Business Strategy

In business, nothing happens until a sale is made. Leads equals sales. Without leads, your business will not survive long.

We consult our clients often about the importance of conversion rates. A conversion can be many things... a product purchase, information gathered from interactive forms, a contract signed, and so on. Your conversion rate is the percentage of people who actually do what you want them to do. For example, if 10 people visit your online store and three people buy something, your conversion rate is 30 percent.

Tracking conversion rates on your website is a very important key business indicator.

Your ultimate goal is to convert clients, make a sale and keep your business growing. After the initial conversion, you need to make sure you keep getting repeat sales from your customers. The way to do this is to create marketing and sales systems that work.

With our website design clients, we first determine what their business goals are, then create conversion funnels to support these business goals.

Too many business owners focus on getting their "look" right before they start to generate leads. At the end of the day, leads are far more important than your brand. Again, leads equals sales, and without leads, your business will not survive long.

If you're in the market for a website redesign, or brand-new custom website design, make sure your website design company focuses on your business goals first, website look and feel later.

I am a huge fan of Napoleon Hill. Hill's works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal and business success.

Recently I read the following by Napoleon Hill:

Where will you be ten years from now if you keep on going the way you are going?

Many people fail to realize that big success is the result of little successes achieved, often over a very long period of time. Truly successful people are long-term thinkers. They know that they must build upon each achievement and constantly learn new and better ways of doing things. A regular review of your progress is an essential part of goal-setting. A goal is little more than a wish unless it has a timetable for completion. Make sure your plan for your life includes short, medium, and long-term goals. Revise your goals as circumstances dictate, check them off when they are completed, and set new and bigger goals for yourself as you grow. And take time to reflect often to make sure you are on the right course-for you.

Pretty powerful stuff. Let me break down this information.

Truly successful people are long-term thinkers.
Thinking long-term is easier said than done. Especially in the current business climate. You might wonder where you next sale is going to come from. Or, will my business survive this period. Every business owner has these thoughts. What's important is that you do something about it.

You need to look hard at your current marketing initiatives. What are you doing now? Is it working? Is your website working hard for you and your business? What is your conversion rate in your pay-per-click campaigns? Did that email blast generate any leads or sales? And so on.

If your online marketing initiatives are not working, you must do something different.

Successful people constantly learn new and better ways of doing things.
How much time do you spend on your website? Are you updating content, photos, FAQ's? How often do you talk with your web design firm / marketing agency? What type of funnels do you have on your website? Are they generating leads or selling your products?

There are so many better ways of doing business online. At Bullsprig, we have modules that allow you to update your website from any computer with an internet connection. How much time do you spend on social media? Ever wonder how to reduce the time you spend? If you have a Google AdWords account, do you have any keywords with a low quality score? What are you, or your web design agency doing about it?

With Bullsprig as your online business partner, we can help you find new and better ways of doing business online.

Make sure your plan for your life includes short, medium, and long-term goals.
At Bullsprig, we have an internal roadmap of goals. We are constantly working and moving forward to create new, better ways of marketing online. Better ways of designing websites, building ecommerce stores.

What are your online goals? Do you have any?

It's okay if you don't have goals... you might not know where to start. Listen, we know the web is complex. We're in business to help people and companies understand the web. We’re about streamlining the complex stuff so that anyone can understand it. Our products are designed so business owners and individuals can start small and grow with it as their business does.

We are actively involved with each of our clients. We work with business owners to define online business goals and make a roadmap to complete those goals.

Reflect often to make sure you are on the right course-for you.
Success online is the result of constant communication. We talk with our clients once a week: What's working? What's not working? How can we fix it?

We believe in providing you great technology, built to help you succeed, at an affordable price.

If your website design agency is not helping your business succeed online, it's time to look elsewhere. Contact Bullsprig today. Let's start the conversation.

We recently went live with a redesigned website for Lake Crest Homes. Founded by Jim Smrt in 1990, Lake Crest Homes, Inc., has an extraordinary reputation for excellence in the Reno-Tahoe area.

Lake Crest Homes is recognized locally for the quality of their craftsmanship and their client support. They have built some of the most spectacular homes in the Reno-Lake Tahoe area, and needed a strong web presence to showcase their talents.

The overall business goals for the Lake Crest Homes website:

• Give Lake Crest Homes a newer, updated look and feel.
• Port their old site to Bullsprig's Content Management System (CMS), allowing the owners and employees of Lake Crest Homes to control content and images on their website.
• Create call-to-action items on every page of the website.
• Utilize Bullsprig's enhanced SEO technologies to achieve better rankings via organic search.
• Using interactive forms and funnels on the website, Lake Crest will be able to generate higher-quality business leads.
• Install custom analytic software to gauge the effectiveness of design elements and page structure.

