Business Strategy

We just went live with a new website for St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School.

The St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School is a private Preschool, Elementary and Middle School located in Carson City, Nevada. The School was founded in 1957, and has a great reputation for academic excellence.

St. Teresa School contacted Bullsprig about redesigning their current website. They wanted a fresh look and feel, more functionality, and a website they could manage themselves.

The web design goals for this project was to give parents, students and faculty a website where they could interact with the school, download documents, check schedules, read news and announcements and much more.

In addition, the St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School website had to function as marketing tool for future students and parents. The School has a lot of fund-raising activities throughout the year. They wanted a website where they could advertise these great events easily.

This was a great project for the team at Bullsprig to work on! I grew up in Carson City, and actually went to school at St. Teresa. I have fond memories of playing football in the dirt playground, and not-so-fond memories of being called to the Principle's office for discipline. I'm happy to say the playground is no longer dirt, and I haven't been to the Principle's office in years!

The St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School website was built 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 St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School every Sunday. The custom website reports illustrate top performing pages, most popular website content, searches, web form submissions and more. Our custom website statistics provide everything St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School needs to know to improve their online business and stay on track.
• Lead Management Systems - We built custom web forms that capture every inquiry, seamlessly updating the customer database in real-time.
• Workflow Notifications - We built multi-step work-flows to notify the St. Teresa staff 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 St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School can get found on the web. Every 24 hours, we automatically generate the sitemap.xml file for St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School, ensuring maximum visibility in Google, Yahoo and Bing.
• Content Management System (CMS) - Utilizing the Bullsprig Platform, the staff at St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School can maintain every aspect of their custom website. The staff at St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School can update web pages and edit content, upload files and communications, add and change photos with a click of a mouse.

About St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School: Founded in 1957, St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School has established a reputation for giving parents exactly what they desire when it comes to their children's education. St. Teresa's provides exceptional education in a faith‐based environment.

Click here to view St. Teresa of Avila Catholic School's website.

I received an excellent email this morning from the Google Apps team:

Dear Google Apps admin,​

In order to continue to improve our products and deliver more sophisticated features and performance, we are harnessing some of the latest improvements in web browser technology. This includes faster JavaScript processing and new standards like HTML5. As a result, over the course of 2010, we will be phasing out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 ​as well as other older browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers.

We plan to begin phasing out support of these older browsers on the Google Docs suite and the Google Sites editor on March 1, 2010. After that point, certain functionality within these applications may have higher latency and may not work correctly in these older browsers. Later in 2010, we will start to phase out support for these browsers for Google Mail and Google Calendar.

Google Apps will continue to support Internet Explorer 7.0 and above, Firefox 3.0 and above, Google Chrome 4.0 and above, and Safari 3.0 and above.

Starting this week, users on these older browsers will see a message in Google Docs and the Google Sites editor explaining this change and asking them to upgrade their browser. We will also alert you again closer to March 1 to remind you of this change.

In 2009, the Google Apps team delivered more than 100 improvements to enhance your product experience. We are aiming to beat that in 2010 and continue to deliver the best and most innovative collaboration products for businesses.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sincerely,
The Google Apps team

This is fantastic news for web developers and clients alike! IE 6 is the thorn in every web designer / web developers side. It simply doesn't play by the rules. Internet Explorer 6.0 is filled with bugs. What makes it so frustrating is that, as web developers, we have to work-around these bugs with hacks and crazy code.

This news is great because once a big company like Google decides to quit supporting IE 6.0, everybody else can follow suit! Thanks Google!

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!

A few more days until 2010! Yes, we know it's not technically the end of the decade, but no one called 1970 the "last year of the 60's." Some have called this the lost decade, excited to start something new. We think only good things to come!

At Bullsprig, we are finishing up a couple great websites and beginning something REALLY COOL.

We're developing a new product that will give business owners and individuals the vital tools needed to be successful on the web: manage your website and run marketing campaigns; care for your customers and sell your products online.

We're integrating SEO and search marketing so business owners can drive qualified targeted traffic to their websites, expand their online business presence, attract new customers and generate leads, give the power of account maintenance to the business owner, and much more!

This new product is designed so business owners and individuals can start small and grow with it as their business does, at an affordable price.

We have a clear vision for this product. Stay tuned!

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.

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.

With every custom website design project we undertake, we stick to specific guidelines to complete the project on-time and on-budget. That is, of course, easier said than done.

