Web Turnaround Time for September

It probably seems like us posting these numbers get old....since every month after month after month it's always so fast. But we still like keeping our current clients, and also potential future clients, informed about our service time.

For the month of September, we did 409 web site updates. These were done in an average time of 1 hour and 20 minutes from when the client sent it in to us!

All of our web sites come standard with unlimited updates of text and photos, because we believe it is extremely important to keep your web site current...even if it's just a little text update. So keep sending the updates in, and we'll keep punching em out....quickly and accurately -- it's what we do best!

What a month for the updates division!

This is a FIRST in the 11-year history of RHD!

In the month of December, we did 274 updates to our client's web sites. EVERY SINGLE update done in the month of December was done on the same day that the client requested it. And, to even add to the level of customer service, this was done with only 2/3 of our web division working ha ha...since Carole is out on maternity leave.

So many of our clients comment how much they enjoy working with Christa, Jessica and Carole in the web division. These three ladies make it their personal goal to do each and every update with accuracy, speed, and their own personal touch. They take so much pride in doing a good job for our clients.

As you know, we make customer service a priority here. We feel much of our success is the fact that we are top designers, but we do it with a friendly attitude, high level of service, and the "customer is always right mentality."

Watch for more info on our updates report for 2010 and our "guess the updates" contest coming soon.

I'm Not Suprised!

Interesting headline huh?

The topic of this blog is the report on the RHD web division for updates quality in October 2010. This month Jessica, Carole and Christa did 438 updates, and the average turnaround time was:

40 minutes


Let's think, just HOW fast is 40 minutes? Well, that's how long it takes for us to drive into the closet mall from Wharton, Texas to Sugarland, Texas. You can get your oil changed in 40 minutes. Get your nails done in 40 minutes. And just think, in less time than most people's lunch hour you can send in your web site update and have it done!

This is the fastest time ever at RHD! And, match this with the fact that they put up more web sites ever this  month than in the history of RHD. Do we have some awesome team members or what!!!!

This fact should heat things up in the employee of the year race lol! Dont' forget to vote on the right side of the screen.

Congratulations and thank you to the top 5 updaters of this month! Remember all RHD sites include unlimited updates, so keep sending in your news and updates to keep your web site fresh.

1. Aegerter Cattle
2. O.H. Kruse
3. American Brahman Breeders Association
4. Tusa Cattle
5. M Lazy Heart Ranch

September Updates Beats New Record!

For some reason, I tried to post this blog at the first of the month but it never posted. Anyway, I know it's a little late but I want to make sure Christa, Carole and Jessica get their due credit for their awesome work in September :)

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It just seems like every month our web division keeps cranking out the updates, and this month they did the most web updates EVER! Wanna guess how many they did? 433 updates in one month. That's over 20 updates a day. (Business days that is).

Whenever people hear that we do almost 400 web sites, they wonder how we do it. Because even with this many updates, the average turnaround time for an update in September was only 2 hours. So say for example, you sent your update in at 8:00 a.m., it was done by 10:00 a.m. that very same day.

Customer service is the backbone of our business success. We know how important it is when you have something new to add to your web site. As our business grows, we have continually expanded our staff dedicated to updates to be able to insure a fast turnaround on service.

So, if you've been considering hiring RHD for a web site, think about the quality of service and give us call.

August Web Updates Breaks RHD Record!

Our RHD statistician Luann Williams recently reported that our great clients at RHD helped us break the web updates record for the most # of updates ever in the 11 year history of RHD!

In August, our clients sent in 384 web updates! This isn't suprising, since there are so many sales and events coming up, plus lots of our clients added new winner pictures from summer shows.

This figure averages about to 20 updates sent in per day. For the month, our average turnaround time on web updates was a little under 5 hours. So roughly, if you sent in your update in the morning, it was done that very same afternoon.

As our clients know, we make updating our #1 priority. We have 3 team members dedicated to making updates, so that each client is a priority and your updates are done in a very timely manner.

Our top updater for the month of August was Top Cut Genetics.

April Update Results

Spring is in the air and everyone seems to be busy with spring activities. But don’t neglect your web site. Update your site frequently to keep your content fresh and visitors coming back!

Ranch House Designs’ Update Division handled 359 updates for the month of April and all of our top updaters this month are Texas based. Beefmaster Breeders United and Independent Cattleman’s Association tied for first with 12 updates each.