We integrated a blog and designed various announcement modules to help the team at Lake Crest Homes keep the site fresh with updated content relevant to the construction industry.

Click here to view the new Lake Crest Homes website. The team at Bullsprig is excited about this new website... let us know what you think!

We recently went live with a redesigned website for CFS Engineering. CFS Engineering was founded by Clark Stoner as a specialty service civil and environmental engineering firm dedicated to helping their clients achieve their most challenging objectives.

The overall business goals for the redesign were:

• Give CFS Engineering a newer, updated look and feel.
• Port their old site to Bullsprig's Content Management System (CMS), giving the owners of CFS Engineering better control over their website.
• Utilize Bullsprig's enhanced SEO technologies to achieve better rankings via organic search.
• Generate higher-quality business leads through interactive forms and funnels on the website.

In addition to these business goals, we added: custom website analytics; lead management systems built around workflows; automatically generated xml feeds for search; and other important key business indicators (KBIs).

Clark Stoner, the owner/founder of CFS Engineering, is an avid outdoorsman as well as being one of the top engineers in the field. He wanted the website to "not" look like every other engineering firm out there. We utilized outdoor photography and various elements to achieve the desired look and feel requested.

We integrated a blog and designed various announcement modules to help the team at CFS Engineering keep the site fresh with updated content relevant to the engineering industry.

At Bullsprig, we are very excited about this site! Click here to view the new CFS Engineering website.

More and more of our clients are demanding a single solution that helps them manage every aspect of their website and online activities. That solution is a Content Management System (CMS).

At Bullsprig, all of our websites are designed and developed to run on our advanced technology infrastructure: the Bullsprig Platform. This platform is a Content Management System for the web.

Content Management Systems (CMS) on the web are used to manage and control collections HTML documents and their associated images, eCommerce systems, workflows and many other things. Having your website run by a content management system is critical to the success of your website.

Content management systems (CMS) are designed to allow users with little knowledge of programming languages or markup languages the ability to create and manage content with relative ease. A good content management system has the power to dramatically simplify the maintenance and freshness of websites.

The Bullsprig Platform gives clients the power to manage their websites, run marketing campaigns, track customers, sell products and much more... making their lives easier and business more profitable.

Our website design and development process integrates our CMS from the start. When we design and develop a new website, all the functionality, i.e., interactive forms, eCommerce capabilities, email marketing, workflows and so on are all tied together on the Bullsprig Platform.

Our CMS platform is an all-in-one solution. That means, when you log in, you have immediate access your website control panel, contacts database, web form submissions, blog and forum comments, products, catalogs and sub-catalogs, your orders, web pages, email marketing campaigns, website reports and more.

You can access your website from any computer with an internet connection... just use any popular web browser!

Our clients have had tremendous success with our system. If you are interested in learning more, please contact us today for a free website design estimate!

We just went live with a new website for Reno real estate agent Brooke Sullivan. Brooke specializes in luxury real estate and Montreux real estate in Reno, Nevada. The design and development of this website went incredibly fast, at only 8 total days! (That includes beta testing and debugging!)

The design goals for this project was to give users an easy method to search for real estate and show Brooke's featured listings, while staying clean and user-friendly. The overwhelming majority of real estate websites are cluttered and confusing... filled with non-essential "stuff" like mortgage rates and calculators. Very rarely do these sites offer anything that users would want to come back for.

This was a great project for the team at Bullsprig to work on because so many real estate web sites -- even the sites focusing on luxury real estate -- are SO confusing, and completely abandon their initial business goals. Most sites lose focus by populating their pages with dancing skeletons and dinosaur pictures.

This website had to be engaging. Relevant. Filled with information users would seek out and return to often. Brooke's clientiel are high-end sophisticated real estate buyers. These clients have purchased real estate before, and are looking for the best Reno real estate agent available.

We built the website entirely on the Bullsprig Platform, integrating numerous key business indicators, including:

• Custom Web Site Analytics - Custom website reports are generated weekly, and sent via email to Brooke Sullivan every Sunday. These website reports illustrate her top performing pages, most popular Reno real estate listings and searches, web form submissions and more. Our website statistics provide everything Brooke Sullivan needs to know to improve her online business and stay on track.
• Lead Management Systems - We built custom web forms that capture every inquiry, seamlessly updating her customer database in real-time.
• Workflow Notifications - We built multi-step work-flows to notify Brooke Sullivan of new web form submissions, verifying steps as they are completed, and remind and escalate to management if need be.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - We put special effort into making sure Brooke Sullivan can get found on the web. We automatically generate the sitemap.xml file for Brooke Sullivan each day, ensuring maximum visibility in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
• Content Management System (CMS) - Utilizing the Bullsprig Platform, Brooke Sullivan can maintain every aspect of her custom website, from any computer with a web connection. She can update real estate listings and edit content, upload files and communications, add and change photos with a click of a mouse.

