About Blairworks
We were originally founded in 1996 as Pacific Web. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of our company, we recast ourselves as Blairworks in 2006.
Our traditional base of operations is out of Cotati, in Sonoma County, California. We do the bulk of our work remotely utilizing the Internet as a platform for communications and development enabling us to work with clients and development teams scattered around the United States, and at times the world.
Mark Blair
Owner
Blairworks is owned by Mark Blair. Mark serves as the lead producer, chief strategist and project manager for all projects that we take on. Our clients have the comfort of having one point of contact, and of knowing that their projects are handled with individual care.
Over the course of the years, we’ve seen the Internet change significantly, having developed websites throughout the heady days of the Internet gold rush – and weathering the burst of the dot-com bubble. We’ve seen the Web mature with the birth of Google, and the many subsequent shifts in Internet technology and usage that have occurred.
As the Web matured, it became clear to me that new approaches to web development and team management were becoming necessary in order to reliably produce successful websites. Our approach to the production of websites has been gradually streamlined and refined over the past several years.
Our Approach
Our approach is different from that of many other Web development and marketing companies. Instead of looking at the design or redesign of a website as a discrete project, we look at it as an ongoing process.
The reason why we do this is that we’ve found, through over 10 years of experience developing Web sites, that the primary factor in the success of a website is not typically whether or not a particular project is completed to particular specification, but whether or not a website is developed with an ongoing plan for success.
A strategy for success must come first. Strategy takes an investment in time, and time and time again we’ve seen that strategy is worth the investment.
What We Do Differently #1
First, we do everything we can too keep our eyes on the “big picture”. This means that we:
- See ourselves as partners with our clients. We believe that their success is our success and vice versa. There is a symbiotic relationship. The Internet is a daunting place. Technology changes daily. We believe that we can be a vital asset to our clients due to knowledge and experience.
- Start all projects with the development of a Strategic Action Plan. This consists of a set of defined strategic goals, with concrete steps to achieve them.
- Recommend that the Strategic Action Plan be reviewed periodically, added to and modified to react to situational changes.
- Recommend robust user tracking throughout the website as this provides us all with critical information from which to make future decisions.
What We Do Differently #2
Second, we believe in a holistic approach to website development. This means that:
- In a customer-facing website, marketing needs to be embedded into the heart of the website. We formulate the Internet marketing plan as an integral part of our Strategic Action Plan. We believe that they since marketing and development share the same goals and often the same budget, they are inseparable.
- Search Engine Optimization is a fundamental component of our approach. Some studies have studies have shown that between 50% and 80% of all visits to a websites start with a search engine such as Google, Yahoo!, or MSN Search. That’s staggering when you think about it — and if it isn’t thought about it is money left on the table.
- Social Media Optimization is new and effective way of penetrating the Internet’s social marketplace. With the rapid emergence of social media websites such as MySpace.com and YouTube.com, there is a golden opportunity for websites to broaden the conversation with their pontential customer base.
What We Do Differently #3
Third, we know that many specialized tasks are required to produce a successful website and we don’t pretend that we can do them all. This means that:
- We are aware of our specific abilities. We know what we know, and what we don’t know and life is too short to pretend to be what we aren’t.
- We have longstanding resources that we can contract that bring additional expertise into our development process. The Internet is highly specialized and we often build a remote development team specific for a particular task that needs to be accomplished.
- We have a broad knowledge of the industry and can help evaluate and recommend specialized third-party companies that offer critical, robust solutions.