AP Website Delivers the How-to Industry Resource You’ve Been Waiting For

(from the October 2010 Editor's Note in AsphaltPro Magazine)

Let’s face it: when creative minds get together, they tend to overproduce a project. I think that’s one of the reasons people roll their eyes when you suggest forming a committee to work on something. Committees tend to slow progress. For AsphaltPro magazine, we’ve been working on a creative project off and on for three years—our website. Here’s where the committee comes in.


The staff at AsphaltPro is more than the Chris Harrison-Sally Shoemaker-Sandy Lender team that you’ve known for years and met at tradeshows and state association meetings. While the three of us have our experience in publishing and the asphalt industry to recommend us for building a first-class asphalt business website, we also have our creative sides that recommend us for building something aesthetically pleasing.

Then we have two artists in our headquarters office who can build, create and design in their sleep! Combined, the staff has 62 years in magazine publishing (more than 33 of it specifically in the asphalt industry). That’s a lot of creative juices. Add in a whole company in our headquarters town that designs websites for a living and I think you get the picture.

I don’t mind telling you that the team has pulled out a lot of hair over the website project. We wanted something that looked full, yet clean and easy to navigate. We wanted something filled with content and useful information, yet quick to load. We wanted something that complemented the print magazine, yet didn’t compete with it and certainly wasn’t redundant. I can’t tell you how annoyed I get with magazine sites that merely regurgitate their print information. Why would I pay for one when the other is free? Why would I support the murder of innocent trees to have a magazine sent to my home if the editor’s just going to put the information up on a website a week or two after it arrives? That’s stupid and irresponsible. I have no patience for it.

Creative minds want to build something superior to that.

So we did.

I present to you: TheAsphaltPro.com.

Of course there are departments and articles that bear regurgitation. But it doesn’t take an outside expert to tell us that magazine readers and web readers tolerate different styles. We’ve edited our content for the web to make it user-friendly. When you visit http://www.theasphaltpro.com/, you’re not going to be stuck in front of a monitor trying to read tiny type in magazine format. No…I give classes on website and blog development and intelligent online social media use. I’ll be presenting this kind of marketing information at CONEXPO-CON/AGG in March to assist contractors and producers to use their online presence effectively.

We know what we’re doing at AsphaltPro not just in the asphalt arena, not just in the magazine publishing arena, but also in the website presentation arena. Now we’re offering a pleasing, informative, useful website to the masses. I invite you to visit http://www.theasphaltpro.com/ often for updates and information that impacts your bottom line. Then be sure to send me a note about the site’s efficacy. Let me know what else we can add to the site or to this blog to enhance your business.
Stay Safe,
Sandy Lender (sandy @ theasphaltpro dot com)

Tags: AsphaltPro Magazine, Asphalt Pro Magazine, website, launch, CONEXPO-CON/AGG