As some of you may be aware, a few months ago, NorthumberlandView.ca won an entry in this year’s Web Marketing Awards WebAwards. Today I received a report from the WMA with the Judge’s assessment of NorthumberlandView.ca.

Most of the negative comments about the site were related to the design of NorthumberlandView.ca. There were positive comments for the site’s content. It’s constructive criticism and I take it for what it is, and who it comes from. The judges in this international competition are widely considered to be the best of the best in the industry. Three judges were assigned to look at NorthumberlandView.ca and their scores and comments are listed below.

Industry average based on all sites entered within category.  WebAwards average based on all sites entered in 2011 WebAwards.

Judges Comments

Below are the comments (if any) submitted by the judges reviewing your entry.  Please note that these comments are the unedited views of the individual judges and not those of the Web Marketing Association. Also please remember that your final score was determined by the average of the highest two scores provided by the judges and comments received my not be necessarily indicative of the final score you received.

“Although the site has loads of relevant content, is easy to navigate and find loacl news its really ugly and doesn’t have any aesthetic appeal. “

“This site should not have been submitted to an awards competition – it’s professional-looking but looks like hundreds – or thousands – of others just like it”

“Unfortunately this site looks very amateurish. The logo/header on the top is not very professional looking. It looks like the site developers simply made a few modifications to a free content management system template. The design is disjointed, full of ads and the main navigation is small and hard to read. I don’t feel like this site is very cohesive or easy to use. It does give users a lot of content, but the pages are a little overwhelming. Overall this site could be improved by working more on design consistency, a new logo and removing the social media bar at the bottom of the page. Social media links are great, but should be integrated into the site, not just tacked on at the bottom.”

I’m not sure about “amateurish” but I do take their comments as the impartial observations of web professionals. I did chuckle a bit at the comment that said that NorthumberlandView.ca should not have been submitted to an awards competition. The only reason that I had submitted the site was because I had won the entry. I knew that I wouldn’t win, especially when compared to previous winners in the News Category (NBC, Slate, NYTimes.com, BusinessWeek Online, etc) I figured that at the very least, I would get an impartial assessment of my site.

I’m always looking for feedback and ways to improve NorthumberlandView.ca so this is a good start. If you have any comments or suggestions for ways to improve NorthumberlandView.ca please feel free to let me know. You can email me at info@northumberlandview.ca. I’ll take any comments and feedback and use it to improve the site.

I have always had mixed feelings about the beginning of September. When I was young, like most kids I was sorry to see summer vacation end but I was looking forward to seeing my friends and learning new things at school.

In the past few years, September 1st has been a bittersweet day for me. It marks the anniversary of NorthumberlandView.ca but it also marks the anniversary of Hollie Gray’s passing.

Hollie was my best friends’ daughter. She was a beautiful young girl who died of a brain aneurysm just shy of her 11th birthday. I was just getting to know her again when she was cruelly taken from us.

Out of her passing came the creation of the Living Pink Balloon, a fundraiser for the Sick Kids foundation. Each year, hundreds of people wearing pink t-shirts form a balloon in support of the Hospital for Sick Children’s Brain and Behaviour Research Centre. You can get more information about the Living Pink Balloon at http://livingpinkballoon.org/

As I said before, September 1st is also the 4th Anniversary of NorthumberlandView.ca. Over the years, I have added content and features on a regular basis. The most recent additions are the reintroduction of the Discussion Forum and the Classified Ads.

NorthumberlandView.ca has gone through so many changes over the years that it’s difficult to keep track… 3 web hosts, 5 layouts, numerous crashes and one complete meltdown. But all in all, I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I have decided that, in addition to offering monthly advertising at NorthumberlandView.ca, businesses can also advertise on a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) basis. Button Ads are available for $2.00 per 1,000 impressions, Banner and Leaderboards for $4.00 for 1,000 impressions and Skyscraper Ads for $5.00 for 1,000 impressions. I have redesigned NorthumberlandView.ca’s Advertising Rate Card to reflect those changes. You can view advertising information at http://sales.northumberlandview.ca/.

So here’s to four years and hopefully many more to come.

Now that everything is up and running properly again, I figured I would let you know about a few of the little extras that are now available at NorthumberlandView.ca.

First off, I have added a bunch of subdomains to make navigation a bit easier. For example, if you want to get to Daisy’s Pet Corner, you simply type in daisy.northumberlandview.ca. Or if you want to go Local News, type in local.northumberlandview.ca. Subdomains have been set up for each of NorthumberlandView.ca’s news sections as well as a number of features, including the events calendar, discussion, classifieds, recipes, FAQ, About Us, Contact, Advertising, etc.

Speaking of “About Us“, I have updated NorthumberlandView.ca’s About Us page to include some new information and toys.