The SEO campaign for Brooke Sullivan will be ongoing, as true SEO performance is not easy, and takes a lot time and effort. The SEO work we'll be doing for Brooke Sullivan is going to be very interesting. There is a lot of competition for real estate keywords. As of today, BrookeSullivan.com is not found on Google. But, that WILL change shortly. (We'll keep you up-to-date).

About Brooke Sullivan: Brooke Sullivan is a luxury real estate agent who works for Dickson Realty at the private golf course community of Montreux. Her real estate website focuses on luxury real estate in Northern Nevada. In addition to Northern Nevada luxury real estate, Brooke Sullivan lists and sells Montreux real estate and Reno real estate. Brooke Sullivan lives and works in the Reno/Tahoe area, and is a member of the Montreux Golf and Country Club, home to a stop on the PGA Tour and FedEx Cup. Her website should be used to search for real estate, including: Montreux Real Estate, Luxury Real Estate, Reno Real Estate, Lake Tahoe Real Estate and high-end Real Estate. The private Montreux community could be comparable to: Martis Camp; Yellowstone Club; Timilick Tahoe; Old Greenwood; Grays Crossing and the Tahoe Mountain Club.

Click here to view Brooke Sullivan's website.

Every week we receive emails from prospective clients about web design and development. The number one question from 90% of clients is, "How much will a website cost?"

The answer is what you'd expect: "It depends." Ultimately the price for website design and development is dependant upon the amount of time spent on the project. One must realize, design is a premium service. A luxury good. Businesses who value good design have an advantage over those who don't.

Any credible design agency will follow a process for estimating web design work. We respond to inquires with a request for proposal document (RFP). This document is filled with important questions pertaining to your business, your online business goals, key business indicators, website functionality and look and feel.

For example, do you need a content management system? A blog? An online forum? Are you going to sell products on your website... and so on. All of these questions help your design agency determine how much time they need to spend on your project. Once that is determined, an estimate can be accurately submitted.

One of the questions we ask is, "Have you worked with a design agency before?" This is an important question because the answer will tell us how much we have to educate the client on process, prices and expectations. Most clients have not worked with an interactive agency before, and therefore we spend a lot of time educating them on what to expect.

Often times, when we present our estimate for custom website design, clients experience "sticker shock." Scary thing is, our prices are reasonable by comparison, and actually lower than comparable design agencies. Some prospects even say, "I can get (insert cheap company here) to design a site for $10 a month." Yup, you absolutely can. But, in 6 months, you'll come back to us for the solution you needed in the first place.

Our competitive advantage is our completeness, creative vision, client service and commitment to your ongoing success. Our clients are partners for life. We want you to succeed, it makes us look good. And, we get and keep more and more clients through word-of-mouth.

It's been said, making the complex look simple is one of the greatest skills. That is absolutely true with web design and development. Website design is a process. There is a lot of work and time put in behind the scenes. Work and time the client never sees.

Here's a quick study on what to expect from a reputable design agency. This is what you're paying for:
Client, Industry, and Competitive research;
Graphic Compositions in Photoshop;
Client Reviews and Revisions;
Taking the Approved Comps and Mapping them to a CSS / XHTML Grid;
CSS / XHTML Production and Testing;
Content Management Database Design;
eCommerce Functionality and Testing;
Search Engine Optimization;

These steps require professionalism and expertise to produce a robust solution. Most first-time clients have no idea what it takes to produce this work. Website design and development is very complicated. Making the complicated look easy is what your web design firm should do, and do well.

We recently went live with a new website for Advanced Dentistry by Design. This Carson City Dentist has been in business for over 30 years in Carson City. Advanced Dentistry by Design offers many dental services including: Cosmetic Dentistry, General Dentistry, CEREC Technology, 6 Month Smiles, Dental Implants, Porcelain Veneers and Sedation Dentistry.

The design and layout of this site was really straightforward. In our initial conversations with Dr. Clint Euse at Advanced Dentistry by Design, when asked about the look and feel they wanted, he said, "We like the look and feel of your site." Great, that made this design really easy... we built the site just like we'd like it. We had one review, after that review, design and development went very fast. And, by the way, if you're wondering about costs associated with website design and development... the answer is easy: Cost depends on how much time we spend designing and developing your site. Simple.

