Fusionbox :: Denver Web Design & Development

Fusionbox Won a Top National Award

2011-04-05T20:12:00.001-06:00

For the fourth year in a row, Fusionbox has won top honors from BtoB Magazine for being a stellar Denver SEO and Interactive agency.

We've worked with a number of b2b companies here in Denver and nationwide. The strategy behind building an effective b2b site is quite different from b2c. For b2b, we're focused on bringing in great quality leads and marketing to them at all stages of the buying cycle.

Fusionbox News

2011-03-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

Fusionbox, the Denver Internet Marketing Company I work for, has recently signed on several new clients. We have also started new projects for existing clients.

Some of the Internet Marketing we are doing now includes working with a B2B company to ensure it does not lose organic search engine ranking at the time of relaunch. We did not do the site design and the client came to us only after having a bad experience with their current web design company. They brought Fusionbox in to do SEO but we discovered that the site that was under development was not ideal at all because it lacked any lead generation program. Fusionbox also found out that the current vendor had not put any plans in place at all to manage page redirects, load times, or even properly optimized meta data.

We were glad we could step in and prevent a disaster at launch time. We managed to get the new site launched without losing any organic rank and by actually increasing rank dramatically for many of the client's targeted keywords.

QR Codes

2011-02-21T13:08:00.000-07:00

QR Codes are a great way to drive offline strategies for completion and tracking online. The above code when scanned, simply takes users to the Fusionbox site, but could take them to a custom page designed specifically for mobile browsers with a special offer that users can access right from their phones.

Fusionbox Denver SEO Blog - Call-to-Action Placement is Critical

2010-11-18T13:26:00.000-07:00

Fusionbox Denver SEO Blog - Call-to-Action Placement is Critical

A quick article I wrote after reading about how research shows that items placed on restaurant menus at the top right hand side get ordered more often.

I work at Fusionbox, a Denver SEO company.

Denver Interactive Agency wins Web Award

2010-10-16T14:40:00.000-06:00

We won another award for our work on www.togethermd.com, a b2b platform for health care professionals.

Denver Interactive Agency wins Web Award

SEO: Bake it into the Web Design & Development Process

2010-10-15T15:02:00.000-06:00

Here's a great post by one of our Denver SEO team members on why it's so important to for SEO to be considered as a site is redesigned.

How and When to Incorporate SEO into Website Design and Development

denver programming jobs

2010-09-15T17:03:00.000-06:00

denver programming jobs

Denver Web Development Company, Fusionbox, adds to Client List

2010-07-01T18:54:00.002-06:00

Denver web development agency, Fusionbox, has been chosen to develop an Absence Management System (AMS) for Options & Choices, Inc. (OCI) that will help their new and existing clients manage employee absences.

The application, called LeaveXpertTM, is web-based and includes the full spectrum of leave types including, FMLA, disability, workers' compensation, sick leave, state leaves, and other casual absence types. According to studies, nationwide estimates show that up to 15% of a company’s payroll goes to pay for employee absence. LeaveXpertTM will help companies lower this number and impact their bottom line in a positive way.

Fusionbox will develop the project in two phases. The first phase will be an HTML demo of the application used by OCI to demonstrate LeaveXpertTM benefits to the market. The demo part of the project determines the look and feel of the application and will happen quickly to meet product launch requirements. The second, more extensive aspect of the project, will involve in-depth web development as the actual application, LeaveXpertTM, is brought to life.

About OCI:
OCI (Options & Choices, Inc.) is a data integration and software services provider that helps companies make better-informed decisions about their employee benefit and risk management programs. OCI has designed and delivered integrated health and productivity solutions to Fortune 1000 companies since 1984. Today, OCI is alone in its unique combination of true data integration and technological acumen. OCI’s administrative structure allows for quick decisions, rapid senior management involvement when necessary, and low overhead costs.

About Fusionbox:
Fusionbox, a Denver web development agency, has helped companies create brand awareness, increase sales, and optimize operations through their websites since 2001. Fusionbox is a full-service Denver Internet marketing, web design, and web development company that is focused on increasing search engine visibility, and effectiveness of client sites to maximize ROI. For more information visit www.fusionbox.com.

Fusionbox is Hiring a Denver SEO

2010-06-17T18:59:00.000-06:00

If you are a Denver SEO who is searching for a job, please see our job description post here:

Denver SEO job description.

Denver Web Design Company, Fusionbox, Announces new clients

2010-06-06T20:04:00.000-06:00

Denver web design company, Fusionbox, is pleased to announce the following new clients:

OCI
Retul
Rocky Mountain Laser College
All Season Financial

We'll be providing web design, web development, and SEO to these local Denver companies.

Fusionbox Launches New Site

2010-05-14T20:29:00.001-06:00

Fusionbox, a Denver Software Development Company has recently launched a new web-based software project for Nordsted, a Denver-based corporate wellness company.

The software allows for scheduling of health screenings. All of the development was done using PHP5/MySQL.

