A New Beginning

There have been a lot of changes around here so I want to explain what’s been happening with the business, particularly for my friends and peers online. You may have noticed that the LogOn.ie blog now redirects to WebsiteDoctor.com, that we have a new brand and great domain, and that we’re now offering training services! I owe people an explanation, so here goes!

Why so quiet lately?

LogOn’s blog has been quiet for the best part of a year now, but it’s not because we’ve gone out of business! In fact we’ve been really busy completing some awesome projects – like building a complete custom e-learning environment from scratch for the International Federation of the Red Cross (in 7 weeks!), like building beautiful websites like Precious.ie, fantastic designs like HotelsInOne.ie’s main website and custom WordPress templates like their blog – my personal favourite of all the design work we’ve done so far. (But wait, aren’t we an SEO company, not a web development company? I’ll answer that in a paragraph or 3).

Another reason I’ve been very quiet is that I’ve been busy with offline social networking with many businesses in Dublin and around Ireland through networks such as DCEB LINK!, The Kaizen Group and Networth. I’ve also been busy giving seminars, presentations and training courses, like my recent presentation to the ICES group on Making Money Online, and for DCEB Enterprise week at City Hall, an Online Marketing Overview.

Unfortunately other important things got left by the wayside: like getting this website up and running and reflecting the quality of service we provide. It was quite uncomfortable giving people website advice when this site was a mess, and I didn’t want to draw attention to it amongst my web development and SEO peers, because hey, we’re a tough audience! But it’s finally good enough to unveil.

Now we’ve taken these first steps towards “Heal thyself, physician!”. This site will continue to change and improve, probably on a daily basis for the next 3-4 weeks, and hopefully it will continue to evolve ad infinitum. I’d appreciate any feedback and comments you have.

What about the brand/business direction changes?

The last 2 years have been very educational for me – as a recovering geek I’ve been soaking up every bit of business knowledge I can get my hands on. Business is a fascinating world (I’m really looking forward to getting to Level 20 and get the new abilities).

Over the course of the last year or two I realised that the LogOn.ie brand is fantastic in many ways (I really love it!) but also sadly it is somewhat limiting and not descriptive of where I want to take the business.

To that end I read a lot of good books (thanks in particular to Dr. Weiss’s book The Ultimate Consultant for naming advice ), brainstormed with peers, friends and family,and after many, many late night discussions, we finally decided that WebsiteDoctor was the right brand for where the consulting and training business was going to go. I was able to acquire some great domain names including the .com you’re visiting now.

WebsiteDoctor is the training and consultancy division of LogOn Internet Marketing Ltd. LogOn.ie is the web development and search engine optimisation division!

Are you going to resume blogging now, or what?

Short answer:yep.

Longer answer: now that we’ve got our ducks in a row on the business side, and put shoes on the cobblers children (got our own site in order), I’m going to be blogging a lot more often again. Stay tuned. I’ll also be experimenting with using Twitter, which I’ve had mixed feelings on – thanks in particular to @TomRaftery for some really great advice on how to use it without suffering from overload.

What’s next for Website Doctor?

We’re running several training courses and seminars in Dublin over the next 4-6 weeks. We hope to have some high quality video available online after those. Stay tuned to the blog for special offer discount codes on the training courses and seminars, and for more updates to our services.

Finally, if you got this far, thanks for reading! If you have questions or advice, please get in touch.