Midlands Business Profiles
Midlands Profiles
Period Three
From L to R: Jay Barry, Jason Johnson, Gene Crawford
As president and co-owner of cutting-edge web design firm Period Three, Gene Crawford understands that the bottom line in business is results, and a company's web site should be held to no different standards.
"We approach things simply and practically," said Crawford, who opened the business with co-owner and chief software architect Jason Johnson in early 2004. "Our motto is 'Simple. Measurable. Powerful.' Unlike a lot of wordy businesses mission statements, we take those words very seriously and they drive our performance; they're not just buzzwords.
"We focus on solutions that give businesses a return on their investment. How we do that is by asking very basic questions such as 'What are you trying to accomplish with your business?' That may sound elementary, but having worked in the field for years, we have seen so many design firms trying to go after the flashy things like animation and music, just eye-catching stuff that on the surface looks great but doesn't make real money for your business."
It also helps that Period Three has industry-leading software it designed in-house: Swiftpress and SimpleContent.
At its core, Swiftpress is an email marketing system that delivers messages carefully designed and developed for specific client needs. The program allows businesses to communicate with and manage their client bases to swiftly gather customer preference information, build marketing campaigns and completely automate an eMessaging campaign. Since email marketing is designed to drive visitors to a business's site and should result in sales, having the best software for that purpose should be a no-brainer.
"Both Swiftpress and SimpleContent were developed out of years of experience," Crawford said. "We designed it out of our own best practices.
"There are a lot of platforms in the marketplace, and when I worked for other companies we would have to use more than one type; each one did one or two things well, but we'd have to combine several of them to make something useful.
"So we stepped back, analyzed the software and built one ourselves that fit all the needs we came across.
SimpleContent originated from the same observations about existing content management software platforms. Fresh content is critical to a site's success in attracting and retaining visitors, and one of the keys to SimpleContent's success is that it allows non-technical personnel to maintain and update content with ease and flexibility.
"Having originated from the same birthing cycle as Swiftpress, we needed a multi-functional, leading-edge platform and realized we could build one ourselves that raised the bar for functionality," Crawford said. "Its ease of use and speed have made it our bread-and-butter."
Period Three's client list says it all; the State Bar of Georgia and South Carolina; Visual Ice Marketing, Janitorial Maintenance and Supply, Palmetto Apparel, United Way of the Midlands and JMRE, Inc.
"We're results oriented, and our methodology, software and practices have earned us the trust of our customers, 95 percent of whom continue to do business with us," Crawford said. "Their success is our future."
