State of the LOU (April '08) - Captains Corner

[BlueEye]

Hey LOU members!

And so FINALLY..... April has arrived and with it a chance to get the boat wet. I know many LOU member have already been out on the water this year and from I have heard, had pretty good success! I have been busy as usual working LOU and getting ready for the spring time rush of traffic we usually see. We also welcome registered user 2000 and topic post 25,000! Both milestones for the site!

Today I am happy to announce we have teamed up with the LOC derby and they now proudly display the LOU Member badge on their website. The spring LOC derby is just around the corner now and it should be fun as always so I highly encourage all LOU members to participate. It is cheap to get in and $12,500 more of a reason to get out there on the water. A link to the LOC website can be found at the bottom of our left hand column.

My work on the LOU website in April includes a couple of site fixes/enhancements and one brand new service we are all very excited about. First the fixes:

1.) LOU Live Chat was fixed and is now working as expected. This was found to be a compatibility issue with our database after we upgraded the LOU core structure.

2.) Bot Detection was added at the bottom. Often times you would see 80 people online but that number included Search Engine Bots that were just crawling the site. Code was added to separate out Bots from real people to give you more accurate representation of how many "real" people were currently on the site.

3.) Added links to EVENTS CALENDAR section of the site help post events more easily. See "Add Event" and "How to Tutorial" links at both the top and bottom of main calendar screen.

4.) Added more helpful fishing resource links to the left column for LOU Professional Members. These links can only be seen by LOU Pro members so sign up if you haven't already (http://www.lakeontariounited.com/LOU_Pro.php)

5.) LOU Professional Chat (Shoutbox) increased number of retained messages from 25 to 50 so users can see MORE of what has been recently talked about. Again a feature only available to Pro Members.

That is it for updates with respect to bug fixes and small enhancements. What we are really excited about this year is our new service geared at Charter Captains on Lake Ontario.

Introducing "Captain's Corner - Affordable Websites for Charter Captains"

http://www.LakeOntarioUnited.com/LOU_CaptainsCorner.php

For the first time ever, charter captains can gain a professional presence on the web at an affordable price. To quote Entrepreneur Magazine:

"Yes, if you have a business, you should have a website. Period. No question. Without a doubt. That said, it's not enough that you just have a website. You must have a professional looking site if you want to be taken seriously." - Entrepreneur Magazine

And therein lies the problem. A professional looking website at an affordable price are two terms that don't go together and thus the reason many charter captains have already subscribed to the $500 or less crappy website option. Of course many of them also fail to realize that having a website like this is actually HURTING their business more than it is helping it.

If you think about it these days, over 80% of the US Population turns to the Internet FIRST to research topics of interest. Calling someone to find out more information about their service is now the second step, assuming the initial impression of your business was favorable. You only get one chance to make a first impression and more than 80% of the time, that first impression is going to come from your website.

Well that first impression does not need to be a bad one because of a limited budget for fisherman anymore. We invite you to check out our live demo of our 5 pages in one Professional design and picture your charter business here:

http://demo.lakeontariounited.com

Book just a single charter through your new website and you have MORE than paid for its yearly costs. We also invite other business (i.e., marinas, restaurants, tackle shops, etc) to use the Captain's Corner web design service as it is a 100% customizable solution that can easily be tailored to professional represent your business.

Thanks LOU for a great kick start to the Spring!

See you on the water.

The Lake Ontario United (LOU) Team