Can you give us a brief backstory of Colophon New Media? How and when was the company founded, and with what idea in mind?
Colophon New Media was founded here in Charleston, SC, in 2003 by James Eastman. His father’s business was “Colophon Publishing Services,” dating back to 1985. ‘New Media’ was created as a venture to explore the new frontier of web design for business. I acquired Colophon in 2024 and stepped into the leadership role. We’ve preserved the original core team and are making significant moves for the future. From inception, our focus has always been on providing excellent, high-performing websites for businesses, ensuring the right audience sees them, and delivering the best ongoing customer support on the market. We view ourselves as our customers’ digital marketing partners and aim to serve them alongside for years to come. We continue to follow through on and improve those promises more than 20 years later.What is your approach to web design, and what are some key things to consider when designing a new website in 2025?
I love this question. While the rules of the web seem to be ever-changing in the AI age, great websites are often timeless. There are unique considerations that can benefit specific industries, but overall, we believe in a handful of tenets to maximize your business’s web presence:- A sleek, gorgeous website to separate you from cookie-cutter competitors
- Custom-programmed themes to optimize performance and reduce security risk
- Clear calls-to-action to funnel leads to become sales
- Hosting the website on high-performing, low-tenant servers with complete security services and informative analytics
- Investing in your holistic digital presence and keeping your website active with blogging, SEO, Paid Ads, social media, and maintaining content
What can you tell me about your hosting services?
Our philosophy with hosting is that it’s much more than simply “where your website lives”. Our standard plan is an unlimited support, full analytics, total security suite hosting plan for a highly competitive price with month-to-month contracts. We host on our infrastructure to bypass a majority of resold hosts’ issues. This provides a more responsive and accountable service for our customers, rather than an “I’ll put in a ticket and wait” approach. This also enables us to optimize for performance instead of cramming websites into small, shared servers. Our team also doesn’t believe in minimal security or analytics. Skimping on security means that we can’t fulfill our promise of being the best web hosts & maintenance team we can be, while putting our customers at unnecessary risk. In that same vein, being in the dark on how your website is performing does no good for understanding your website’s ROI, brand positioning, and effectiveness in your target markets. Our plans include unlimited support hours, so if you encounter a problem or have a question, we’ll resolve it or provide an answer at no additional charge.What other services do you offer?
Colophon prides itself on being a one-stop shop for business marketing. We specialize in website design, development, hosting, maintenance, and marketing. Our marketing services consist of website SEO (advanced reporting, on-page optimization, blogging), advanced SEO (backlink building, citation building, GMB and Social Media optimization & management), and Google / Microsoft / Meta Ads campaign development and management. We’re passionate about helping websites get discovered online by crafting the best holistic package for each customer based on their needs and goals.What makes you stand out in the competitive field you’re in?
Our commitment to exceptional customer service is the reason clients refer us to others and continue working with us for decades. We’re incredibly proud of the partnerships we create, not only with each business we serve, but also with the individuals who run those businesses. Many companies or small business owners we talk to have felt abandoned by their website or marketing agency, and we combat this by partnering for the long haul!To learn more about Colophon New Media, you can visit www.cnmwebsite.com
