s like having a nice car that stays in your garage. Or what’s that quote? “Ships in a harbor are safe but that is not what ships are for.” I suppose that applies somewhat.

Some new web design case studies have been added to the site. Most of these have been done for some time, but it’s hard to get around to updating your own website, you know? We’ve added case studies for Unishippers, Poems Art, Price Self Storage, AEEC, and Artscape.

Price Self Storage is the most recent work and in fact the new site hasn’t launched yet, although the design phase is complete. We hope to launch the new site within a few days. If you think Artscape and Poems Art are curiously similar, there’s no mistake to that. We completed Poems Art and acquired Artscape as a client as a result of the Poems Art site.

From time to time MWI is invited to bid on government contracts. We never respond to these requests for three reasons:

1. Bureaucracy. The bidding process with government is full of red tape and hoops to jump through. There are all sort of requirements that have to be verified. There is paperwork to fill out. It’s time consuming and a pain. By contrast, bidding on a job for a private company can be as simple as sending an email with some general pricing information.

2. Speed. The government is slow. Everything has to be approved and go through the proper channels. With private companies, we can go from responding to a request for proposal to having a signed contract and a check in our hand within 24 hours.

3. Multiple bids. The government is required to get at least three bids. Sometimes the decision makers have already decided who to use, but since they have to get three bids they call us up and ask us to submit a bid, knowing full well that we won’t get it, no matter what. Why would I want to spend my company’s time on something like that? Even if we have a fair shot at it, we know we’re competing against at least two other firms, and that whoever has the lowest price will probably win the work. We are never the lowest price and we don’t try to be the lowest price.

In fact, at MWI we don’t respond to bids from any company if they tell us we’re competing against someone else for the work. We have enough work where we are the sole company providing a bid that we don’t need the hassle of fighting for the work. We’ll let someone else focus on the competitive situation and we’ll spend our time with the clients who have already decided to use us before they even know what our bid will be.

So if you’re with the government and would like us to submit a bid for a project, we’re glad we’re on your radar, but not interested.

A few months ago Centershift asked MWI to partner with them to provide web design and search engine optimization solutions for their clients in the self-storage industry. Centershift’s software provides all the backend accounting, billing, and facility management functions. MWI is designing websites for self-storage facilities and then integrating Centershift’s software into the website so that all the functionality shows up seamlessly.

If you own one or more self-storage facilities contact us or Centershift to learn more.

About a year ago I swore MWI would never do web development (i.e. web programming, .net development, php programming, java, database stuff, content management, ecommerce, etc.) ever again. After all, web development is time consuming, lower margin, and harbors loads of potential for things to go wrong. Designing a website is much easier, goes fast, and 99% of our clients absolutely love the design work we do for them. SEO is even better, in that it’s all results-oriented, it’s recurring revenue, and as long as we deliver results our clients are happy. It’s not subjective like design–either we deliver or we don’t, so the objectives are clear.

So we removed any trace of web development services from the website, referred our programming clients to other web development firms, and decided to focus on web design and SEO. A year later and here we are still doing programming projects. Right now we’re working on an ecommerce site for a client who will be selling tungsten rings online, a content management system with custom integration to a third-party software package for a self-storage company in Southern California, and we’ve done a number of other programming projects as well. In fact, we might be doing more programming right now than we were doing a year ago.

That said, I’m still not going to put any word about programming back on the website. We do it and we’re happy to do it, it’s just not the direction I want MWI to grow in. I still say web design and search engine optimization are the way to go.

Not in general, but on our site, specifically. The section of our site that was previously labeled as “application development” has been changed to “web development,” partially for SEO reasons, and partly for the human factor.