Web Design & SEO Services

A Little Background Info

My name is Kris Sarratt and I am the owner of My619. I started with a simple idea a few years ago (I can’t claim it’s a totally unique idea): deliver great web design at competitive prices. It’s quite a tight rope to walk giving both to my clients. Generally one has to be sacrificed to achieve the other. To a degree this is true. I realized I can’t afford to design $400 sites like I see marketed on the web (which look like $400 sites by the way), but on the flip side I did want to reach a target market that needs good workmanship at a fair price. Many start up companies need to start off with a professional site, that is Optimized for Search Engines and is custom designed to fit their company’s identity. If you’ve shopped around at any length, you’ll notice that these things cost a pretty penny.

I worked with a web design company a few years back doing sales, and I was amazed at the overhead expenses to keep the place running. The sites we built were very basic and not that overly appealing and they weren’t cheap. Since I had to handle sales, trying to convince potential customers to buy our product after they viewed our portfolio was extremely difficult.

At that time, I began to realize that I could easily design something twice as good at half the price…and I did! I started out advertising on Craigslist (which is still a great marketing tool for our business and it’s for free…can’t beat that!) and in time, business slowly trickled in. That first year was definitely challenging as I had to learn a lot of lessons the painful way (pain is a powerful tutor by the way). From those lessons I learned that no matter what, I would always follow through on my commitments because I knew in the long run that would be a foundation upon which to build my business.

Web Design

At first learning to code and layout out websites was extremely difficult as I had no prior background in coding (I had a degree in Microbiology and I had worked with a non-profit ministry), but in time I got the hang of it. I soon realized there were many other elements to web design, one in particular that caught my attention: Content Management Systems. I began to realize that clients want control over their website. I looked at several different options, but ultimately ended up using MODx which I found to very flexible and it fit the needs of my clients perfectly.

If you haven’t already, feel free to browse our web design services section to get an idea of what we deliver and view our portfolio to see our past work.

SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is another one of those areas that I wanted our company to really excel at. Again, this is one of those areas that is critical in good web design. Good SEO doesn’t happen by chance. It’s intentional and requires a combination of good coding skills (a knowledge of hand coding XHTML and CSS is extremely helpful), content creation and directing qualified traffic once it comes (and it will!).

We’ve had some really great results with our clients moving many of them onto the first page of Google and Yahoo for their keywords and many to the #1 spot which has been really cool. I enjoy getting those calls where a client is ecstatic because their website has moved to #1 for the keywords we targeted for their site and to see their business grow as a result. When you succeed, we succeed. Nothing like having people actively search for your website through Search Engines (and it’s becoming so critical that your website score well with Search Engines).

Keeping Things Affordable (The Tight Rope)

Truthfully it’s not the easiest thing keeping cost down. How do we do it? Mostly by the approach we take as a business. We keep cost down by using an efficient method that’s a sort of “by the numbers” approach. Through trial and error and client feedback, we’ve learn to streamline our operation by methodologically approaching each project in a manner that is efficient and straightforward.

Also with virtually no overhead, this means we can build our websites at a more affordable price. For example, as a team, we all work from our own home and don’t have to worry about expenses that cost businesses a lot (i.e. rent, utilities, insurance, staffing fees, etc.).

Sure, it’s a bit of a tight rope, but we’ve been able to pull it off pretty successfully and we’ve helped keep our expenses to a minimum.