We do more than just design and build effective and colourful websites. We also provide instant viewer traffic and Targeted Marketing for local businesses on our community websites - www.hiway16.com and www.bcnorth.ca which generate more than 1.4 million hits per month.

Our Targeted Marketing is aimed at residents in the Hazelton to Burns Lake region.

Advertising on our community websites also reaches many people who are being transfered to our area, or who plan to visit the area as tourists. Many tourists pre-plan their trip to our region on the Internet and of course, they often use our community websites to find accommodations and services as well as events and things to do.

Does your business market to the local area only? If so, paying money to gain a top position on the search engines may be better spent. A business in Smithers BC or Burns Lake BC can have thousands of hits from viewers in Atlanta, Hong Kong and New York, but the hits may not generate one extra dollar of sales or ounce of goodwill, unless the business sells services or products outside of our region.

For most local businesses who only market regionally, it is as important to use Targeted Marketing and advertise on a community website such as www.hiway16.com or www.bcnorth.ca as it is to spend money gaining a top position on a search engine that may or may not produce results.

The result of Targeted Marketing is that your advertising reaches local residents and can earn extra sales or increased awareness of your business for future sales.

Our experience since 1997 has taught us what works well on the Internet.

Simplicity - The best website design is a simple, clean and open design that is easy to read and navigate. Colour and good graphics help, as long as they serve to make the site easy to use.

Dial up users have rights too - High speed Internet is fine but half of North America Internet users are still using slow dial-up connections. Many designers have abandoned the dial-up user by using very large Flash files, massive PDFs and other bloated files that make a website slow or impossible to download on dial-up. The owner of a business website suffers in the long run if dial-up users have difficulty accessing their website.

We design websites that load quickly on a dial-up connection and we will continue to do so until the vast majority of users are on high-speed connections.

Content - A sophisticated website can only be effective if it is updated often with information that viewers need. The Internet is littered with spectacular sites that look dramatic but have little content that people can use and inadequte traffic.

Technology - Proven and stable technologies such as SQL database server, ASP and ASP.Net have made our websites secure and very effective at making large amounts of data easy to search and access.

Return visits - Many splash pages and full-page graphics look spectacular when you first see them. Viewers sometimes hit the refresh button over and over to watch a replay. But after two or three visits to the site, the novelty wears off and the viewer becomes annoyed because they have to click to skip an introduction.

Viewers return to a website for information. Spectacular graphics often get in the way. It's far better to fill the site with original, rich content that the viewer will return to use than waste money on graphics that annoy.

Jim Easterday started building websites in 1996 and first worked as a full-time professional in 1997 in Smithers BC. Combined with experience as a small business owner since 1978, Jim is expert at helping businesses build a cost-effective website.

Jim has designed hundreds of websites and all the graphics necessary to make each site unique.

He does not use "canned" solutions unless necessary but writes code from scratch to make a website look and work right.

Jim pioneered the use of database-driven websites in our region of northern BC and continues to lead in the adoption of new but effective technology.

We deliver on time and on budget. To keep to that standard, we try not to overbook work. We would rather turn down extra work that may force us behind schedule.

Normally, small web design projects take two weeks assuming that all site content is ready. Photos, graphics, logos and text should all be ready in digital format. We can help scan photo prints or hard print copy.

Large web design projects are quoted for both cost and time to completion.

• We meet with the client to gather copies of past advertising and logos, and to find out the client's needs and desires.
• A draft copy of the website is created and posted on the Internet on a non-public server for review and feedback
• Revisions are made and the website is made public.
• Changes and updates are scheduled as required.

A first meeting to discuss your plans is free.

Some technologies we favour in addition to HTML include:

ASP

ASP.net

Access database

SQL 2000 database

XML/RSS

Dreamweaver

ASP has many advantages.

• ASP is very fast. Pages download quickly.
• The technology is well proven, secure and stable.
• There are many third-party components available.
• The source code is hidden from Internet viewers and is safe from hackers.
• ASP allows websites to be built open source which means that the site code can always be changed or updated in the future.
• Processing is done on the server and the result is clean HTML code at the browser which eliminates problems with browser compatability.