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Promotion Web Design - New in Stevens Point WI
Have you enjoyed visiting Dreams of Yesteryear's website? If so, meet the web designer.
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Designing the Dreams of Yesteryear Web Site
My name is Darcy Bunn. I am the oldest daugher of Bill and Bonnie Maher, owners of Dreams of Yesteryear Bed and Breakfast. Yes, I was the one who wanted to stay in the car rather than touring old houses when my parents "dragged" my sister and I around the country. That is, with the exception of haunted houses, which I eagerly went in to. I was reading a lot of Nancy Drew books in those days, and I loved investigating alleged ghost sitings. (I had not wanted to live with ghosts, however--but that's another story.)
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The last thing I wanted to do the summer before I started high school was move to a new house, especially a "musty, old house." I remember agreeing only on condition that I would get to have my bedroom in the attic. Well, my parents didn't get around to finishing the third floor of the house until long after I moved out. I stayed in what is now the Gareld's room, which at that time stretched across the entire front of the house and included the balcony. That was pretty "cool" as a teenager. I did eventually get to stay on the third floor when I was home to visit with my husband and children when we were living in Maryland for a few years.
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The internet was just starting to be used by regular people when I graduated from UWSP in 1994. It wasn't until 1998, eight years after Dreams of Yesteryear opened its doors, that I helped my mom put together a website for the B&B. For a while we were one of the few inns that had a website, and certainly one of the few businesses in Stevens Point that were online, one of the others being the water conditioning business.
Over the past several years, the Dreams website has undergone a few minor changes. In the meantime, I married a rocket scientist who also has a masters degree in computer science, and we have had the opportunity to develop some business websites of our own.
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At first, we looked into hiring a web design company to help us with the work load, but the cost was prohibitive and most of all, I could not find any company that would provide the quality of web design that I would have made myself. No web designer I met would ever care about our business as much as my husband Jason and I do, or be willing to commit to a long-term plan for a successful website beyond the initial set up and perhaps monthly updates, or bi-weekly if I was lucky. This was of no use to us. So Jason and I committed to learning web design, some graphic design, and search engine optimization, and built our own little portfolio of successful websites.
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In light of all this, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it was time for the eight-year-old Dreams of Yesteryear website to be brought into the 21st century. It has been fun to revisit the site I started on years ago. I guess the old house is kind of growing on me, because I enjoy the beautiful pictures that I am putting into slide shows and optimizing for fast web viewing.
Jason and I have received numerous compliments on our web designs, and many people have asked us if we have ever considered going into business as web designers. What finally convinced us to go ahead and open a web design business was our love for the Stevens Point area, and the reality that small businesses in our community really need to get online, or upgrade their online presence, and I know they feel they can't afford to do so because most web design companies are charging a high premium for a very small amount of work.
We think a really good web designer would fashion themselves a partner of the client, as though the client's business was really their own, making recommendations and employing the best of their own creativity to ensure the client's website will benefit them as much as possible.
So we are taking on the challenge of providing the same type of personal attention and care that we have applied to the Dreams of Yesteryear website to others who are interested in our web design services. We will work with a limited number of clients. Rather than charging per hour or per page, we will charge per project. We do not consider websites to be a finite number of pages. We find brochure-type websites are all but useless. Websites need to have room to grow, and to be constantly growing to be truly good quality sites with good information on them. They also need to convey the personality of the business behind it. We will be happy to work with business owners or their employees who are willing to collaborate with us so the website can really be the best possible for their business.
So that is a little about the background of DreamsOfYesteryear.com, and how this site has been instrumental in the opening of Promotion Web Design in Stevens Point.
If you would like to contact Jason or me about our new web design company, you can drop an email to us at jdbunn(at)charter.net. Thanks for reading my story!
Warmest regards,
Darcy Bunn
Converted Old House Lover
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