Dr. Euse and the team at Advanced Dentistry by Design, had multiple business objectives for this website. They wanted a clean and professional website that would: capture prospective new clients via the web site; give current clients the ability to make appointments online; be found on Google and other search engines; allow Advanced Dentistry by Design the ability to update their web site on their own; and, communicate with clients via a blog.

We built the web site entirely on the Bullsprig Platform, integrating numerous key business indicators, including:

• Web Site Analytics - We generate custom reports, sent to Advanced Dentistry by Design weekly. These reports illustrate their top performing pages, most popular products, web form submission volume - everything Advanced Dentistry by Design needs to know to improve their online business.
• Lead Management Systems - We built custom web forms that capture every inquiry, then update their customer database automatically.
• Workflow Notifications - We built multi-step work-flows to notify Advanced Dentistry by Design of new web form submissions, verifying steps as they are completed, and remind and escalate to management if need be.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - We put special effort into making sure Advanced Dentistry by Design can get found on the web. We automatically generate the sitemap.xml file for Advanced Dentistry by Design each day, ensuring maximum visibility in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The SEO efforts for Advanced Dentistry by Design will be ongoing, as true SEO performance is not easy, and does take time and effort.
• Content Management System (CMS) - Utilizing the Bullsprig Platform, Advanced Dentistry by Design can maintain their web site from any computer with a web connection. They can make updates and edit content, upload files and communications, add and change photos seamlessly.

Click here to view Advanced Dentistry by Design's new site.

About the company: Advanced Dentistry by Design is a Carson City Dentist serving Carson City, Reno and the outlying areas. Where other practices look at patients and see teeth, Advanced Dentistry by Design sees a person with expectations, desires and concerns.

We just went live with a new web site for Capital Glass. This 40 year old company specializes in apartment renovations commercial construction and residential construction. Their location in Carson City hasn't stopped them from expanding nation-wide.

The main business objective of their new web site is to sevice exsiting clients, while attracting new clients across the country.

The Team at Capital Glass is extremely busy with ongoing projects. They wanted their web site to work for them... to be an online business. Communicating with architects and contractors on a daily basis takes a lot of time--on the phone and via email. One of their business goals was to create a "members only" portion of the web site where Capital Glass clients could download specs, plans and other communications, allowing Capital Glass the time to focus on their projects.

They also wanted to control their content, that is: make changes, add photos, plans, specs and communicate with their clients. We built the web site entirely on the Bullsprig Platform, integrating numerous key business indicators, including:

• Web Site Analytics - We generate custom reports, sent to Capital Glass weekly. These reports illustrate their top performing pages, most popular products, web form submission volume - everything Capital Glass needs to know to improve their online business.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - Capital Glass can now manage their customers from their web interface, allowing them to track customers actions easier.
• Lead Management Systems - We built custom web forms that capture every inquiry, then update their contact management database automatically.
• Workflow Notifications - We built multi-step work-flows to notify the Capital Glass team of new web form submissions, verifying steps as they are completed, and remind and escalate to management if need be.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - We put special effort into making sure Capital Glass can get found on the web. We automatically generate the sitemap.xml file for Capital Glass each day, ensuring maximum visibility in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
• Members Only Section - We built a members only section for Capital Glass, allowing current customers secure online access to download their files and communicate with Capital Glass.
• Content Management System (CMS) - Utalizing the Bullsprig Platform, Capital Glass can maintain their web site from any computer with a web connecting. They can make updates and edit content, upload files and communications, add and change photos seamlessly.

Click here to check out the new site.

The site was built, and is hosted, on the Bullsprig platform.

About the company: founded in 1968, Capital Glass, Inc. is a family owned and operated glazing contractor dedicated to providing the highest quality products and services to all customers and projects regardless of their size. The company's founders, Donald and Virginia Larkin, and now their sons have grown the business on the principals of hard work, quality, and accountability.

We just went live with a new web site for TopLine Leadership. In addition to a brand-new look and feel, we built a customer relationship management (CRM) system, blog and email marketing systems.

TopLine's main business objective was to capture new leads. We integrated their AdWords account with their analytics for better tracking and conversion stats. We also administered a complete overhaul of their keywords and added multiple landing pages.

Click here to check out the new site.

The site was built, and is hosted, on the Bullsprig platform. TopLine Leadership can control their own content, email marketing and CRM.

About the company: TopLine Leadership delivers 2-day sales seminars for sales managers and sales people through customer centric selling and Getting Into Your Customer's Head solutions.