The Foundation for Educational Choice is a not-for-profit founded on the ideals of famed economist Milton Freidman that promotes educational choice to any and all who seek it. By acting as a sort of repository for nationwide news relative to the subject, Ed. Choice has the ability to keep students, parents, teachers, legislatures, and everyone in between informed of new scholarship opportunities, legislation passed, or bills created that help students seek the schooling they desire.

While they are not solely web-based, a lot of their information is passed along via the web, and their current website was hindering them from effectively managing all the information that they had. In order to help them better educate the masses on educational choice, we here at BitWise Solutions developed a means to easily deliver research, news, legislation, and other documents that directly affect each state. Their content management system wasn’t ideal and made it difficult for the Foundation to easily edit content on their site, as well as provide organized content for their audiences. With a brand new content management system and research and legislation modules, they will now have complete control over what content is displayed on their site, and that will allow them to keep it up to date in the manner they need.

Now that the new site has launched, the efficiency and ease with which they can reach their audience will increase greatly, allowing them to more effectively serve the students and parents that subscribe to educational choice.  

Yesterday a longtime client of ours, Ice Miller, celebrated its 100 year anniversary.  This is a huge accomplishment, not just for a legal firm, but for any company!  Ice Miller, based in Indianapolis with offices around the country, was founded on a commitment to provide personal service and valued legal counsel to its clients and after 100 years, that hasn't changed.

With a focus and belief that technology and rapid information retrieval is a critical component of their business they rely heavily on applications and Web centric technologies that allow their lawyers and staff members to be connected and accessible.  The work we have done for them, including their Website and custom built proposal generator help their team members be efficient and provide the best service to their clients.

We are proud that we have had the opportunity to work with such an upstanding firm and we highly regard the relationship we have developed with Ice Miller over the past decade.  We are honored to be able to provide our Website design and custom application development services to Ice Miller and are thrilled about the fact that we have been able to help them succeed as a business and continue to provide their clients with the outstanding services they provide.  Ice Miller – we hope you have 100 more years!

If you are the key person in your organization in charge of managing your corporate Web site and you have difficulty managing your Web site…you are not alone!  Amidst the many other responsibilities we marketers face, one of our primary responsibilities should be the management of our Web site and often times, this proves not to be the case. Many companies either leave their Web site in the hands of their IT folks or it gets left to the wayside until someone decides it’s time for a “redesign.” 

Your corporate Web site should always be the responsibility of the marketing department and it should be viewed a lot like a fine tuned race car that needs to be constantly tweaked and tinkered with…the only problem is finding the time to get this done.  So how do we overcome this problem?  Here are a few suggestions for keeping your Web site up to date and in top notch performance:

1.       Dedicate regular, specific time just for your Web site.  This can be once a week, every two weeks, or once a month – the point is to set aside the time for it.

2.       Don’t become complacent – no matter how great your Website is, it can always use improvement!

3.       Be deliberate about implementing changes to your Website – fight the urge to put things off due to lack of time, money, or resources!

4.       Put on your creative hat – your Web site is often times the first impression that your potential customers will have and you want to have your best foot forward so make sure you are being as creative as possible with your Web site.

5.       Enlist the creative abilities of other people within your organization – let’s face it, we marketers often like to think we have the greatest idea ever!...but the truth is that others may have many incredibly creative ideas for your Web site, take advantage of their creative abilities.

Of course, this is just a short list of things to help you manage your Web site, but I hope this helps you in keeping your Web site in top notch performance!