Fusionbox Adds New Denver SEO Client

2010-04-16T17:43:00.002-06:00

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver has chosen Fusionbox, a Denver SEO Company, to design and develop a website to host their Rocky Mountain Raffle. This is the second year of the Raffle, the proceeds of which benefit the Colorado Boys & Girls Clubs. The raffle offers a million dollar Denver home or a million dollar cash prize to the grand prize winner. There are also incentive prizes for entering early or referring friends to enter the raffle.

Fusionbox will also develop a custom content management system that will allow the Boys & Girls Club to easily update their site. The site is designed to the best in usability standards to allow customers to find the information they need quickly and purchase tickets easily. Fusionbox will also be providing search engine marketing and social media marketing to help promote the event and spread awareness of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver.

Fusionbox is thrilled to be able provide our services to help the Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver.

About Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Denver:
BGCMD, which was founded in 1961, is a community-supported nonprofit organization that helps children and teens, especially those from low-income families, get the guidance, support and training they need to be successful now and in the future. During the critical after-school hours and summer months, when parents are working and many youth are left unsupervised, Club members have access to safe, youth-oriented facilities staffed by trained full and part-time staff members. A variety of programs are offered in the following areas: Education and Career Development; Leadership and Character Development; The Arts; Technology; Health and Life Skills; Sports, Fitness and Recreation. For more information, please visit www.bgcmd.org.

About Fusionbox:
Fusionbox, a Denver SEO company, has helped companies create brand awareness, increase sales, and optimize operations through their websites since 2001. Fusionbox is a full-service Denver Internet marketing, web design, and web development company that is focused on increasing search engine visibility, and effectiveness of client sites to maximize ROI. For more information visit www.fusionbox.com.

Geeky Goodness

2010-03-18T19:57:00.003-06:00

Fusionbox, the Denver software development company where I work has a new blog post about something that I can't understand. Maybe you will?

I prefer to stick with my Denver SEO posts.

New Fusionbox Client

2009-12-13T14:09:00.002-07:00

Fusionbox won a new Denver software development client, Nordsted. We're building a custom web application for this healthcare company. The software will be released in early January.

How to Get High Google Rank

2009-04-08T17:56:00.003-06:00

Fusionbox, the Denver web design company has a rule of thumb for getting high organic rank for our clients through search engine marketing. We believe that if it is good for the user, it's good for your search engine ranking.

Many Denver SEO companies make search engine marketing sound difficult and mysterious. It's not. Getting to the top of Google comes down to three key things: content, links and code.

Content - When you add useful, relevant content that includes your keywords, you are adding value to your user. Google will reward you by bringing you up in the search engines. Content is the most important aspect of SEO.

Links - The more relevant sites that are linking to you, the higher the rank. Inbound links from quality, relevant sites shows authority.

Code - The more standard and accessible your code is, the easier it is for Google to spider it. Create code that uses structural CSS and is W3C-compliant.

Fusionbox has worked with many Denver search engine marketing clients to help them increase their leads, sales, and donations by using the above best practices.

Fusionbox Focuses on Web Technology

2009-02-15T22:39:00.001-07:00

Alexander Groth, Fusionbox’s founder, is a programmer by trade. He founded Fusionbox because he knew there would be demand for a company with superior technical skills.

Fusionbox does not do logo development, radio, television, outdoor or any other type of advertising services, nor do we plan to. We do web and we love it. We are experts in usability, interactive design best practices, navigational best practices, internet marketing and especially at creating content management that is full of features and incredibly easy for non-technical people to use.

Over the years Fusionbox has seen many agencies in Colorado launch web departments that have failed. Knowing interactive really well takes years of experience and learning. Agencies struggle to recruit, hire and retain technical people because they don’t speak the language (geek speak). Agencies often bring us in as their de facto web department. We have long-term relationships with two ad agencies in California and have launched many sites for their clients.

Fusionbox Process

2009-02-12T18:22:00.004-07:00

Seth Godin's blog today talked about Algorithms. When strict Algorithms or formulas drive business, success is not always forthcoming. Ideas, methods, and products that warp, evolve, and expand win.

At Fusionbox, a Denver web design and agile software development agency where I work, our process has always been to define, design, measure and refine. Then, we complete the entire process over again. This means we embrace change, but only change when the data backs it up.

So, if we launched a search engine marketing campaign, based on what we thought was a good strategy, we would then look at analytics to see if the numbers backed up our thinking. If the numbers don't show success, we move in a different direction. If the numbers show success, we focus more resources on that strategy with slight variations to test success.

I'm Less Than 2%

2009-02-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

I took the 43 Things Personality Quiz and found out I'm a

Self-Knowing Extroverted Tree Hugger

Twitter Bandwagon

2009-02-10T21:56:00.003-07:00

Begin rant:

Six months ago, everyone wanted a Facebook page. Six months before that, everyone wanted a corporate blog. Now, everyone wants a Twitter account for their business. Before you take the time/energy=money, step back and ask yourself whether Twitter will bring you more sales, leads, brand awareness or relationships with your clients.

A blog is a great way to add keyword-heavy content. Who cares if anyone ever reads that content? A Facebook page is easy to set up and manage. Twitter is a commitment and does not have any search engine marketing benefit.

If done well, however, it's a great way to touch your clients and keep your brand top-of-mind. (Best be posting interesting, relevant information, though. Don't just talk about boring company news. Create some thought leadership.)

