WebStop 1.  In the old days, an automobile dealership sold just one "brand". Today some dealerships represent multiple lines from the same parent company, e.g., Chrysler-Plymouth-Jeep-Eagle, and some have franchises from two or more independent companies, e.g., Bayside Saab VW. The latter situation -- one dealership with multiple franchises -- can get a little sticky when the dealership looks to the manufacturers for advertising and marketing support. And that's how it happened that management at Bayside Saab VW decided to separate their webpages into Bayside Saab and Bayside Volkswagen.

Since Bayside Saab VW occupied one web domain -- baysidesaabvw.com -- we needed a "gateway" page that would guide the website visitor to either the Saab or the Volkswagen pages. As you can see from the replica page, which I've prepared for fast loading, the gateway page we came up with is simple, clean and intuitive. It sets up the franchise dichotomy -- Saab left, VW right -- and forces a choice. On the actual gateway page, clicking on the Saab side took you to Bayside Saab and, of course, clicking on the VW side, took you to Bayside Volkswagen. Visitors who "didn't get it" or were perpetually indecisive were "pushed" by our electronic bouncer to start their visit at Bayside Saab.

So why are we looking at this webpage besides the fact that it came out of my WebShop? Because I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing the page behind the page. When I first started working on the gateway page I was focused on two things. The first was the Yogi Berra saying -- "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Not so spectacular but sometimes that sort of thing becomes like a song you can't stop humming. The second thing was the need to stay simple and clean. These two things, plus a little native humor, led to the gateway page that wasn't used, or finished.

The arrows mid-image were going to point to recognizable, vintage Saab and VW automobiles, or simply to their signature logos or names. And I was toying with copy derived, as you might suspect, from the Berra one-liner. But then, as I rummaged for logos and images, I realized I'd strayed too far from the thematic presentation we'd been using for Bayside Saab VW (and the other Helms Group dealerships). And the colors weren't right. And the focus was on a question that I really didn't want the visitor to think about. So good-bye funny abstract graphic and let's start all over again.

The moral of this story is show a little sympathy next time your webdesigner tells you how hard and long he worked whipping up a page that you think should have rolled off the drawing board almost by itself. If it's good and simple, it probably had several pages that weren't inspiring it. Of course, if your website looks like a hodgepodge of pages that weren't... Well, that's another WebStop story.

But now it's time to take a look at the making of our monthly mailer.