Business Strategy

I just read a great article from Adage about the importance of a company's website.

Your website is ostensibly your biggest office or storefront. Think real estate: Would you cheap out building your headquarters, manufacturing plant, distribution center, customer service center, or store? And yet, a website can be all of these. This piece of property is available to customers and prospects all over the globe 24/7.

Read that paragraph again. The importance of a great website in this day-and-age should be your number 1 priority. Your website is where your customers go first... before calling you. Trust me.

An interesting thing happened to me the other day. I needed to order some light-bulbs for the office last week. I went to Google and searched for my light-bulb guys. Nothing. Searched again, same result. I searched a couple more times, could not find the phone number. Then I looked down at my feet, there it was: the telephone book. I looked up the number, made the call and got my light-bulbs.

Ordering light-bulbs is not very interesting. What IS interesting is the fact that I searched Google first instead of opening up the Yellow Pages.

Trust me, this is happening all over the world. Your website is where your customers go first!

If you're not spending money on quality website design and development and on online marketing (what you need to do to drive customers to your website) you are missing a huge shift in consumer behavior.

We are currently developing a new product to help business owners, individuals and other web designers build and publish websites. We're really excited about this new product... the ease of use, the functionality, low cost, etc.

The design and development of this project has been a lot of fun! From the beginning, we've asked a lot of hard questions: Why do we need this? What problems are we solving? Will customers purchase and use it?

I think the answer is yes! Of course, we hope customers will adopt our new product at a fast clip. Only time will tell.

We will go live with this new product soon. I'll keep you up-to-date!

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.

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 said goodbye to one of our longtime clients. They said they could not afford our services any longer, but really appreciated all the work we had done in the past, and would look forward to working with Bullsprig in the future, once the economy picked-up.

Looking back at our relationship, one thing kept eating away at me. You see, they decided to go with another marketing service provider (yes, one that was cheaper). That’s fine and good--we get, it every penny counts--except this other company isn’t providing a better service (in my opinion). So why would they bail on us?

The answer is plain and simple: lack of communication. On our part. Period. Our mistake, we will learn from it.

Our goal as a web design agency is to have all of our clients trust us and keep the communication lines open. It’s important that we deliver the very best service at a reasonable price. We want our clients to rave about our services and the results we deliver... recommend us to colleagues and friends.

I think it gets back to trust. Inspiring trust is a critical component to business, especially a service business like website design and development. I am a believer now that trust comes from communication. People will not recognize Bullsprig as a leader unless they trust us. People need to be convinced that we know what we’re doing and that we can deliver.

Recently, we have started having weekly conversations with our clients. These conversations are generally not long and take place over the phone. But, what we’ve noticed with these conversations, is that our clients are coming to us for more and more services. They are asking us more questions, keeping the conversation going.

These conversations have also given us an opportunity to talk about all the other services we provide, in addition to web design and development.

With the ever-changing economy and strains on your business, we need to know where you stand today. What your current business goals are (they change frequently), and how we can deliver ROI. What are your key business indicators? How can we leverage your website and online marketing initiatives to achieve these goals?

Our services should ALWAYS help you move your business forward and be worth the investment; otherwise, it is time to talk and revisit goals and deliverables.

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.

Let's talk a little about copywriting for your website.

What is copywriting? When talking web design, it's your site's content... what people read. This includes Headlines, Subheads and body copy. Writing is always difficult (for most people anyway). We tell each of our clients to estimate the amount of time you think it will take to write copy for your site, then DOUBLE IT! Internal content creation always takes longer than you expect!

Right now, we have 5 websites that are completely finished, beta tested, layout approved, all ready to go... but WAITING for finalized copy. It's always copy that holds up a website launch!

My minor in college was Journalism. I didn't know how to write very good at all. One of the first classes I took was on writing. My professor actually asked me if wanted to change my minor and do something else! At any rate, I learned how to write. I wasn't the star student, but I powered my way through it and learned a lot. So can you!

Here's some help for those of you who may need some help, here is a great article: The Art of the Paragraph.

The www.copyblogger.com is a great website to learn how to write and to bring out your inner writer. Read the articles. Learn.

Keep your fingers crossed that we get the copy soon. We have some awesome sites to unveil, stay tuned!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of analyzing and enhancing your website to help potential customers find it on Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. SEO is a process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural" or unpaid search results (defined by Reno SEO companies as "organic" search results).

The term "search engine marketing" (SEM) deals with paid search. Search engine marketing seeks to increase the visibility of a website by promoting that website with the use of paid ad placement, contextual advertising and paid inclusion. Search engine marketing includes the use of Google Adwords, contextual advertising and other forms of online advertising.

Having your custom website design optimized for search is important because the higher your website appears in the search results list, the more traffic your website will receive from the various search engines. Website traffic is key if you want to have a successful online business!

Search engine optimization includes a lot of different kinds of search strategies in addition to your keyword search strategy. Image search, local search and video search are all components that should be included in your search engine optimization. By incorporating all these strategies in your SEO, your website will have a much better web presence, thus more traffic!

As part of your internet marketing strategy, SEO tactics should be incorporated into custom website development and design. Valid code is the foundation for effective SEO strategies.

Search engine optimization focuses on how search engines work and what specific terms people search for. SEO efforts should start at the bottom level of your website. That is, your HTML code!

The majority of web pages on the Internet are written in computer languages (such as HTML). This allows web designers and web developers the ability to structure text, images, multimedia content and more on a web page.

All software and applications written with computer languages are supposed to follow rules. This includes websites and web pages! A common mistake made by many web developers and designers is to NOT follow these rules. This is a huge mistake if you want quality search engine results.

Optimizing a website for search begins with valid HTML code. Quality, valid HTML code will remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines and make your online business search engine friendly. All of our Reno web design clients have websites built with quality code. In addition, we send an xml feed every 24 hours to all the major search engines, which helps our clients tremendously with their search results!

The term "search engine friendly" describes the overall layout and design of your custom website. Designing search engine friendly websites begins with valid HTML code. That code powers your overall layout and design, including: navigational menus, content management systems, images, blogs, forums, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that make up your online business.

In today's competitive business environment, proper SEO is critical to the success of any website. Whether you want to optimize your site yourself or want a professional Reno SEO agency to help you, Search Engine Optimization should be a keystone of your online marketing strategy.

The goal of your search engine optimization strategies should be to gain more visibility on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. Increasing traffic to your website is the only way to grow your online business.

If you need help with your SEO, SEM or your website design and development, contact Bullsprig today! We are a Reno web design and Reno SEO website design agency. But, Reno Nevada is just where we call home... we have a lot of clients all across the US and would love to work with you wherever you live!