Recently, my wife’s co-worker’s husband, Manuel, asked if I could help him with his business website: PCM Industrial Solutions. I took a look, and it was built using a WYSIWYG editor and needed some serious help. I compiled some changes he should make and presented him with the list.

After an hour of talking, he was asking if I could make the changes. Typically, I don’t take on such projects anymore. Freelance work can be nice here and there, but I’ve been very busy with work and my own life, so I wasn’t looking to take on a project.

I assumed it would take me a few hours to deal with it, and over the course of two visits to his house for half a day each time as well as a remote access session from my home, I was able to:

• move the website from Bell’s business hosting to WordPress.com
• moving the website also meant a bit of a redesign
• pushed the domain from Bell to Hover and extended the registration length
• migrated his email from Bell to Zoho for Businesses

He will soon be able to cancel his Bell hosting/domain/email account which was around $300 per year. His new costs will be WordPress.com’s Premium account for $130 per year and domain renewal for $15 per year. So not only does he have a nicer site now, which loads faster, will likely rank better, and looks more modern, but it will also cost him less to run.

I gave him some tips on how to continue to improve the site over time and reinforced the fact that I’m not looking to be his regular web developer/designer. I hope he is pleased with it and that it helps him to bring in the business he wants from his website.