End rant.

This rant brought to you by Ivy Hastings, account director at Fusionbox, a Denver web design company.

Yay - We are Hiring

2009-02-09T22:11:00.004-07:00

Fusionbox is hiring again. We have two new search engine marketing clients in the fitness industries and we have a complex web development project starting in the next couple months including video uploads, ratings, comments, social networking, ecommerce, etc.

We have 40 hour work weeks so you can have your life back. Enjoy beer in the fridge, foos ball, and decent salaries. Fusionbox has some of the smartest web developers in all of Colorado who work on challenging object oriented projects. (Sick of content management yet?)

Our search engine marketing work is strategic. It's not just cranking out content and linkbuilding. Our guys are creating integrated solutions that include paid, organic, social media, and online pr.

So, if you are a Denver web development badass or a Denver internet marketing pro who thrives on results, hit us up.

More New Clients

2009-02-06T17:23:00.002-07:00

We've had quite the busy week with new clients at Fusionbox, a Denver web design and development shop.

We are working with one of the top television affiliates in the country to develop a new socially interactive site that will include user reviews, comments, and ratings. It's top secret until launch.

We developed some designs for one of our clients who is pitching to Target for a new product line with an instructional cooking video site. I'm a foodinista so this was so fun for me. She loved what our design team came up with.

We signed a deal with Fitness Together, one of the fastest growing franchisors in the company. We'll be working with them and Sukle to create a new search engine friendly site and they've signed up with us for a monthly search engine marketing package.

Finally, we ran the numbers for Morris Animal Foundation and there donations are up 48% over this time last year. Amazing!!

Fusionbox Revenues

2009-02-02T20:17:00.006-07:00

Fusionbox, the Denver web design company I work for, has grown its revenue by over 50% in the last year. How did we get all that business? By having top search engine placement. But, we also were very careful about the clients that we did partner with. And, we insisted on partnership.

When we are able to work closely with clients and they listen to our advice, we do very well.

New Stats for Morris Animal Foundation

2008-12-15T22:08:00.002-07:00

Today we reported the latest numbers for the Morris Animal Foundation. Since we launched the search engine friendly site, traffic has gone up 36%. That's just in one month since the launch. Here are other key stats:

Traffic nearly tripled (up 171%) compared to this time last year

Search Engine Visibility, Total Search Engine Traffic up 458.36% compared to this time last year (More traffic from this source indicates better organic rankings and higher ad click-through rates) and is up 51% compared to October

Google Adwords Grant CTR Performance up 80% compared to last month. We achieved significant improvements through optimization of both keywords and ad copy in individual campaigns and as a result we more than doubled the amount of traffic from this source

Contact Fusionbox, a Denver advertising agency, to see how we can drive sales and leads through search engine marketing and usability improvements.

Fusionbox Adds Staff

2008-12-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

Denver, Colorado, December 14, 2008 - Fusionbox, a Denver advertising agency, with offices in New Orleans, Louisiana is proud to announce two additions to our design and account management teams.

Fusionbox continues to grow and expands its services and client list. To manage new business, Fusionbox has added Lindsey Jamieson as to the team as an account manager. Lindsey comes from now defunct Denver advertising agency, McClain Finlon. “Lindsey came very highly recommended from our contacts at McClain Finlon,” said Ivy Hastings, Account Manager at Fusionbox. “Lindsey was one of the star project managers there and has the upbeat and caring personality we look for in Account Managers.” Lindsey holds a degree in Marketing and Advertising from Colorado State University.

More and more clients have been coming to Fusionbox as a full service advertising agency. “Our focus has always been interactive, but we are seeing clients use print advertising and direct mail to drive clients to the web for conversion,” said Ivy Hastings. “We've been really effective in using print and email for lead generation programs.” To add to our services, Fusionbox hired Casey McAllister to the New Orleans team. Casey is a longtime resident of New Orleans and has developed branding for New Orleans institutions like the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Casey is a natural addition to our team. He brings many years of branding and print design as well as web design to our team.

Fusionbox is thrilled to welcome Lindsey and Casey to our growing teams in Denver and New Orleans. Fusionbox team members are among the brightest in the advertising and interactive industry in Denver and New Orleans and is a key factor in Fusionbox's continuing growth and success in the Denver advertising, web design, web development and search engine marketing industry.

About Fusionbox: Fusionbox, a Denver advertising agency, has helped companies create brand awareness, increase sales, and optimize operations through their websites since 2001. Our work results in a direct and measurable financial impact on your business. We were founded and built by a business strategist and a programmer. That combination makes our work technically superior and gives us the expertise needed to solve your business challenges and increase revenues instead of just focusing on design. Fusionbox services include search engine marketing, web development, web design, and RIA development. We have offices in San Francisco, Denver and New Orleans. For more information, call 303-952-7490 or visit www.fusionbox.com.

