“I need a new website.”

These five words strike more fear in more business owners than hearing “We are heading for another recession”. Websites are everywhere, so why are they so hard to construct? The answer is that they are not. Websites are easy, great websites are a lot of work.

That was my mission nine months ago. Create a great website that distinguishes us from our competition. I consider any recreational activity vying for cyclists’ time and attention to be competition. I needed people, lots of them, to look at how we operate and help create our online vision. The funnel theory was explained to me on how we need to direct more people to our proposed site and get them to act on our message. Sounded like a good theory, so I searched for the best “funnel” people that I could find.

We needed a web designer that I could work with that would understand my vision and add talent, expertise and experience to expand on my concept well beyond what I knew was possible. What I know about web design is that I don’t know what I don’t know. Web design is a complex field with lots of trap doors. Trap doors cost money, time and frustration. I wanted to do my due diligence to avoid all three. The Cavallaro Group was recommended to me by a business associate. My business is built on word of mouth recommendations, so I appreciated and trusted the referral. Jay and Michelle Cavallaro were the perfect team to take us where we needed to go. They had the eye, creative and technical expertise, communication skills, anal retentive attention to detail and professionalism to partner with us on this journey to a target that progressively got smaller as they helped us hone in on exactly what our proposed website should offer in experience and navigation. They brought with them Sadelle Whiltshire, a third party developer, and a team of support from LiveBooks who were allowed to break rules and create new pages and concepts for our site that never before were imagined. We rode the backs of the Cavallaro Group around the land mines and trap doors. The LiveBooks team consisted of Design Manager Dayle Hendrickson, Flash Designer Adam Royer, Production Design Manager Albert Rusz, Production Designer Carmen Moise and Production Coordinator Bert Hall. All focused on our target.

Content, content, content. At the end of the day that is what makes up a website. Sounds simplistic, but that is where most sites go wrong. Unique, proprietary, well written and photographed content will make your site special. We felt that we deserved to be special so we searched out a great photographer to chronicle our bikes, events and rides. Jim Cooper of James Patrick Cooper Photography is a Manhattan based, award winning photographer whose eclectic portfolio was proof enough that if anyone can make our business and products shine above the rest Jim can make short order of the task. Jim comes in on a weekly basis and keeps all our galleries fresh and timely. Every still photo on our site is shot through Jim’s eye. You could say that our site is another portfolio of Jim’s work. He makes us look special.

Our team of eight employees contributes to the content, blogs and reviews. Their experience, expertise and opinions are why people search us out. The Cavallaro Group, LiveBooks and Jim Cooper set the table and our team delivers the meal. I hope you feast on their work and I personally want to thank every team member who contributed an idea, thought, criticism, comment, photo, story, and article. This was a work done by many hands and it shows.

If you are thinking about a new website I suggest you don’t go it alone. Find experts in their field and trust them. You most likely don’t know what you don’t know.