Website Migrations  Complete & we’re back in business.

Well Hello there!

We hope you’re all well, we’ve been in the office working our way through a  wealth of website migrations since our announcement in March earlier this year about  our now previous service provider announcing the end of life of their services. Read more about that here.

August 30th  we celebrated as we not only finished up all of those migrations and have just  completed the migration of our own website over to WordPress as well.

There’s still a few niggles with our own site but we’re working on that inbetween building up a few new ventures.

Natalie Crowe Designs Business Support Group – Find Us On Facebook

For those of you who don’t know.   Last year we started up a Natalie Crowe Designs Business Support Group Facebook Group in conjunction with our Natalie Crowe Designs Facebook page.

This FREE support group has been created by Natalie Crowe Designs to enable members to ask questions and get support in regards to their businesses.

Natalie Crowe Designs is a website design and business mentoring business based in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales Australia. We work with businesses all over the world to build strong online presence and grow their businesses.

The group is a “Closed” group -which means the group can be found on Facebook however the contents of the group conversations is limited to members only.  Members are FREE to join and participate.

The aim of the group is to bring together an online community that not only empowers it’s members but acts as a powerful tool and supportive environment.

In addition to member contributions we’ll also be offering our own insight, knowledge and resources, motivational content, tips and tricks that will be supportive of those in our community.

We look forward to hearing from you and sharing as we grow the group. If you know someone who is looking to get a website or needs help with their websites. Please feel free to share this group.

FOREWORD:  Business Catalyst IS being discontinued and is scheduled for deletion as of 26th of March 2020. Whilst this DOESN’T affect the majority of our clients,  there are a small number of clients in our database who will be impacted and we’ll be working with each of those businesses to complete their migration. Below you’ll find a run down of what we know and your options should you as a business owner be faced with Migrating Business Catalyst to WordPress

Over the last 3-4 years, Natalie Crowe Designs had already moved the majority of our client base over to WordPress or other platforms with the needs for more customised functionality and with our love for WordPress, the development freedom and in general the robust and diverse system, meant that we were able to deliver more for our amazing client base.

Here’s what we know about Business Catalyst  “End of Life”

In the early hours of this morning 27/3/2018; Australian Eastern Standard time, Natalie Crowe Designs, like the Hundreds of Thousands of other Business Catalyst users and  Business Catalyst partners, received word that Adobe has decided to discontinue Business Catalyst and would be phasing out the solution without offering an real alternative – other then to encourage it’s users find means of migrating to other systems.

This news has sent ripples through the BC community and caused much outrage at Adobe abandoning their partners, their clients  and the many businesses that are solely Business Catalyst focused.

Whilst we too feel this process is unjust, as there had been other alternative options for Adobe, “We” as a community have been graced with a “generous”  two year window between March 26th 2018  – March 26th 2020  before they will delete all site data related to their systems including any remaining websites / systems who haven’t migrated out of the system.

Below a screenshot of the email:

Much like many  of the Partners who allocated  thousands of dollars to come on board as a Lifetime Partner,  who bought into this system as it was practical and meant users had everything they needs within one interface, with the general consensus that partners are feeling as if they have been left high and dry in this circumstance.

Moving forward,  we will be working closely with our current client database  as well as implementing measures to migrate / rebuild our own website and future proof our own business, and then reaching out to the BC community to offer services to migrate business catalyst to wordpress.

I will post more on this process later and would encourage everyone to  take time to consider their options and work out the best plan of action for their business.

2018 is flying by! We’ve made some massive changes to our business of late in terms of the website packages we’re now offering and we’ve just implemented a new blogging strategy to make our primary website blog – “NCD Corkboard” more enjoyable for readers as well as still offering a heap of information and resources to continue to support business owners.  Explore more about this below.

March Already?! Let’s Change things up a bit!

Hey wonderful people!

I can’t believe it’s March already, I know I’ve probably said this a few times in previous posts but I  feel like time has flown at a rapid rate.. There are so many things I want to birth forth in 2018 through this amazing little web designer and mentoring business I’ve built over the last 10 years..

Thus far in March, I’ve spent a great deal of time, focusing on identifying my own direction for this year, with my eye on the big things I want to achieve:

• Growth in my business,
• Clarity in my offering,
• Ability to serve more business owners
• and in general be of service. 
• To increase my annual revenue ahead of the financial year,
• To fund the lifestyle  and renovation budget for my family and for my personal life.
• To growth my knowledge and experience as a business owner.

Whilst working IN my business for my website design and mentoring client, this time spent working ON my business is equally as valuable.  Giving me that clarity and insight to move forward in my business.  It’s almost as if I’ve spent most of the past 3 months just getting into the flow of business again after new year, and finding our feet for 2018. 

So? Why I am changing the way I share content on my Web Design Business Blog?

Over the last few years we’ve written 100s of blog posts whether that be in regards to:

• Website or Business tips and tricks, 
• the amazing clients we’ve worked with,
• the various events or work we’ve completed
• and happenings within our business and community  since we started blogging in 2011… 

However not all of this information is going to be ideal for every user and it’s not always going to be super helpful to have a heap of blog posts that are around  solving website problems, or specifically just on  WordPress or Search Engine Optimisation etc as the first thing you see when you read my blog. 

This goes for all clients, but particularly for new clients – or clients who aren’t quite at that point where this type of content is relevant for them.

It goes without saying, the search engines love the volume of information I share, nevertheless, I’m NOT writing for the search engines… I am writing for YOU… My beautiful business following.

I want you to be able to check in every month and see content you can relate to… I want you to be able to delve deeper into my resources  but also not be weighed down by the volume at any one topic as I do tend to craft multiple posts around topics I recognise as more challenging for my clients…

*super hero voice over*
NEVER FEAR!!   A SOLUTION IS HERE….!

Instead, as of the time of this blog post, I’ve created a new section of our website which will help provide all of this knowledge and resources I’ve wanted to share with all of you in a way that is not going to clog up the main Natalie Crowe Designs Business Blog. This will result in more enjoyable viewing and give users more freedom to explore our website and enjoy our main blog sharing.

So for the remainder of 2018, I’ll be posting at the end of each month a summary of the month that was, the insights I’ve learned and more… This will come to you via the NCD-Corkbard  also known as my regular blog page.

Under the FAQs tab however, you’ll find a second blog, which will contain articles on how to do various tasks, Tips and tricks and more.

I’ll answer commonly asked questions and share insight on functionality, as well as on topics like Search Engine Optimisation, Content writing, Managing your business and marketing your business as well as technical tutorials and any other resources I create that could help others.

This will eventually create a library of information to help you and other business owners make the most of their resources and grow and support their businesses.

I look forward to sharing my ideas with you.

If you’ve got any topics or questions you’d like asked feel free to ask them via our contact us page.

Thanks in advance Everyone.

Kind Regards,
Natalie Crowe.