CONTACT:
Ivy Hastings
Fusionbox
www.fusionbox.com
303-952-7490
ihastings (at) fusionbox.com

How We Increased Donations for a Non Profit in a Down Market

2008-12-08T17:45:00.006-07:00

In June of this year, Fusionbox took over the management of the Morris Animal Foundation's site from Morris' ad agency. The Morris Animal Foundation funds research to protect, treat and cure animal disease. The agency was not getting results from a pay-per-click campaign that they launched. (CTR was .003%) This was just not the agency's expertise so they referred Morris to us.

Since we have been managing the site, traffic has increased by a whopping 50% over last year and continues to go up by an average of 10% a month. Donations in October were 15% higher than they were last year despite news about the economy.

Here's how we did it:

Our brilliant pay-per-click expert took the list of keywords that the agency had created and cut it down dramatically. That list had hundreds of keyword that were related to obscure animal diseases that were getting no search volume-- no clicks ever. We cut them out. Further, the list of keywords did not include donation-related keywords like, "saving animals", "donate to save animals", etc. Our SEO developed several different campaigns around the key performance indicators that we established with the client. (All of the KPIs tied to the non-profits mission and vision.) One of the campaigns was used to test different donation-related keywords with different messaging. The click-through rate started going up and up. As we monitored the campaign, we gathered data on what worked and what did not and kept refining the messaging and the keyword list. As of October, the click-through rate is at an impressive 1.78%.

One of our goals were to increase awareness with a younger generation. In order to do this, Fusionbox created a social media marketing campaign. The campaign included a Facebook cause and page, a YouTube channel, and a presence on MySpace. Influential bloggers also played a role by posting about the Morris cause and targeted advertising on Facebook rounded out the effort.

We still had one problem, though: organic search engine placement. The Morris site was ranking better for some keywords but our organic rank was not what we wanted it to be. The site that the original developers created used a content management system to control the whole site. (Warning to anyone looking to redo a site: Do not create a site that is 100% controlled by a CMS unless you can change titles and tags for EVERY page.) Because of the way the site was created, it was impossible to write metadata for every page.

So, what did we do? We recreated the entire site to be search-engine friendly from the start. Our strategy included:

Rewriting content to include keywords
Developing seo-friendly code
Creating titles and tags for every page
Developing internal links of keywords
Renaming pages with keywords
Optimizing digital assets
Creating content management for sections of the site that would change
Refreshing the website design to be more modern
Fixing usability issues in the navigation
Creating more calls-to-action to donate
Simplified the donation process
Creating measurable conversion goals

One of the most important aspects of the site was to redo all of the donation forms to measure our efforts. Our Search Engine Marketing team can now determine what keywords are converting best in order to use up our entire Google Grant. Our process has always been to design, measure and refine and now we could walk the talk

The site has been live for about a couple of weeks now and so far, the response is very good. It will take a few months to see the full impact of redoing the site in terms of organic search position, but we're very confident that donations will continue to go up as the economy tanks-- not an easy task.

Lessons learned:
Create your focused keyword list with your goals top of mind
Don't hire an ad agency to do an interactive agency's job. SEO, usability, and web design is a specialized field.
Combine paid, organic and social media tactics for maximum results.
Always design, measure and refine.

Hit me up if you want to discuss how we might help you. All this stuff works for businesses too. Now is the time to shift ad dollars away from traditional advertising to interactive.

Fusionbox Launches New Site for Morris Animal Foundation

2008-12-08T16:15:00.001-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Morris Animal Foundation Works with Denver Interactive Agency to Launch Happy Healthy Cat Website

Denver, Colorado, December 02, 2008 - On behalf of the more than 80 million cats in America, Morris Animal Foundation (MAF) embarked on a mission to provide felines with their share of health care and research. The Healthy Happy Cat Campaign, launched Monday, Nov. 17, aims to help stop suffering and premature death in cats. MAF worked with their Denver web design agency, Fusionbox, to complete the new website.

There are more than 82 million cats in U.S. homes, making them America’s No. 1 pet. However, cats get less veterinary care and research than dogs. There’s also too few scientists studying feline health issues, according to the foundation.

The focus of the new campaign is to raise pet-owner awareness of feline health issues and increase funding for research and scientist training. To achieve this goal, MAF created a dedicated online resource with information on feline diseases and symptoms. Additional features include interactive blog entries and quizzes, MAF research success stories and resources for cat owners.

The foundation previously has funded projects in areas of feline health including diabetes, kidney and heart disease, cancer, urinary disorders, hyperthyroidism and infectious diseases.

Patricia Olson, DVM, Ph.D., MAF president and CEO, said that a tremendous amount of cat health research remains to be done. “Our goal is that the Happy Healthy Cat Campaign will give veterinarians the tools they need to dramatically improve the health and well-being of all cats,” she said in a statement.

Hill’s Pet Nutrition donated $1 million to the campaign in addition to a genetic database of research information to help scientists worldwide develop diagnostics and treatments for the most serious feline diseases.

About Morris Animal Foundation: Morris Animal Foundation, established in 1948, is dedicated to funding animal health research that protects, treats and cures companion animals, horses, and wildlife. MAF has been at the forefront of funding breakthrough research studies benefiting animals on all seven continents. MAF has its headquarters in Denver. Charity Navigator ranks MAF as a four-star charity, the highest rating. MAF is a BBB Wise Giving Alliance Charity Seal Holder. For more information, call 800.243.2345 or visit MorrisAnimalFoundation.org.