In a close second place was Nix Farms with 11 updates, followed by the American Brahman Breeders Association who sent in 10 updates placing them in third place.

And once again, the average turnaround time for updating sites is less than one day!

March web site updates

Much like the March winds, our updates division was blowing and going last month, busily updating web sites. More than 400 updates were sent in for the month.


Top Updater for the Month honors go to Top Sires with 39 web site updates.

GKB Cattle came in second with a total of 14 updates, while Tusa Show Cattle followed closely on their heels with 12 updates for March.

Beefmaster Breeders United and Duelm’s Prevailing Genetics rounded out the top five with 11 updates each.

This completes the first quarter for 2010 and the competition has just started. Keep updating those web sites!

1 Hour Turnaround in January!

One of the best things about Ranch House Designs, in my humble opinion, is the great people who work here and their dedication to our clients. Just when I think we can't get any faster on web site updates, they go and blow me away once again!

This month, Jessica, Christa, Dollie and Stacey completed 291 updates in the month of January. And their average turnaround time was 1 hour. Yes, that's correct -- on average, our clients web sites were updated within 1 hour of their request. Now of course, we can't guarantee this on EVERY update, but as always we do our very best to provide timely, accurate service, because we know how important it is to have your web site updated when you want it updated.

This month's top update winners were:

January Champion Web Updater: American Brahman Breeders Association
January Reserve Champion Web Updater: Southern Jewlz
Honorable Mentions:
Beefmaster Breeders United
O.H. Kruse
V8 Ranch

Don't forget to send in your updates! This year's contest for all time most frequent updater is just beginning so keep sending in your news and photos.

Top Updater of 2009 Award

Drumroll please, I am happy to announce our most frequent breeder web site updater of 2009 for Ranch House Designs......Matt Lautner Cattle.

As our loyal blog readers know, each month we post the winners of our most frequent web site update contest. At RHD we have a huge commitment to providing fast and timely web updates, and this contest is our fun way of encourating our clients to keep their web site updated as often as possible.

In order to win this award, Matt completed 55 web site updates in 2009, which is at least weekly updates, and sometimes more. It's no suprise that Matt's site is one of the most visited and most popular cattle web sites on the web.

So, instead of mailing Matt his award for being the top updater of the year, we saved it until Denver where we could make a personal presentation. This award was created by Sandy Meyer of Classic Leather Designs, who is also a RHD client and who commented that next year she was going to be gunning for this award herself! If you look closely, see if you can guess who the animal featured in this award is. The first person to comment and correctly identify the animal will get a free RHD cap.

Here are the photos from the presentation, I love this first one, where I am showing Matt the award. I love the look on his face, and my face too. I think he likes the award, don't you! Then, the next photo is our official photo!

And for all of our RHD clients, the 2010 contest has just started! So keep YOUR web sites updated, send in those requests to updates@ranchhousedesigns.com and then next year, maybe we'll be presenting this trophy to YOU!!!

December Update Report

The update division recorded their fastest ever turnaround time for December 2009, with an average turnaround time on web updates of 1 hour with 213 updates in the month of December!!!!! Holy smokes that is F-A-S-T!!!

People always comment on how fast we do our updates, and usually they ask us how in the world is it possible for us to do as many web sites as we do and keep them all updated that fast. Updates is our priority. We have 3 staff members who work in updates and when things get busy everyone at RHD chips in and helps on updates.

Now of course, we don't make any claims to ALWAYS update that fast, but in general we make our best effort to get our client web sites updated as fast as possible, because we know that when you send in an update, you are excited to see it up.

So here is a list of winners for our December Web Site Updaters.
Supreme Champion Updater December 2009 - Beefmaster Breeders United
Reserve Supreme Champion - Texas Red Angus Association
3rd Overall - Stock Horse of Texas
4th Overall - Sears Marketing Service
5th Overall - American Brahman Breeders Association

Honorable Mentions:
Aegerter Marketing Service
Rincker Law
Elliott Cattle

Congratulations to these winners!

October Web Update Winners

Congratulations to our October web update winners at Ranch House Designs! This month our average turnaround time was 3 hours.

Grand Champion October Web Updater: Dismukes Ranch

After that, we had a 4 way tie for Reserve. So we'll just list the remaining top updaters for October.

Gorman Milling
J3 Cattle
Stock Horse of Texas
Tusa Show Cattle
Williams Show Cattle

Remember it's super important to keep your web site updated. So keep your updates coming in to us and we'll do our best to get them done in the fastest turnaround possible!

