Big Medium Inspires Paris Muse
With an elegant website to match the company's sophisticated museum tours, Paris Muse relies on Big Medium to keep the site up to date and looking great.

The last thing Ellen McBreen ever thought she would do is run her own website.

"I'm most comfortable in front of paintings, not computer screens," admits McBreen, an art historian and director of Paris Muse, a company that offers private, high-end tours of the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay and the other great museums of Paris.

But by using Big Medium, the self-described technophobe single-handedly maintains the Paris Muse website at www.parismuse.com, featuring an elegant design that matches the company's sophisticated offering.

"It's so easy to use"

"Before Big Medium, updating our website used to be a huge headache, and I dragged my feet every time we had to add a new tour or change any information," said McBreen. "We didn't know how to do it ourselves, and so we had to track down our webmaster to do it, even for small changes. The updates took time, they took money.

"When our webmaster first suggested that Big Medium could let us do everything ourselves, I have to admit I was skeptical," McBreen added. "Do it ourselves? We don't know how websites work, and we don't want to know. And with Big Medium, we don't have to. It's so easy to use, and editing website pages couldn't be simpler."

The City of Light's museum shows and gallery exhibitions change constantly, and Paris Muse's team of American art historians keep their customers informed with the ever-changing website.

"Because we update the site so often now, I can't imagine doing it without Big Medium," McBreen said.

A creative spark

With Big Medium's user-friendly design and powerful tools, McBreen discovered that she could add new features and sections to the Paris Muse website. The tip editor maintains the glowing testimonials of Paris Muse customers. The content affiliate program allows other websites to post automatically updated art news from the Paris Muse website. And the ease of adding new content gave McBreen both the confidence and the ability to launch a new editorial section of the website, featuring Paris art news and events.

"The software released a real creative spark for us," said McBreen. "Now it's not just easy to update the site, but it's actually fun, too. I'm constantly sculpting the site, and I love it."

A powerful marketing tool

From the beginning, Paris Muse relied heavily on online marketing to spread the word about its tours and to book reservations. But since the company started using Big Medium, traffic has more than doubled. Big Medium's search-engine-friendly techniques have boosted the site in Google's search results, and McBreen's regular editorial updates have quickly earned a loyal following.

"It's only now that I understand just how powerful a website can be as a marketing tool," McBreen said. "Big Medium has transformed my relationship to my business."