About Fusionbox: Fusionbox, a Denver web development company, has helped companies create brand awareness, increase sales, and optimize operations through their websites since 2001. Our work results in a direct and measurable financial impact on your business. We were founded and built by a business strategist and a programmer. That combination makes our work technically superior and gives us the expertise needed to solve your business challenges and increase revenues instead of just focusing on design. Fusionbox services include search engine marketing, Denver web development, web design, and RIA development. We have offices in San Francisco, Denver and New Orleans. For more information, call 303-952-7490 or visit the Fusionbox website at www.fusionbox.com.

CONTACT:
Ivy Hastings
Fusionbox
www.fusionbox.com
303-952-7490
ihastings (at) fusionbox.com

"I could give a rat's ass about design."

2008-11-18T18:23:00.006-07:00

I met with a new agency partner today to talk about redoing their site. It was the first time we had met with a Denver advertising agency that was focused on results and were willing to be a model for their own clients on what they could achieve with a website that works.

I gave my speech about how being at the top of the search engines was key to getting new business. After that, the site should include a solid lead generation program, be usable, and establish thought leadership. Design is last on the list of priorities. The site should have a decent design, but the focus of the site should not be on design , it should be on bringing in leads.

After my speech, the President of the company said, "I could give a rat's ass about design, as long as it brings results." That was the point when I knew we were entering into a great relationship with an agency that is run by executives who sincerely want to get results for their clients and not pat themselves on the back for their great design or creative work.

Google makes Life magazine photo archives available to the public online | Media | guardian.co.uk

2008-11-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

Google makes Life magazine photo archives available to the public online | Media | guardian.co.uk

Google is going to create an archive of all the Life magazine images online for the public. Just another reason why we love you, Google!

Fusionbox Adds Staff

2008-11-18T14:42:00.001-07:00

Fusionbox is thrilled to announce the addition of Lindsey Jamieson to our Denver Interactive Team. Lindsey was one of the rising stars at McClain Finlon and she brings project management and account management experience to the table. We love her because she is smart as a whip, super energetic, and wins people over instantly.

From Search Engine Low Down

2008-11-18T12:08:00.002-07:00

Couldn't have said it better myself...

From Jeremy at Search Engine Lowdown:

SEL: "Top 8 Most Important Things I’ve Learned About Interactive Marketing

It’s been my honor to follow Andy’s and Garrett’s lead for the last year. These were incredibly large shoes to fill, and moderating this blog is not something that I have taken lightly. My hope was that I’ve done it justice. And unless THK decides to generously give this blog to me, this will be my last post as I leave MSA today.

In the meanwhile, below are what I think are the most important tidbits of information that I’ve picked up about interactive marketing over the years. Some of them are pretty obvious, but then again:

1. Never forget that it is interactive. There is nothing more essential for conversion than a site that responds to the needs of the target market.

2. SEO never ends because it is a mindset, not a project.

3. The best way to have a search engine friendly site is to have clear and concise performance goals before the first line is coded. Your goals should affect the brand, the tone, the products, the pricing and the overall architecture. Retrofitting a site for SEO is almost always second best.

4. If you are not committing yourself to understanding and immersing yourself in your Web site’s analytics, you are in the wrong business.

5. PPC will never get less expensive. Success should be determined by overall conversion"

Dave Gannon :: Denver Freelance Web Designer + Print Designer + Information Architect Blog

2008-11-18T09:54:00.001-07:00

Thank you to my friend, Dave Gannon, who did some digging and found out who was behind Obama's design and site dev. Glad to hear Obama went with local talent.

(Dave's a great freelancer!)

Dave Gannon :: Denver Freelance Web Designer + Print Designer + Information Architect Blog: "Here's who built Barack Obama's website and Logo
Monday, November 3

I did some research - code digging, and found out some info on who was responsible for the amazing campaign design/logo/website of presidential hopeful Barack Obama.

It looks like Barack kept it local by hiring all Chicago, IL designers/programmers.
Sol Sender: Obama Logo Design
Simple Scott: Obama Website Design/Coding/Creative Direction
Walker Hamilton: Obama CSS Coding/Design"

YouTube to test video ID with Time Warner, Disney | Technology | Reuters

2008-11-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

YouTube to test video ID with Time Warner, Disney | Technology | Reuters

It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. One would think that media companies would want to capitalize on the reposting of their content.

Fusionbox Web Site Design and Development

2008-11-14T21:14:00.001-07:00

Blogging to Create Thought Leadership

With Web 2.0 and new media, many companies embraced blogging. But only a few are doing it right.

When executed correctly with a strategic and credible approach, blogging can build thought leadership online and foster dialog between customers and brands.

In this post, I'll discuss some of the ways you can use blogging to reach these business goals. But first, what are most companies doing wrong?

The biggest mistakes I see are corporate blogs created merely for the sake of doing so. "Other companies are blogging, so we should too" (even if we have nothing to say). And then there are the blogs that function as thinly veiled undercover marketing tools, fake blogs or "flogs."