The new information is the fact that NorthumberlandView.ca has become a member of the Port Hope and District Chamber of Commerce. We are already members of the Northumberland Central Chamber of Commerce, as well as several other groups.

I have also added the promotional video that I did a while ago to the About Us page to try to help answer the question “What is NorthumberlandView.ca?”

And now for the toys. If you have a smart phone, you can download a mobile app for NorthumberlandView.ca. Also, if you have a website, you can add NorthumberlandView.ca’s headlines to your site with a new widget.

I’m always looking for input and feedback so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. You can also ask your questions in the FAQ section and I will do my best to answer it.

The next few weeks should be interesting as far as the back-end of the site goes. I use a Content Management System called Zikula for NorthumberlandView.ca and the developers are looking at introducing a new version shortly. They’re in the final testing stages and the new version looks very impressive. I’m looking forward to upgrading NorthumberlandView.ca to the new version.

I had a conversation with a potential client a while ago and she said something that kind of threw me for a loop. She said “I love your sales style”. My immediate reaction was “I have a style?” She then commented that she liked the fact that I offered a no-pressure style of selling advertising at NorthumberlandView.ca. No “act now, limited-time offer” or “if you don’t, someone else will” comments or bad-mouthing the competition.

I’m the first person to say that I’m not a salesman. I’m a geek who just happens to have to sell ads at his site to make a living. I have seen some salespeople at work and in some cases, I didn’t like the way they worked. The ones who are just looking to make the sale, to get their commission and who really don’t care about building a relationship with their potential client.

I could probably be more successful if I was more assertive but honestly, that’s not who I am. I have had inumerable conversations with potential clients and only really brought up advertising in passing. A lot of the time we talk about what they’re doing with their business, what I’m doing with NorthumberlandView.ca, and if I know them in some other context, we talk about that. I spend very little time talking about business, I usually just spend my time talking, and listening.

I have never considered myself to be competition for the other media outlets in Northumberland County, nor have I ever endeavoured to replace any of them. I have always intended NorthumberlandView.ca to be a source of news, events and information that the other media might not cover. My site has its strengths and the other media have theirs.

I don’t think that I have ever had a confrontational relationship with the other media and if a potential client brought up their experiences with them, I would listen to what they had to say and we’d have a discussion. Every media outlet has limitations based on the amount of resources, time and money. I have never deliberately bad-mouthed about their editorial content or the quality of their reporting. We all do the best that we can with what we have.

But getting back to my so-called “style”. I don’t think I’ll ever consider myself a salesman in the traditional sense but based on what I have read in several books on selling and sales techniques, I’m actually doing something right. Sales is apparently not supposed to be about making your commission, but about building relationships. I like to think that I do that. I go in to see someone and they don’t automatically recoil because they know that they’re going to get a pitch. I talk to people, tell them about the benefits of advertising at NorthumberlandView.ca, answer any questions that they might have, let them know that I am available if they need more information and then let them decide. Sometimes they choose to advertise, sometimes they don’t, either way, we’ve had a good conversation.

And it works for me.

WARNING: GEEK-SPEAK AHEAD

In case you haven’t noticed, I have, once again, had to rebuild NorthumberlandView.ca‘s layout. I’ll explain what happened if I can. Websites use templates to give the layout and look of the site. In some cases, these are called “Themes”. These Themes do have all the basics in there and are customizable. The biggest problem that I (and most people) have with customizing this was is the fact that it involves a lot of “Hard Coding” or going into the files and making changes to the HTML code itself.

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but the HTML code from the templates for NorthumberlandView.ca were emptied… not deleted, but emptied. You open up the file and it’s blank. So while I was scrambling to try to get it fixed, I had to use another Theme that I had on the server temporarily.

Now Zikula, the Content Management System (CMS) has been going through a lot of changes lately. There have been 3 updates in the past couple of months and they are working on a new version that promises to make it a contender again in the CMS game. I decided that the Theme that I based NorthumberlandView.ca’s look on should be one that is going to be compatible with the new version.

So I looked around and found one that had the basic look that I wanted and added it to the site. Then I got down to work customizing it. I’m still working out some of the bugs and I’ll hopefully have everything the way I want it shortly.

On another note, I had been having problems with the antiquated Classifieds Module (last updated 4 years ago I think) for NorthumberlandView.ca so I decided to start over and rebuild the Classifieds using a separate system. I added all the categories that were in the previous one and I think it’ll work quite well. I’m still toying with the idea of charging for some ads but I think I’ll stick with all free ads. You do have to register (for Free!) at http://www.northumberlandview.ca/classifieds but all the ads are free.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… NorthumberlandView.ca is constantly growing, evolving and changing. One of the great things about being a one-person operation is the fact that I can make changes whenever I want and however quickly they need to be.