About BaldwinShops.com

BaldwinShops.com is a concept developed from five years of creating websites for various sized organizations ranging in size from 100+ page sites down to a few page small business sites.  Over those years I have discovered a few things:

• All businesses, professionals, and most groups need a web presence.

• Many small groups and businesses don't have big advertising budgets.

• Most communities don't have a central web portal that links local sites.

• In many cases one good web page is all that is needed to describe an organization.

• People hate dealing with computer geeks to get their websites created and updated.

Over the last year or so I literally stumbled across a solution that solves all these problems.  I recently moved to Baldwin County from north Mississippi and while out and about in the Fairhope area I told one of the local merchants I was trying to reestablish my web design business in the area and asked if she would be interested in a site.  The merchant asked what it would cost and what kind of information she should put on the web.  The answers boiled down to the conclusion that, (1.) She needed a site.  (2.) She really only needed just one page to provide a brief description of her business, contact information, and post weekly specials. (3.) It was too expensive for her advertising budget to set up a complete website just to do those things.  This encounter, like many others I have had, inspired me to find a solution that would bridge the gap for small organizations and put them on the Internet.  After some thought, I realized I already had half the problem solved by using technology I had implemented on one of my standard websites.

I have a client who needed to change one page on his site twice a week.  In his site I built-in a simple web page editor that works like a word processor and allows him to make the changes himself.  It is web-based program that he accesses through his web browser so it requires no special software or knowledge of HTML code.  It worked out great and gives him the freedom to make changes 24 hours a day without having to go through me.  This editor solves the last issue mentioned above in that people don't have to deal with a computer geek to create and update their web page.

In BaldwinShops I have used what I call the co-op approach to solve the rest of the problems.  By putting all the one page sites within the framework of one central website, I not only create a community portal, but I spread the costs of operating the site across all the users so the cost to each user is very low.  I project the cost of  having a user changeable web page on BaldwinShops.com will cost each user less for a year than the price of running one small ad for one day in the newspaper!

Some of the added benefits to all users:

• Your own web address that can be used on business cards, correspondence, and print ads.  Your site can be directly accessed with a web address like: www.baldwinshops.com/yourbusinessname .
• Web portal linking.  Now a web "surfer" can go to one site and find links to dozens of organizations in their own community.  If they are looking for a tire dealer, a place to eat, or to join a local club, they can come to baldwinshops.com and find it.  Having a site here will put you on the local radar screens!
• Search engine awareness.  The bigger the website and the more links it has, the better the ranking in search engines like Google.  It is a fact that it can take months for a website to even appear in search engine listings.  By placing your site on a portal, you will have an immediate search engine connection.

So that is how BaldwinShops was conceived and what I want to do with the site.  In order to establish the site and have it grow into this vision I need local participants so I have decided to initially offer the service free of charge.  This is no trick and no one who signs up for a site here will  be under any obligation to pay.  When the time comes that the site has grown to a useful size and gained value for the clients I will establish a fee that I expect will be very low.  At that time you can decide whether to keep your site listed or not.  Consider it a "try before you buy" approach which costs nothing to try.

I have put together a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page that will hopefully answer some of the questions I am sure will arise.  Please take a look at it and please sign up for an account with BaldwinShops.  I think we can create something useful and good for everyone in Baldwin County.

Emery Wooten