Sunday, February 24, 2013

our website refresh


We've been on-line a long time, we stopped counting website visits after the first 100,000 visitors.

Sthoee was the first Lifeguard website in the Ireland / UK and boasted many other firsts, first Irish language, first mobile site, first wap site, first imode site, first online course & badge. The Dublin Beach Information site now has its own popular following. Some experimenting we did at the end of last year on AED & Beach Lifeguarding generated 40,000 impressions alone

Like geocities MySpace and bebo in the past and Facebook now the lifeguard blog has been a stalwart of communication but something interesting started happening last Summer……It’s always been a useful tool for members keeping in touch, its handy as its iphone friendly, provides a nice time line and deck log but in the summer all hell broke loose, this past summer our visitors to this site alone rocketed and now exceed 1000 a month.

Web has given us many good stories, lots of people looking for courses find us this way and old friends use it to keep in touch from around the world. We even made friends in a pool in the US who suffered a fatality - with our crew sharing experiences and giving support from thousands of miles away. They sent on beautiful gifts to say thanks and gave real meaning to “been there got the t-shirt”.

One blog entry has received nearly four times the visits of any other page, any ideas?

Hidden away in the background we are now using web to manage gear, write collaborative documents and organise courses. In the cloud - the sky is the limit.

So what’s next?

Sthoee.com is getting the long awaited refresh, if you want to get involved please volunteer 

until then  - keep in touch