September Web Updates Blowout

As to be expected with all of the busy club calf sales during the month of September, RHD recorded our biggest web updating month in the 10-year-history of RHD in September 2009!! This month we did a record-number 333 updates from September 1-30!!!

Recently I was visiting with someone who has a web site done by a company other than RHD. This person was complaining that they had sent in some photos to be added to their web site and 5 days had passed, and the photos still weren't added. Their sale was coming up, and they wanted their photos up right away. Wouldn't that be FRUSTRATING!

At RHD, we know that time is money. That's why we make it a top priority to keep our clients web sites updated as soon as possible. Of the 333 updates we did this month, 271 of these were done on the VERY SAME DAY the client requested the update. The remaining updates were done within 1 day of the client update request.

So yeah, we're tooting our own horn a little bit, but we feel this is important.

Our Grand Champion Updater for September 2009 was Beefmaster Breeders United. This is a great group of people to work with. By and large, their updates are due to the very popular Buy/Sell listing on their web site which is a great service to BBU members. They had twice as many updates as any other client.

Our Reserve Champion Updater for Sepember 2009 was the American Brahman Breeders Association.

Other sites in the final drive for this month's updating championships were:

• Virginia Club Calf Producers
• Rincker Law
• O.H. Kruse Grain & Milling
• Matt Lautner
• Graves Cattle Co
• Cross S Arena
• Aegerter Marketing Service

August Update Winners

It's time again for the August web site update report! In August, we did exactly 200 web site updates, which is an average of 10 updates per day. Average turnaround time for August was a 2 hour turnaround, and 90% of the updates were done on the very same day that the clients requested them.

This month's top updaters were:

Champion Updater for August: Washington County Fair
Reserve Champion Updater for August: Aegerter Marketing Service

These clients maintained weekly updates throughout August:

• American Brahman Breeders Association
• American International Charolais Association
• Beefmaster Breeders United
• Matt Lautner
• O.H. Kruse
• Strolberg-Eckloff
• Sullivan Cattle - Maternal Legends
• Swanson Shorthorns
• TMAC Show Steers
• Virginia Club Calf Producers
  

As always we encourage our clients to send in your update as often as possible to keep your web site continually updated. We're excited about September to see how many updates we can do that month! We're shooting for 300!

Update-A-Thon

It's that busy time of year where we're burning the midnight oils with updates in the web division. Yesterday we put up 40 new videos on Jeff Miller's site, and over 100 new photos of calves for sale this fall. Mondays are always fun since we get the rush of updates sent in over the weekend.

Updating your site - and letting people know it's updated - is crucial this time of year. Whenever you start updating your web site, your traffic is going to dramatically increase. Here are just a few examples of sites and the traffic they are getting:

Great Shorthorn Revival - They have been posting sale previews over the past few days, and their daily traffic has increased 4 TIMES OVER for the month of August. On August 1, they were averaging 60 visits per day. Yesterday, after posting thier 2nd sale preview, they had 286 visitors. GSR is one of our most well listed sites, as they do a great job of promoting their URL in their advertising. When reviewing their web site traffic, GSR is getting hits from showsteers.com (purchased link), shorthorn.org (free link), cattle.com (free link), etcow.com (free link if you are their client), showtowin.com (free link for RHD clients), humphreymarketingsolutions.com (free link for their clients), and ranchhousedesigns.com.

Jeff Miller has been continually updating throughout the last few weeks. On August 1, he was averaging 15 visits a day. Over the weekend, his site averaged 250 visitors per day! Jeff is also listed on several directories and getting lots of hits from showsteers.com (purchased), clubcalves.com (purchased), showtowin.com (free), facebook (free), http://www.maximumexposurephotos.com/ (free to his clients), ranchhousedesigns.com, and http://www.theshowcircuit.com/ (free to their advertisers)

Here are some more tips to build web site traffic:

1. Put your web site address on everything.... your ads, signs, e-mail signature, etc.

2. Send your friends and past clients a quick email letting them know that your site is updated. People love to see new things! Social networking sites are also great ways to announce that your new photos are up. If you have a facebook profile, post your calves there in a photo gallery too. And don't be afraid to call up your friends and tell them too. I would put money on the fact that Steve French (Great Shorthorn Revival) has made more than a couple phone calls to his friends letting them know the sale preview is up on his site!

