An Update from Anaheim Hills

I’ve been working with Tony Dove and Scott Sisson over in Anaheim Hills, California, to overhaul their community website, www.AnaheimHillsLive.com.

The idea of Anaheim Hills Live is to provide a unique online resource for the residents of the community, stocked with all sorts of information to help them with their day-to-day needs.

During the “real estate boom,” REALTOR®-sponsored community websites were sort of a dime a dozen. Agents could buy a template, throw in some keywords, and attempt to make the website a lead-generation tool without seeming like one at first glance. I’m not sure how that worked for people who used the templates as-is, but there you have it.

Tony Dove’s vision was always larger than that. While he makes no secret of the fact that he is a local real estate professional, he has worked with great diligence for nearly 5 years to make this particular website all about the community. Using the resources that were available to him at the time, he stripped out as much of the template features as possible (especially lead-generation) and really made the platform his own. It’s not about him — it’s about the community where he works and lives.

The branding throughout the site coincides with a community financial website that he also sponsors, his real estate website, and his overall marketing materials. He also has a page about who he is and why he’s sponsoring the website. But that’s where the “real estate connection” ends.

The rest is a compilation of resources that a member of the community would want to use on a regular basis. Planning a trip? The Transportation page approaches travel resources from the perspective of someone who lives in your neighborhood. Planning a weekend out? The Recreation and Entertainment pages give you local options.

Anyway, the site is in need of an overhaul — partly in design and partly in content. We’ve been working for the past year on deciding how to best do that. Over the next year we hope to successfully complete a remodeled Anaheim Hills Live, and I’m excited to see how it turns out.

One of the projects in our overhaul is providing a directory of businesses in the Anaheim Hills area, called “Preferred Providers.” Scott, in particular, is working on going out into the community and speaking with business owners to get them on board.

We’ve recently completed pages for a few local business owners, and we’ve got several more lined up to have their pages added. It’s slightly more of an intricate process than it seems, but then the best projects usually are.