Nate Covington

“Nate is conscientious, easy to reach, a creative problem solver, and unusually reliable in an industry where reliability can sometimes be spotty. I wouldn't use anyone else for web needs, and as a consultant on marketing, especially for Google Adwords. We've worked with him on multiple projects and intend to continue doing so as long as he'll have us.”
- Foster Winans, President & CCO

If you've familiar with WikiPedia, you know that the basic premise is that anyone can make changes to the site's content.  There are obviously limitations - you cannot advertise yourself, you cannot defame anyone or anything, and they even "lock down" certain articles... for example, during the holiday season, they've been known to lock people out of making changes to the PlayStation articles.  Makes sense.

Just got done applying a new "skin" to this site... after building dozens of custom Joomla templates for client projects, I decided it was time to treat my own site to that same custom treatment! Below is a before & after mock-up - what do you think? Thanks for visiting!!

It appears that Google Maps / Google Local Business Center has updated their listings service to include reporting and other data - neat! (see below) If your business is not listed in Google's local business center, you can add your listing here.

Dear Nate,

We are writing to let you know about an important update to your Google Local Business Center account (log in at www.google.com/lbc).

Your account now has a new interface designed to show you more about how customers interact with your verified business listing. A new reporting dashboard shows statistics about your business listing, like how many users saw your business as a local search result, zip codes where driving directions requests come from, and the top search queries for which your business appeared. Here is a sample of your data:

Business: Covington Creations, LLC
Impressions in the last 30 days: 282

This information and more can also be found here: www.google.com/lbc.

Sincerely,

The Google Maps Team
Google Inc

Tip: You can now hire us to manage your Google Local Business listing data, along with other social media and website optimization requirements.  

When it comes to building your company's web site, there are two basic ways to build it.  The first method is to use a program like Dreamweaver to build the template, menu, and pages using HTML.  Each page becomes a separate HTML file, and all of the HTML files are interconnected.  For basic sites, this method is fine.

Update August 18, 2022: Editing a site by hand in HTML is no longer acceptable!

In an article released earlier this month, the French Police reported saving millions of euros by adopting Ubuntu, an open-source alternative to Microsoft Windows.  This is because open-source software is free to use.  It is developed by thousands of like-minded computer nerds (like me) who collaborate to build powerful, effective software.

Open source content management system software is a great way to take control of your web site, and unlike 10 years ago, it won't cost you $20,000 to hire a developer to build it from scratch.  Contact us to learn how open source software can help make your web site work for you!

Facebook has recently launched a new application that allows people to post comments using their Facebook accounts to 3rd-party sites.

This means two things:

1. People that leave comments with their account are more likely to leave honest, legitimate comments on your site, as it will be linked directly to their Facebook profile.
2. During periods of heavy traffic, your own web server is not handling all of the traffic, as all of the comments and user logins will run from Facebook's server instead.

Please contact us if you are interested in adding this functionality to your site!

Covington Creations is featured in the upcoming CBCC W4 Magazine! Click here to see the article. (pdf)

(Yes, this is the same testimonial that I featured in this case study)

As a business owner, it is frustrating to think that there are potential clients browsing my web site that I may never know about or meet. These people may have found my site by accident, and they might have received my direct mail piece which has motivated them to log onto your site.

What can we find out about these people? Our first stop is Google Analytics, which is a free visitor tracking tool. You could literally spend all day going through the data that Google gives you. My favorite place to "snipe for sales leads" is the Google Analytics "Network Location" report. For starters, this is how we access this data:

1. Log into Google Analytics here:
   http://www.google.com/analytics/
   (If you don't have an Analytics account, it's free. You should.)
2. Click "view reports" on the opening screen to access your reports.
3. In the menu of the left side of the page, navigate here:
   Visitors -> Network Properties -> Network Location

Note: The software demonstrated below can be adapted to power any existing Web site or customized to specification. For more information, contact us.

I just made a bunch of these nifty tutorial videos to show how easy it can be to update your own web site without any programming skills.