In the blogosphere, there is nothing more important than credibility. What's more, social media communities will turn quickly upon disingenuous and self-serving attempts at blogging. Worse, they won't forgive and they won't forget, so don't shoot your blog in its digital foot.

So how should you blog if you want to create thought leadership? Corporate and executive blogs are communication platforms, and to get noticed and stand out writers need to share provocative ideas. Whether that means new perspectives on industry issues or discussing strategic concerns, thought leadership happens when you post original and relevant ideas.

Still, having great ideas is only half of the equation. With no attention or readers, your ideas will fall on deaf ears no matter how revolutionary they are.

In order to maximize your visibility and reach, start by researching the most popular bloggers in whatever vertical your going to be writing about. Then, comment on their posts and start a conversation. This helps you get your foot in the door and gain credibility by association. Chances are they'll link to your blog too, which is a big help from a what marketers call an "influencer."

As you write, make sure your posts utilize search-engine friendly titles, keywords, and links. A little SEO can go a long way propelling your blog to the top of the rankings, which lends further credibility to your words.

Add video and sound to your blog as well. Studies show that blogs with interactive media, especially video and podcasts, capture more returning visitors and offer a "stickier" user experience.

Don't overlook social media channels either. By adding social bookmarking buttons, readers can digg, del.i.cio.us, Facebook, etc. your content and expose it to their networks. Again, being connected to these key influencers is a proven and effective method to build thought leadership.

None of this will happen overnight, however. It may take months of blogging before you start to build readership and gain recognition. Monitoring your blog with web analytics will provide further insight into your efforts while showing you what content is the most popular with readers.

Remember that a corporate or executive blog must create dialog between management, customers, and readers. Companies and brands can leverage blogs successfully to share information that otherwise would remain internal. Blogs humanize companies by giving a face to an organization, and well-written content can create loyal brand supporters. Always enable comments on your blog to foster conversation.

Allocate the resources for your blog before you start writing. If it's a company blog, make sure you or whomever manages the blog has time to update it frequently, ideally posting new content every two or three days. Nothing looks worse than a blog that hasn't been updated in three months.

Creating thought leadership online is tricky business. As you can see, many companies are prone to the mistakes and mishaps that arise when their blogs are used for the wrong reasons. In the blogosphere, credibility is paramount.

Developing thought leadership is about gaining credibility with readers and establishing yourself as the authority on whatever topic you write about. Do this and you'll become one of the "influencers" I mentioned above. Key influencers are, by definition, thought leaders.

Fusionbox Web Site Design and Development

2008-11-14T21:08:00.002-07:00

Fusionbox Web Site Design and Development: "Search Marketing Boosts Brand Awareness"

Fusionbox is going on seven years as a Denver web design, Denver web development and Denver search engine marketing firm. When I tell people where I work, they almost always say they have heard of Fusionbox. This is true despite the fact that we have never done any traditional advertising. I'm convinced this is true because we dominate the organic rank for many of our keywords. And doing this creates brand awareness.

I spend quite a bit of time talking to clients about the tremendous return on investment that organic search engine marketing can bring. Most clients know that seo means getting to the top of Google, but not every client knows that a search engine marketing initiative can have the same benefits as a traditional PR campaign.

Here's a quote from Enquiro that illustrates this point:

"In a first-of-its-kind online study commissioned by Google, researchers discovered a significant correlation between companies in the top organic and sponsored ad placements and consumer brand affinity, brand recall and purchase intent." - Enquiro Research - www.enquiro.com.

Contact Fusionbox to find out how internet marketing can spread your brand awareness and effect your bottom line.

Denver Interactive Marketing News from Fusionbox – Colorado's Premier Interactive Agency

2008-11-14T21:07:00.001-07:00

Denver Interactive Marketing News from Fusionbox – Colorado's Premier Interactive Agency: "Fusionbox has just completed and launched a redesign of the Morris Animal Foundation website in order to make the code search engine friendly and to fix usability issues, and limitations of their current CMS.

Fusionbox has quite a bit of success with the Morris Animal Foundation site whose donations are up 23% over last year despite the economy because of our search engine marketing efforts.

We've also created a new site for Morris for their Happy Healthy Cat Campaign. We'll be launching a search engine marketing and social media marketing campaign to get the word out on this great cause."

Howto: Fresh Ubuntu Install Without Losing Your Current Settings

2008-11-12T15:58:00.000-07:00

Howto: Fresh Ubuntu Install Without Losing Your Current Settings

Card Sorting for Information Architecture

2008-11-06T16:41:00.002-07:00

Many of our clients ask us what method we use in determining the best information architecture for their users. One effective and easy way to accomplish this is by using a technique called card sorting. The beauty of this technique is that you don't need an Information Architect in order to do it and it's effective in understanding how users categorize information.

To perform a card sorting exercise, grab a bunch of index cards and write each section of the site on a card. For example, Home, About Us, Contact Us, Services, Careers, Products, etc. Make sure that you capture every section that you want to have on the site. This process often helps you discover what sections you need.

The next step is to put the cards in piles of subjects you think belong together. You might group together About Us, History, Executive Bios, and Board of Directors sections. Once you've done this, record what sections go in which pile. Just make a list of each section.

