2016 Update

Robert P Campbell

So I haven’t really kept up with regular posts on this blog as with many other things, but life has been busy.

So let me just give you an update on my life. Most will not be interested, but here it is.

1. I have decided to go back to school and gain some more credentials for what I already know. Already got to skip a few classes by testing out of them.

2. The website design business has been busy, with several new customers. I still need to expand on my reasons to have a website and create that Power Point.

3. It has been almost 2 years since my daughters first seizure, but at times she goes months without having them. When she has them they are short and we have gotten a lot more use to it.

So that is pretty much my life these days. I will try to get back into updating this blog more with some great information for all of you and perhaps expand on a few of the things I have mentioned here.

Happy New Year!!! 2016

A poem from the early 2000’s

Robert P Campbell

I was speaking with a Facebook friend a few months back and told him that I had a few poems published years ago. So here is one that I had published called “Every Moment.”

Sunshine, moonlight, and stars light the sky
such beauty surrounds us and I cannot say why

Sometimes it’s cloudy and rain fills our life
but when it’s all over, the rainbows survive

There’s love, hate, day and night
there’s me and there’s you, that just can’t be right

The word should be us and not me and you
that’s how it should be; “us,” me and you

No more rain or clouds from now on
we’d see only rainbows, the rain would be gone

I can’t see a rainbow, the clouds will not lift
a rainbow, a star to give as a gift

When the rain stops and the sun shines
I’ll enjoy every moment, as though it were mine.

 

I believe I wrote this around the year 2000. 🙂

Customer Convenience

Robert P Campbell

Reason #3 of My Top 7 Reasons to Have a Website.

Some customers don’t have time to do business during normal business hours. Websites allow them to research, shop, and interact with your business at any time of day or night.

Some people don’t like to leave home. Websites allow them to stay at home and while laying in bed they can research, shop, and interact with your business.

Some people are shy and don’t like to interact with people. The anonymity of a computer screen gives potential customers the courage to do business with you with out them being forced into face to face communication.

Customers can be in a strange town and in need of your services. All they need to do is take out their phone or other mobile devices and they can find your website, research your business (and your competitors), and find your business location fast.

On the go, at their convenience and at any time helping them to connect to you!

 

24/7 Customer Support and Visibility

Robert P Campbell

An explanation of reason number 2 to have a website.

When it comes to customer support and visibility having a web site is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to achieve this. For visibility your website can be found from smart phones, computers, tablets or any other obscure devices connected to the internet. Links to your site can potentially be found in search engines when people are searching for products like yours, links can appear on other web site and online advertising. You should also be placing links to your website on all your printed material essentially allowing you to put virtually an unlimited amount of information on a business card or small print ad.

Your website is an excellent place for customer service. Every website should have the typical contact information such as phone, email and physical address, but in addition to this, websites can have frequently asked question areas and databases of information useful for customers to do self service customer support. Your website can also have online customer chat support, like Crafty Syntax Live Help, allowing a support individual to help multiple customers at the same time, while phone support would be difficult to do this at the same level.

Finally the best part is all this can be done 24 hours a day 7 days a week. The functions such as live chat can be done from anywhere using any computer or mobile device and the customer on the other end would never know the difference.

 

CREDIBILITY – Reasons to have a website

Robert P Campbell

Look like a real business; don’t look like the guy selling watches out of a trench coat. Nearly every business has a website these days. If your customers can’t find you on the internet, you lose credibility.

Traditionally many things have added credibility to your business: a phone number, a business address, a professional logo. Today it is essential that you have a website to look like a credible business. These days people crave even more information. Many people research everything before placing any trust in a company or a product. They look to the internet for reviews, contact and support information, product information and just to figure out who the heck you are. If they go online and cannot find your website their trust will move on to the business down the street. The business that has a website and all the information they are looking for, at their fingertips, will be the one that gains their trust more easily. Once you have a website there are many more ways to boost that credibility level:

  • Tell your story. Why are you in business. How did you get started.
  • Make sure your guarantees and all your contact information are always available. Knowing they can contact you at anytime helps to bring prospective customers peace of mind.
  • Display testimonials and reviews to show your prospective customers that other people love your product too.

Credibility is only one of the many reasons to have a website. Over the next few weeks I will dig deeper into 6 more reasons from My top 7 reasons to have a website.

My Top 7 Reasons To Have a Website

Robert P Campbell

Credibility
Look like a real business. Nearly every business has a website these days. If your customers can’t find you on the internet, you lose credibility.

24/7 Customer Support and Visibility
Your website works for you 24/7 without any extra labor cost. Customers and Potential Customers can find answers to their questions on your website even while you sleep, contributing to greater customer satisfaction and your own.

Customer Convenience
Your customers can find information and your offerings without the perceived fear of high pressure sales tactics.

Cost Effective Marketing
Newspaper, television, radio, and other traditional ads can be very expensive. Marketing on the internet can be done on a budget for less than a dollar a day if you choose.

