If you’re visiting our site for the first time, you might not know that we recently went through a major redesign. While we’ve changed the look and feel a few times in the last several years, we’ve never performed this drastic of a change – we ditched our hosted shopping cart and wrote a new, sexy, extremely functional system that allows easier ordering for the user (you!) and easier fulfillment for the provider (us!). In doing so, we started with a clean piece of paper and said “What is it our customers are looking for?” in order to determine exactly what you need to see to understand not only what we do, but how we do it and why you need it.

We ran into a few problems, and I’m going to address one today – most of our customers are not worrying about ripping CDs all day (as they shouldn’t be) and therefore do not know what to call the service we offer, much less know how to search for it. We don’t blame them at all. In fact, we want you to stay ignorant, so you can enjoy the better things in life! However, this doesn’t get us business and doesn’t get your CDs ripped.

So let’s chat. At Ripstyles, we take your CDs and make them available in a digital format. We do this through a process called CD ripping, or as we define it, “the service we offer to convert and copy your CDs into a digital music collection, suitable to be played on a computer, portable media player, home media center, and many other devices.” Not too shabby, however, it doesn’t address the problem. Often times our customers use the term “burn” instead of “rip.” To make it simple, burning is putting data onto a disc, and ripping is taking data off of a disc. Easy! We also hear the phrase “download my CDs to iPod” quite often. While Apple uses the word “syncing” a lot, we prefer to just say “we’ll load your iPod.” It’s quick, easy, and clear.

Does it matter what you call us? Heck no, we love being creative. “Those CD Guys and Girls” works just fine. We do, however, want to make it easy for you to find us so that we can help out with that pile of CDs sitting in your living room. If you hear of a good name for CD ripping or conversion, let us know. Drop a comment below, or email us with your thoughts.