If your site is complicated and deep, and you are concerned about
usability, it makes sense to go through this process with different user types. Get volunteers from your company to create their own piles of content. This often reveals that users might expect a certain section to appear in a place that you did not previously think of. That's okay. In fact, that's good. You are not going to accommodate everyone's expectations, but you will start seeing patterns in the way different user types organize content. You may also discover that some content sections belong in two categories. You can also treat these kinds of expectations by using cross links.

Sometimes you will find that you have sections that don't seem to fit into any pile. Sometimes these oddball categories suggest an important user path. When that is the case, use a call to action directly on your homepage (above the fold, of course, or consistently across your site.

Your information architecture, while it should be intuitive, is not going to account for every way a user will get to the information they need. You need to consider many paths to the same information whether it's by using internal links, calls to action, or a search tool. The most important aspect of information architecture is to make sure that users can get to the information they want easily. You'll also want to direct them to the information that you want them to see. This is called key user paths. Whenever you can, make sure that your key user paths consist of three clicks or less.

This simple exercise can reveal patterns of user preferences that you may not have considered-- especially if you are really close to the project. Card sorting is easy to do, doesn't take much time, and reveals a lot about key user paths and expectations. Perform this exercise and no one will even notice your information architecture, or forbid the worst, have to learn how to move through you'll site. The benefits of this are better usability which, in the end, means more sales, leads, or user loyalty for you.

Ivy Hastings is a Project Manager at Fusionbox, a Denver Web Development company. Ivy is a graduate of UC Berkeley and a member of the Board of Directors for Arts Street, a Denver, Colorado non-profit that teaches kids job skills in the Arts.

Fusionbox Opens New Orleans Advertising Agency

2008-11-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

October 23, 2008 – New Orleans, Louisiana – Following seven years of successful growth in Colorado, Fusionbox, a leading Denver interactive agency specializing in web design, development, and search engine optimization (SEO), announced the opening of a new office in New Orleans, Louisiana.

As a leading Denver and New Orleans interactive agency with clients from across the nation, Louisiana was an ideal place for Fusionbox to expand. The company will be able to interact personally with local clients while offering expert SEO and web development services.

Fusionbox offers the New Orleans business community an agency that caters to the interactive needs of evolving companies. Strategic, usable web design and search engine marketing are complemented with an emphasis on web analytics.

With a growing client base throughout Louisiana, especially within the oil and gas industry, Fusionbox recognized the opportunity to expand while maintaining the focus on client service the company was built upon. Fusionbox will remain committed to search engine friendly web design, open source web development, and results-proven search engine marketing services.

Fusionbox President Alexander Groth said “New Orleans is seeing a renaissance after the devastation of Katrina. The city seems focused on the future, and we’re very excited to be here now during these important first steps of technological growth.”

The new Fusionbox office will be located in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter. With this expansion, Fusionbox also hopes to help the New Orleans community thrive in its continuing recovery from Katrina. Fusionbox will aid in this recovery by bringing jobs to the city and offering assistance through community service and involvement like the company does in Colorado with non-profit organizations like Arts Street.

To learn more about our move to New Orleans, contact Ivy Hastings at 504.307.3447

Interactive Agencies are Getting all the New Business

2008-11-05T19:28:00.001-07:00

Interactive agencies in Denver and elsewhere are taking business from traditional agencies because those they continue to struggle with their interactive services. We see it all the time. Many agencies are focused solely on design and don’t consider usability, search engine marketing or even conversion rates.

Case in point. We helped a Denver advertising agency cut up and program their site. I asked them what their goals were as they related to the new website design. They said they wanted to use the site as a lead generation tool. This was ironic since they had placed the “Contact Us” link at the very bottom left of the site in tiny font where no one would see it because they did not like “how it looked” in the top navigation.

Information about Fusionbox

2008-10-14T22:35:00.001-06:00

Here's some info on Fusionbox that not everyone knows:

Fusionbox is a Denver interactive agency with offices in Denver, Colorado and New Orleans, Louisiana. We've helped companies create brand awareness, increase sales, and optimize operations through their websites since 2001. Our work results in a direct and measurable financial impact on your business. We are unlike many interactive agencies, because we were founded by a programmer and a business strategist, not a designer. That combination makes our work technically superior and gives us the expertise needed to solve your business challenges and increase revenues. Our list of achievements is long. Here are a couple of highlights from recent years:

- Fusionbox had been ranked as one of the top five fastest -growing small companies in Colorado by the Denver Business Journal two years in a row.
- Fusionbox was ranked as one of the top national interactive agencies by BtoB Magazine.
- Fusionbox has earned numerous local and national awards for its work.
- Fusionbox has been recognized as one of the top Denver interactive agencies by the Denver Business Journal for three years in a row.

Fusionbox is a profitable, debt-free, private organization with over seven years of operation in Denver and New Orleans. Fusionbox was initially incorporated in 2001 and has enjoyed persistent and stable growth since its inception. We employ a dedicated team whom we have hand-picked from among the top talent in the industry.