The Internet Is The New Yellow Pages
Very few people look for businesses in the Yellow Pages these days. They go straight to the internet and many times they are using their mobile phones. They can look you up and find more information about you from your website than any single ad in the Yellow Pages could ever tell them. And then they can map directions to your business to get turn by turn directions right to you.

Fast and Easy Updates
Keep your customers up-to-date on your ever changing products, staff, services, or promotions with your website. Most content updates can be done for free in a matter of minutes so you can update many times a day if you want.

Your Competition Is Doing It
Your competition already has a website. Do you want your customers to find them first? Do you want to compete?

 

7 Reasons to Choose Star Host Design

No Risk
You don’t have to pay anything until you are happy with the design we have made for you.

Over 14 Years Of Experience
We have been programming, designing and hosting websites since May 2000. We are experienced in managing web servers, designing web graphics, and working with many different programming languages and libraries and more.

Low Price Guarantee
Many website designers won’t design a basic site for under $1000 and their price only goes up from there. Our average website designs range from $300 to $800, but can be as little as $100 for the most basic of websites. Think you could go somewhere else and get it done cheaper. Talk to us about it and we will make sure we are at the right price!

Quick Turn Around
Most of our websites are done within one or two weeks. While other web site designers seem to take over a month for a simple website design.

We Can Take Care of Everything
We can take care of everything on your website from start to finish from obtaining your domain name, to design, to programming, to hosting your website and optimizing it for search engine visibility. Other designers will design your site and then you might need to find someone else to program features, another place to host your website, and maybe a third person to optimize your web site for search engines. We can do it all!

Computer Literacy Not Required
No computer expertise required. We have worked with some of the most computer illiterate people out there and were able to make them a great site and train them in updating their own site with the help of our custom made, easy to use administration software.

Our Clients Love Us! Here Is What They Say
Star Host Design created a site for me base on unlocking mobile phone service. Website was done within a week, met my expectations 100%. Whenever I had any changes or any inquiry, they were there to respond and help me. I made several changes to my site with reasonable price; at times it was free of charge. I have nothing but great things to say about Star Host Design. 100% reliable company, highly recommend. ~ Diocles Rodriguez – Bronx, New York (http://DiokUnlocks.com)

We have used Star Host Design for many years and would recommend them to anyone, Robert does a great job! ~ Neal – Waseca, Minnesota (http://SouthsideMarine.com)

September 2004 Star Host Design created my first website. Robert was excellent in assisting me, who knows very little about computers, understand how to use my website. He continues to be a great help and I am very pleased with my website. Thank you Star Host Design! ~ Juaquetta Holcomb – Newman Lake, Washington (http://GardenPartyFibers.com)

http://StarHostDesign.com – Southern Minnesota’s Website Design and Hosting Company – Mankato – Waseca

Daughters first epileptic seizure

Robert P Campbell

Not what I expected my first post to be about, but it happened and some time has passed and I am going to write about it here.

A few weeks ago was one of the scariest moments of my life. I was already asleep and at some point after that, my 6 year old daughter climbed into bed with me and went to sleep next to me. From what I am told she was asleep fr about 30 minutes when I felt her repeatedly bumping me and making a repeating sound from her mouth. It woke me up and my first thought was that she was playing around, but when I saw her eyes going back and forth and she wasn’t responding at all to me I could tell she was having a seizure.

Besides that I didn’t know what was happening or why. For all I knew, she could have been dying. We called 911 and went to the hospital and were released several hours later. over the next week she had several tests including CT, EEG, and MRI. Fortunately the majorly evil things like a huge tumor was ruled out, but 4 days after her first seizure she had a second.

To make a long story shorter, she was diagnosed with Benign Rolandic Epilepsy. A form of epilepsy that they expect she will grow out of before she is a teenager, be controlled with medication, and if more seizure occur they will most likely be at night.

The week from her first seizure to the time she was diagnosed and put on medication was a week of sleepless nights for me. I slept on her floor next to her bed every night and for the first couple of nights I set an alarm on my phone to go off every 15 to 30 minutes so I could wake up and check on her.

It has been almost 3 weeks since her last seizure. She has not had anymore since she has been on medication and everything is getting back to normal including my sleep. There are still slow days at work when I have a lot of time to think and paranoid thoughts cross my mind and I just want to come home and see my children, but hopefully life will normalize from here out and rearguards of all the paranoid fears in my head, my daughter will be just fine and grow up to have a normal life.

Welcome to My New Blog

Robert P Campbell

I have tried blogging before and usually end up discouraged and failing. I believe it is because I would always pick a specific topic to blog about and then ran out of material or general interest in writing about it.

This time I am going to keep it open. I am going to write about what ever interests me at the time. I expect topics to range from technology (such as programming or building things with Raspberry Pi’s), experiences I had as a supervisor or an employee, to brewing beer and wine.

Let’s see where this takes us and go from there… maybe one topic will stick out more than another and my blog will become known for that… but if you see a blog post that interests you, please comment so I know people are reading and interested in my writing and I will be motivated to write more…