I have been extremely happy with Melissa and her work. She is very proactive in her site building and I’ve found she is always waiting on the client rather than the client waiting on her. I have been impressed with her knowledge in both site building and SEO and I have seen her knowledge grow tremendously since we have been working together over the last year. If anything stumps” her, she considers it a challenge and always finds the answer quickly. To address some of your questions below…
• Design Skills are a perfect 10
• Deadlines are always met. Its generally Melissa waiting on content from the client rather than the client waiting on her.
• Budget: Her knowledge and understating of the technical website world keeps her quotes in-tact. She knows her abilities and quotes her time accordingly. Occasionally a client will want to add additional features to their site and she is 100% up front with the added costs…not a “surprise” at the end.
• Strengths: Very personable & she communicates well. You always know where the project is in the build process.
• Weaknesses: I honestly can’t think of any!
Have you been happy with her work and with working with her?
Professionally, I have been delighted with the work Melissa has done for two of my businesses (both are co-owned, but I coordinated most of the work with Melissa Johnson), and seen direct outcomes of the work with her. Personally, I have found it so easy and refreshing to work with her, as she can simplify and streamline what others in this industry make complex and unmanageable. I am so relieved and excited that I have been able to work with her over the last 3yrs.
I give my highest recommendation to her work. Several of my colleagues have also utilized her services at my recommendation and are equally as satisfied with their experience working together and their results. My only regret is that I didn’t start working with her sooner. (I’ve also heard this from many others that work with her).
Are you happy with her design skills? Her technical skills?
Yes, I don’t have to know any of the technical side or design parts to get the look and feel that we wanted! We talk over the details, our vision, our hopes. She makes it happen.
Originally, we contracted with her to do mostly SEO work for: www.DoulasofBoulder.com. She took our website (which we want to be very simple) and cleaned it up, offered some essential ideas and optimized it. We went from barely being recognized on search engines, to coming up on top with dynamic SEO from her. Now if one googles “boulder” “doula”, we come up in the top three (there are over 100 doulas in the Boulder area). We get an average of 200 page views per week, which in the doula world, is very significant! We receive a lot of traffic, and have a full doula practice.
Next, we involved Melissa with www.JOYCollective.net from its inception (I want to make sure we had it set up right from the beginning), and she provided us a much more robust full package. This business is more complex with 13-17 independent business owners (with lots of changes in the first year) all under one roof/name, but still working independently. Melissa understood the complexity and worked with it beautifully and smoothly. She took a LOT of content and variations and made it look and feel just how we wanted it! We continue to add changes, tweaks and revisions that come off easily and simply. Our brand new business (JOY Collective) opened and 6 months later won Boulder Weekly’s Best of Boulder’s runner up for Best New Business. Our website averages over 1K page views per week.
Does she meet her deadlines?
Melissa is excellent at meeting deadlines. I however was typically the hold up in the system. So as long as my content was submitted on-time, her deadlines were consistently met.
Does she stay on budget with her quote?
Melissa has great integrity with budgets and money, and would clearly outline her work/hours.
What did/do you find to be her strengths and weaknesses?
I have not encountered any of her weaknesses through our projects. All work exceeded my expectations.
Melissa has this great (unusual) blend of technical, design and people skills. Having worked with her before, we upgraded to the full package and got a lot of her time for the second project. She really helped us hone in our message(s), the look and feel that we present to the outside world, and get us optimized beyond what I could imagine. She was excellent at accommodating our changing needs and various personalities. The work and the outcomes was excellent.
Jenevieve Russell of the Joy Collective Wellness Center in Boulder
“Working with Melissa of Simplified Website Design was a stress-free and educational experience. When I started my own business I attempted to create a website on my own but it ended up looking unprofessional and my lack of website design knowledge kept me from taking my online presence to the next level. I contacted Melissa and we created a brand new website for my business within 6 weeks. All of our communication was via email or phone conversation and once the website was ready to publish Melissa walked me through the back end so I knew how to update content in the future. She also broke down SEO (search engine optimization) for me and helped me come up with key terms to attract new clients through Google search results. I am so happy with the final result and receive compliments from prospective clients all the time. I would recommend her services to anyone looking to build a modern, user-friendly and beautiful website. Thanks Melissa!!”
Melissa Johnson was a life saver for me when I started my business almost 3 years ago. I had a sudden change in my job and decided over night to start my own company. She completely facilitated everything I needed including setting up my website and email in full, teaching me how to manage it and setting up my social media accounts. Thanks to Melissa, I got great advice on how to improve my social media to get the best reach and increase my business. The return on investment was well worth it, not to mention how patient and kind she was with me in such a stressful time. From time to time, I like to send a message just saying thank you because it really meant a lot to me.
Melissa’s work both behind the scenes with SEO and front line with artistic design has done wonders for my online presence. As a result, my business has grown quite a bit in a fairly short amount of time. I love her ability to work with me, allowing me to have complete creative control, while still providing guidance and feedback. She is able to respect financial budgets, while still giving a top-notch end product. Having owned and operated several successful businesses herself, she understands the many facets that attract customers and will help guide you in developing those skills. Melissa is extremely patient, creative, gets things done in a timely fashion, and is a pleasure to work with. I’m not sure what I would have done without her!
Melissa did amazing job helping us update our website and cleanup our online information. We saw immediate results in our google listings and as a result our phone started ringing. I highly recommend hiring Simplified Small Business to review your website and SEO.
Knowing that Melissa had previously owned and operated a wellness center in Jacksonville, FL was comforting when we took on the creation the Joy Collective in Boulder. She was our *Business Doula* while we birthed this new business and website. She was knowledgeable and built our confidence by simplifying the process during this potentially stressful time. She supported us through challenges like a good doula would!
She took on our website which holds information about 15 different practitioners and their individual practices and helped us market our diverse wellness offerings.
When our firm was interviewing website vendors, I almost couldn’t believe the letters of recommendation Melissa’s clients e-mailed to me. They were incredibly positive — gushingly positive. Now that our website is finished, I’m would happily write a similar letter. Melissa is simply a wonderful person to work with on every level, both professional and personally.
Large-scale projects are always stressful in parts. Our website was no walk in the park; it’s complicated and presented many challenges to both Melissa and me. But Melissa handled all situations with competence, professionalism and, what meant the most to me, infinite patience and grace. I have nothing but admiration and respect for Melissa, and am so glad we chose her to produce our site.