3. Consider purchasing links on outside web sites. RHD isn't affiliated in any way with any of these sites, so we just make our recommendations based on the sites that have proven to give our clients the most traffic in the past 10 years we have been doing sites.

We recommend choosing one of the paid directory sites, and then purchasing a link there. Of course, if you are a show cattle breeder it's a given that you need to be listed on showsteers.com. This is "THE" directory. If you aren't listed, e-mail becky@showsteers.com right away to get listed. The cost is $250 and that'll be the best $250 you spend promoting your web site. Once you are listed, let us know so we can notify them whenever your site is updated.

Two others to consider are clubcalves.com and EDJEcattle.com. These sites don't generate as much traffic as showsteers, but our clients that are listed here averaged about 100 hits a month from these two sites.

4. Get listed on any and all FREE sites.

• Most all breed associations offer free links to members. Some state breed associations offer this too.
• Cattle.com is also a must -- click here to suggest your site to cattle.com.
• Steerplanet has a directory too, submit your site here.

The Show Circuit also has a breeder's directory, you can email roland@theshowcircuit.com to get listed. I believe they charge a small fee or sometimes they offer links as incentives to their advertisers. If you advertise with other magazines, check and see if they offer free links.

Before spending additional $$ to be listed on these sites, I recommend checking out their actual traffic. Don't just fall for the bogus line of "we have the most visited site on the internet". Cattle.com does great research on what sites actually get traffic. Their top ten sites for August is available at http://www.cattle.com/webmasters/marketshare.aspx. They do full research on all cattle related sites, but their show cattle related ones are:

• Cattle Today Sites 17.55%
• Cattle.com 8.73%
• Cattlegrower.com 7.00% (9)
• Showsteers.com 5.18% (7)
• Cattlepages.com 3.21% (8)
• Steerplanet.com 2.09% (>10)

Others close but not quite in the top 10 were: Clubcalves.com, Cattleconnections.com,
EDJECattle.com, and Showtowin.com.

And, remember, all RHD clients get a free detailed web site statistics program through us. If you want information on this or need a reminder about how to access your stats, let us know.

1 Hour Web Turnaround in July!

Big news from the web updates division! In the month of July, we completed over 150 client web updates with an average turnaround of 1 HOUR! Just when we think we can't get any faster, Jessica and Dollie continue to do it again. But seriously, I don't see how we can get any faster than a 1 hour turnaround on updates, so I'm thinking this is going to be the top turnaround.

Our Grand Champion Web Updater Awards have become very popular among clients. Which is great....because we encourage everyone to update their site as often as possible to keep things fresh.

We have some new faces in the July Update Top 10 list.

Grand Champion July Updater: Washington County Fair
As the oldest county fair in Texas, and one of my personal favorites, the staff at the Washington County Fair are working hard to prepare for their 141st Annual County Fair. This year's dates will be September 16-19, so you can see they are updating quite frequently with all of their upcoming information. This client is averaging 2 updates per week.

Others in the Top Ten web updaters for July include:

• Airhart Show Cattle
• Beefmaster Breeders United
• American Brahman Breeder's Association
• Catching Tractor
• American International Charolais Association
• Effective Showmanship
• Hanewich Cattle
• Knight Show Pigs
• Stock Horse of Texas
  

June Web Updates Report

Just when we think our web site updates reports can't get any better -- the ladies of our web division continue to raise the bar!

For the month of June, we are happy to report that 99% of all web updates were completed on a SAME DAY turnaround. The average web update was completed within 1 hour of our clients requesting their update!

Great results like this are due to the excellent customer service and teamwork here at RHD. When web updates come in, we know you want your work done as fast as possible. This month, everyone on the RHD staff worked on web updates - and we have added two new members to our updates team (Dollie and Emily).

As always, we do want to remind you that our GUARANTEE is a 5 day turnaround on web updates, however for the past two years we have always EXCEEDED that guarantee with an average of a half-day turnaround.

This month's winners for most web updates are.....

Grand Champion June Updater: Matt Lautner

We had a 4 way tie for Reserve.....
Bauman Cattle
Beefmaster Breeder's United
Illinois Club Pig Assn
Washington County Fair

Other honorable mentions doing a great job of sending in web updates are:
Adam White
Effective Stockmanship
Grumbles Performance Horses
Brad Hanewich

So to all our clients keep sending in your updates -- and we'll do our best to get them cranked out for you as fast as possible.