Does this sound familiar? The person who built your Web site -- an outside design firm, a friend, a co-worker -- isn't around to make the changes needed. You have to change a phone number, update a price or add a new product. What do you do?
For most small business users, you're stuck. You didn't have the time, or inclination, to build your Web site to begin with. And now when you need to change it, you're stuck tracking down your Web guru or paying someone to update your site.
A new vendor, TypeRoom, has a unique and I think potentially useful solution to this problem. The service lets you enter the URL of any page on your site. It then pulls a copy of that page onto its servers and provides easy-to-use, WYSIWYG tools for making updates and changes to the page.
When you are done, you provide the service with the FTP address to update your site. This is the only part that might trip up newbies, but once you've got your FTP address and set up TypeRoom to upload to it, you'll never have to worry about that technical detail again.
If this still seems a little abstract, take a look at the embedded video. The magic sauce is this: TypeRoom works by letting you edit an exact replica of a Web page, *right on the page.*
Think about it: you see a typo on the page. Wouldn't you like to just go on the page and fix it? TypeRoom, for the most part and with a few tricks, let's you do just that.
So what are the downsides? The tool is built more for editing pages than creating original Web sites. It isn't formally available yet -- a free version is available in private beta today and a for-fee "pro" version with more capabilities is pegged as "coming soon." And like anything Web-based, it still requires at least some minimal computer skills to get it to work, including being comfortable inputting an FTP address.
But the ability to do quick Web site edits is so important to small businesses, I think this is a tool worth keeping an eye on.