With every client wanting the absolute best work for their online business, it's best to stick to your project management guide or your design contract to fulfill your end of the bargain.

The absolute most important point in your contract is the one defining the scope of work. In our web design contracts, we are as detailed and precise as possible when dealing with project scope and reviews/revisions. If you let the project get out of control with client revisions, your project will be drained of any profit you calculated in. Nothing drains more dollars than unnecessary client revisions.

Stick to your project goals. What was the original business goal for this project? Sometimes we have clients try to make changes after they have approved the original design. This happens. More often than not, the original design was the correct decision. We always go back with our clients and review the project goals and articulate the logic behind the original design decision.

Sometimes client revisions are due to another, higher-level manager in the company. It's vitally important that you get the names and information of each key decision maker on the project, and involve them!

How important is client involvement? There are several phases of web projects where client approval is necessary to move forward. We let clients know how many revisions are budgeted in the project scope. And, when formal revisions take place, we always get a signature for approval.

It's important your web design agency takes the time to educate clients on the web design process and business goals that will be solved via your custom website design. If you're working with a web design agency, you've probably chose them because you liked their work. Trust them! At Bullsprig, we're in business because our clients trust our judgement when it comes to the design and layout of websites.

At Bullsprig, our clients are responsible for providing constructive feedback at each revision cycle. Each revision cycle is designed to move the project forward, to solve business goals as specified by the client.

At each milestone in the web design process, we insist on client approval and involvement. The website design and development should be completely 'client approved' prior to launch. This will prevent last minute delays and unexpected costs due to revisions.

After the site is launched, the education process continues. Clients need to know how to use their website, how to get traffic and how to evaluate strategy moving forward. Successful business owners know that in order for their website to gain traffic, convert visitors, and solve important business goals, the website has to be constantly updated, reviewed, tested, linked and maintained.

We build all our websites on an advanced technology infrastructure that makes it easy for businesses and individuals to maintain and grow their online business. After the launch of any website, we train all our clients how to use this platform. The Bullsprig platform boasts a wide array of powerful modules for empowering your website.

If you have a business in Reno Nevada, and are looking for a Reno web design agency, let's get in touch.

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.

In 2004 we designed a web site for WHITNEYfusion, a high-end event planning company. The web site was built entirely in Flash, and won Bullsprig numerous design awards. The web site was incredible--utilizing the latest in Flash technology and engineering.

Fast-forward to 2009 and WHITNEYfusion was overdue for a redesign.

Since 2004 WHITNEYfusion has seen tremendous growth. They have added a lot of new clients, and added people to their support staff. In addition, WHITNEYfusion has added wedding planning to their list of capabilities: corporate events, sports marketing and social soirees.

There are a few main business objectives for this redesign, including: be found on Google; give WHITNEYfusion the ability to updated the web site on their own; capture prospective leads via the web site; add photo galleries fast and whenever they wanted; and, finally, add a section on WHITNEYfusion weddings (more on this later).

The first phase of the redesign focused on the events side of WHITNEYfusion's business. The look and feel needed to be somewhat corporate but still incorporate the movement from the previous version of the site. The target audience for WHITNEYfusion Events is human resources staff at companies. In other words, people who needed information and examples fast, and hassle-free.

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 WHITNEYfusion weekly. These reports illustrate their top performing pages, most popular products, web form submission volume - everything WHITNEYfusion needs to know to improve their online business.
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - WHITNEYfusion 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 WHITNEYfusion 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 WHITNEYfusion can get found on the web. We automatically generate the sitemap.xml file for WHITNEYfusion each day, ensuring maximum visibility in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The SEO efforts for WHITNEYfusion will be ongoing, as they have contracted with us to provide results and keyword analysis. This will be a lot of fun, as our initial analysis shows the area to be ripe with opportunities!
• Content Management System (CMS) - Utilizing the Bullsprig Platform, WHITNEYfusion 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 check out the new site.

Back to the WHITNEYfusion weddings side. This is a different animal... a completely different web site. Different objectives, different audience. Evidently soon-to-be brides are very picky. (I should know, I am married.) We're in the middle of designing this side of WHITNEYfusion. It's an exciting site, very creative, and, of course a custom website design.

Below is a peak at the initial comps. I'll post the entire site when we're done.


About the company: WHITNEYfusion is a boutique event planning firm that offers the very best in corporate events, charity events, sports marketing, social soirees and wedding planning. From simple to extravagant, traditional to edgy, we fuse your vision with our insight & resources to create the perfect occasion.