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.

Search engine optimization is a never-ending job. All the time and money you spent designing and developing your website means nothing if people can't find you!

It's important to make sure your website design company optimizes your site during development, but there is always room for improvement. To get those precious leads coming in, you must ensure your prospects can find your website via search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Tip 1: Write Better Page Titles
At the top of your browser, on every web page, there is a title. Make sure each title is very specific, and is different than any other web page on your site. Search engines scan this data when indexing your site. Being specific counts! Do not use generic page titles like "About Us". Include targeted keywords in your titles.

Tip 2: Use Keywords Generously
Incorporate top phrases you want associated with your website. Do your keyword research, find out what keywords you want to target. Try to have your keywords appear a few times on your site. But, do not "keyword stuff". Keyword stuffing is putting A TON of keywords on a single page. This is a red flag.

Tip 3: Develop an XML Site Map
Site maps are a major component for search engine indexing. There are many tools that generate xml site maps for free... use them! Websites designed by Bullsprig submit an xml site map to all the major search engines every 24 hours. You need to do the same.

Tip 4: Broadcast Your Links
There are many ways to get your content out there to the world. Focus on social networks and trusted websites within your industry. Tell the world about your business, products, services, employees... everything!

Tip 5: Tweet About It
Twitter is a wonderful tool that has become an important part of search engine optimization. Tweets are now indexed in Google! If you have a Twitter account, include Tweets about your business and useful tips that your customers would like to hear about. If you don't have a Twitter account, get one!

These tips will help you get better traction with your search engine results. SEO is a never-ending job! The sites that rank highly in Google are there for a reason... you can be too.

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.

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!

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.