Our Story: In search of the perfect website.

I met John at the Foxcroft and Ginger coffee shop in Soho, London. John is not his real name. I struggled with the pronunciation of his first name so many times, he finally said “just call me John.” I apologized multiple times, and promised to work on it.

John then said the magic words, “I can make a computer do anything.”

Can you make it tell a story?

Let me explain.

I’ve been in marketing and advertising for more than 20 years. I’ve worked on some of the biggest brands in the world – Pepsi, Marlboro, American Express, Dewar’s Scotch, Sony. I’ve managed political campaigns. I’ve created marketing programs for more than 100 mid-sized and start-up companies.

I love marketing. I also love technology. So much so, I’m quickly frustrated when technology doesn’t live up to its potential or is unnecessarily complex or just poorly designed.

Since the late 1990s, it’s been clear to me that websites are the most important marketing vehicles for companies because they allow rich, multi-dimensional storytelling, which is at the heart of every good brand – and every worthwhile sales or marketing effort for that matter.

But throughout most of the last decade, I could never find the perfect mix of technological, design, and usability that enabled great online storytelling.

Limiting technology and over-protective IT departments seem to conspired against me.

So I began my search for the perfect website.

Well, to be more precise, I was looking for the perfect combination of software, hardware, designs, UI, analytics – everything necessary – to build websites perfect for storytelling.

Of course, if it were perfect for storytelling, it would also be perfect for brand building, lead generating, relationship nurturing, sales producing, Facebooking, and so on.

The result is Microsite.com.

Which brings me back to John and our team of international players.

John turned the famous WordPress platform into a highly customized content management system that can be tailored to how any specific organization thinks and works. The technology adapts to the user. Not the other way around.

I found Tami in New Zealand, who, similar to John, can make Drupal (which is WordPress on steroids) do anything.

Amy provides intuitive layouts and designs from NYC. Cristian and Niclas handle database and system management from Romania and Germany, respectively. Sid oversees the bulk of the coding in India. You get the idea.

Not everything, however, is custom coded. For years, we used our own software to provide forms on our sites. Until I discovered Gravity Forms. Through a licensing agreement, now every one of our sites comes with the industry’s best editor for creating contact us, lead generation, ordering, sign-up, and questionnaire forms. Nothing else comes close.

As the world moves to smartphones and tablets, so will our solution for storytelling.

So how does it work? Find out for yourself. Sign up for a demo. It may be perfect for you.

Now, what’s the secret behind telling great stories? Well, that’s another story.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to contact me in the U.S. at: 1+269+767+8238

Bill Hanekamp,
Co-Founder, Microsite.com