We are looking forward to Mike’s upcoming presentation: “Building Traffic with Social Media” at UNCW on March 1st!  This informative seminar will help business owners take their existing social media campaigns to the next level with helpful tips and strategies on building quality traffic.  Many thanks to our friends at the SBTDC (Small Business & Technology Development Center) for hosting this event. We hope you’ll join us!

Register for Sage Island’s Social Media Strategy Seminar by Feb. 23rd!

We recently revamped WB LiveSurf’s website to have a fresh new look and some new features for all to enjoy. Some of the many changes accomplished are:

• Built in HTML5/CSS3
• Removed the login so viewers can now peruse all pages of the site
• A new larger 1080 HD view of the Live Cam which is now Iphone, Ipad, Droid and Blackberry compatible
• Additional Ad spaces created and managed by Absolute Banner Ad Manager
• New weather modules displaying live weather information on every page
• Larger view of the daily photos
• Tabular view of both WB LiveSurf news and Surfline News

Lower Cape Fear Hospice and Life Care Center is a great example of a client that takes the initiative to constantly keep their site updated and fresh with new content, new pages and periodically new look and feel. The new site was developed in 2008 and since then we continue to periodically perform work on the site.

Recently, we were contacted to make minor changes to the look and feel of the website to better match their new marketing materials. Their new marketing materials now include a new logo and some ‘tree leaves’ scattered in the background. To help mimic this look, we did just that on the website. They are also really involved in their social media so we additionally added graphics to promote Twitter, Facebook and their recently developed WordPress blog. You can see below how minor cosmetic changes, though simple, are enough to make a difference to the viewer, ensuring the site’s content and look remain fresh and updated.

2008 Site

2011 Site

While making changes throughout the site, we also transformed the previous Foundation section of the website, into its own ‘mini-site’ complete with a unique design skin (background/look) to make it obvious you are jumping into a new section of the site. Now, when clicking on ‘foundation’ in the primary navigation, you still remain within the site’s domain, but are taken to a section of the site with its own look and feel, dynamic left menu. Another fun thing we did to update the site was to utilize Flickr for the photo gallery, allowing the client the ability to add albums (sets) to Flickr and embed these into the site for ease of viewing and management.

Foundation Section

Today is the last day you can register to attend the 2nd annual Biz Tech Expo! As the area’s largest Business to Business conference, this year’s event will include a variety of educational topics and seminars, a presentation luncheon with two impressive keynote speakers, and the ability to network with tons of successful local businesses. The conference will be held at the Wilmington Convention Center this Thursday, January 26th from 12-7 pm.

Sage Island has been given a special discount code just for our Facebook fans and customers, so if you are in the area and want to attend,  register with the code: sagebiztech. This waives the $5 entry fee to attend both the Expo and the after hours event. We hope to see you there!

In early 2011 we were tasked with the challenge to rebuild both SeaDek.com & SeaDekStore.com into one seamless, streamlined website. Today I’m pleased to announce we have successfully completed this project and you can view the new and improved site here.

Built in both ASPDotNetStorefront and WordPress, this site is a beast in itself and includes a wide range of functionality:

• The Home page features a rotating JavaScript, Embedded YouTube video, Blog Feed, Flickr Feed and a Constant Contact Email Opt-in
• The Products section of the site is custom per product category and some product categories include multiple price changing drop down options. Each product contains a Facebook Like and Addthis Share, as well as an overview, installation instructions, features, color options, photos, videos and return policy.
• The Photos section of the site includes a Flickr Embedded thumbnail view of photos in the WordPress platform. It brings up a neat lightbox/ajax when clicking to enlarge the thumbnail.
• The Videos section of the site utilizes a third party tool allowing us to dynamically feed in videos uploaded to SeaDek’s YouTube channel.
• The News section of the site is a WordPress Blog. We imported old posts (3 year’s worth) from client’s old blog (previously Blogger) into WordPress, and skinned this blog to look like the new website.
• The site’s storefront is fully manageable and integrates with a UPS account for shipping calculations

We all came together as a team to make this site possible and it was such a joy working with SeaDek! Overall the client is very pleased with the results thus far and has hit the ground running in editing the site and keeping content and product information up to date. Be sure to check out the new site when you get a chance!

New Site:

Original Site:

We are looking forward tothis year’s Biz Tech Conference/Expo on January 26th at the Wilmington Convention Center!

The event is the region’s largest business-to-business conference and this year’s agenda is packed with seminars, excellent keynote speakers (PPD founder Fred Eshelman & former NC Governor Jim Hunt), and will include a ton of local exhibitors.  If you are in the area, we invite you to register with our special BizTech discount code. This waives your $5 entry fee to attend the BizTech Expo and AfterHours- both great networking events.

Visit the Biz Tech website and use the code: sagebiztech (This code will only work until Monday, January 23^rd so register soon.)

Sage Island will be in booth #203. Stop by and see us!

We hope everyone is settling back in from a busy holiday season and tackling January 2012 with all you got!

The first few weeks of the new year have been busy ones for us. We’ve already hit up Surf Expo, an action sports tradeshow in Orlando that is near in dear to our heart–  they are both a client of ours and the hub of all things action sports for a lot of our customers! We have kicked off many new projects on a local level that we are can’t wait to share with you. A few ecommerce projects are underway, a favorite local hangout is getting a website facelift, and we have been fortunate enough to receive several real estate and developer clients this month- an excellent indicator for our local economy. Stay tuned for more details!

We feel so fortunate to be starting off the year with such a bang, and are anxious to see what the year will bring. Our resolution is to continue to stay ahead of the trend in terms of cutting edge marketing and design technologies, and bring you the best products and service possible. Here’s to a great 2012!