When it comes to real estate, companies and individuals devote hundreds of resources into researching, purchasing and investing in repairs for the property acquired. It’s a carefully calculated process. Once a piece of property has been purchased, no entity can take it from the owner, assuming all monetary obligations have been met.

The same principals apply to purchasing a domain name and a website. And in a very real sense, the online real estate market is as fierce as the housing market. As small businesses around the world get larger, domain names (www.mywebsite.com) are being purchased and quality domain names are disappearing fast. Once an investment has been made for a domain name and a website, the organization owns it for life.

The first step in having a website is understanding why individuals and businesses need a website. In addition to building amazing websites in Asheville, North Carolina, we have also built custom websites for clients in Alaska, Texas and Arizona, to name a few.

Orthodox Daily’s History

Our business name, Orthodox Daily (OD), was created in 2007. The original concepts of our business, and our services provided, changed from month-to-month as the tide of business ideas washed certain technology away from the market. Eventually, Orthodox Daily settled and began designing software for Short Message Service (SMS aka “text messages”). Eventually with the rise of smartphones and Personal Device Assistants (PDAs), SMS features on cellular phones become less and less important. According to the Neilson Company, “by Christmas of 2011, 1 in 2 Americans will have a smartphone.” (2010, http://gigaom.com). With smartphones comes the internet and there’s no more need for SMS. Seeing this growing trend over the 2008 – 2009 fiscal year, Orthodox Daily abandoned its SMS research and took a step back.

Moving Forward

Obviously, during the time of creating SMS software, OD was developing its own website to showcase the technology. During that time, various web design ideas were employed including, Content Management Systems (CMS [more on CMS later]), templates, raw Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and other methods. Consequently, we became interested in web design and its effect on the business it represents.

In the winter of 2010, the webmaster of a local Russian Orthodox Church (website address available in Portfolio section) was to be reassigned to a parish in the northeast and we, Orthodox Daily, volunteered to rebuild the website for parish and assume webmaster responsibilities. We performed a complete overhaul of the site and began providing additional features such as a newsletter, updatable photos, and donation forms. The website underwent design changes for a few months until a desired effect had been reached.

Requests for Websites Began

After some of our personal and professional contacts saw the website for the local Church, we began to receive requests for affordable websites. We were on to something. Shortly thereafter, we collaborated with our business contacts, made phone calls to computer programmers, attended webinars and even hired short-term employees to assist in the initial launch of Orthodox Daily. And on March 13, 2010, Orthodox Daily officially opened its doors for business in web design.

Progression

It took Orthodox Daily two months to build its first website. Our next website took one month, and each website that we’ve produced since then has taken less and less time. Of course, it’s not important to finish a website in record time while losing quality, but this information demonstrates our knowledge of design and ability to produce a website in a timely fashion. Orthodox Daily is constantly adding new services and we have big plans for 2011; you should join us!