In addition to working with clients, we firmly believe in giving back to the community. Fusionbox works actively to support Arts Street--a Denver non-profit that helps young people pursue creative careers. Arts Street mostly employs at-risk youth who are talented but may not learn well in a traditional environment. The organization matches youth up with programs where they can cultivate their creative and job skills in an encouraging and safe environment. Arts Street graduates go on to have successful careers in many industries. Arts Streets provides Fusionbox with a steady stream of bright young interns interested in web design and development, many of whom go on to have successful careers in the industry. Ivy Hastings sits on the Board of Directors of this organization.

The Future of Copywriting

2008-10-14T22:32:00.000-06:00

It's no secret that the art of copywriting is changing with the evolution of the web. Fueled by a fast-paced desire to digest information, users no longer read, they scan. Many of the old copywriting "rules" no longer make sense in an online atmosphere.

Changing trends are the future of online copywriting. So how can you make sure users read your content instead of ignoring it? Follow these suggestions to increase user engagement and "stickiness."

- Know your audience. The better you understand your target audience, the better you can connect with user motivations. You must emphasize unique advantages about whatever you're offering and convey this message free of fluff.

- Readers will stop reading when they encounter marketing speak, so don't give them a reason to leave. There's a 5 second rule (that's quickly becoming 3 seconds) in which a user must find what they want. If they don't, they'll abandon the page and add to your "bounce rate." Highlight benefits immediately and address a pain point and it's solution.

- Adopt a more conversational tone with less formality. As online advertising shifts to more alternative media, connecting with readers grows more difficult, especially younger audiences. This demographic values honesty and lacks patience, so a conversational tone is much more effective. Rarely are chances in this world given twice. In an online atmosphere, once you lose the trust of a reader, you can't get it back. Instead, offer the promise of action and cater to Web 2.0 readers' desire for immediate results.

- This translates to formatting as well. Don't write in thick verbose paragraphs. Instead, utilize short sentences and bullet points. Always leave a healthy amount of negative space so you don't overwhelm readers with text.

- Test and test some more. Multivariate testing can reveal what type of copy readers respond best to. A quick test can point you in the right direction and boost your site's conversion rate. Use web site analytics to look at the bounce rate and time on site/page before and after reformatting.

Follow these copywriting guidelines and your words will get noticed in a Web 2.0 atmosphere.

contributed by Nick Yorchak

My Total Pet Peeve

2008-08-06T17:19:00.003-06:00

Most of my co-workers know that I'm not a big proponent of email marketing. Organic SEO just shows such a higher ROI. It is an on-demand world we live in, after all. But, if you are going to send me email blast spam, at least make it effective. If I open this message in Outlook, it's all blocked images. Don't tell me that email marketers don't know about Outlook blocking images. Please, guys, include just a little text to grab the users attention.

Fusionbox Features new Video Production Partner

2008-03-10T21:35:00.001-06:00

Search Engine Marketing Builds Brand Awareness

2008-02-22T12:35:00.001-07:00

Fusionbox is going on seven years as a Denver web design, web development and search engine marketing firm. When I tell people where I work, they almost always say they have heard of Fusionbox. This is true despite the fact that we have never done any traditional advertising. I'm convinced this is true because we dominate the organic rank for many of our keywords. And doing this creates brand awareness.

I spend quite a bit of time talking to clients about the tremendous return on investment that organic search engine marketing can bring. Most clients know that seo means getting to the top of Google, but not every client knows that a search engine marketing initiative can have the same benefits as a solid PR campaign.

So, how do we go about elevating a brand? We create online buzz. First, we make sure that our clients show up in the top organic ranking in Google. Take Adolfson & Peterson, a national construction company, for example. They aren't as big as some of their competitors, but they want to be, so we make sure that when users search for national construction companies, they show up with the big players. Once a potential client clicks through, they position themselves as being just as experienced as their competitors who might be bigger.

Next, we'll create what we call Thought Leadership. Adolfson & Peterson is a leader in green construction. Everyone at the company is aware of this, but most potential clients are not. We change perception by essentially launching an online PR campaign around this subject. We'll write and distribute content about Green building to blogs, industry publications, groups, and even social media outlets. Now, we have developed online buzz around one of A&P's key value propositions.

Then, we'll make sure that A&P is on all the directories, lists, and sites that cover the green building industry. We're not just building inbound links as most of our competitors are. Sure, we are helping positioning, but we are also creating brand awareness and controlling perception at the same time.

“In a first-of-its-kind online study commissioned by Google, researchers discovered a significant correlation between companies in the top organic and sponsored ad placements and consumer brand affinity, brand recall and purchase intent. “ - Enquiro Research – www.enquiro.com.

Contact Fusionbox to find out how internet marketing can effect your bottom line.

What is Digital PR?

2008-02-12T16:22:00.000-07:00

“In a first-of-its-kind online study commissioned by Google , researchers discovered a significant correlation between companies in the top organic and sponsored ad placements and consumer brand affinity, brand recall and purchase intent. “ - Enquiro Research – www.enquiro.com

Online PR allows brands to:

Control their online message by engaging in online conversations
Build brand awareness by coming up higher in more and varied searches
Online PR allows companies to position themselves as Thought Leaders in designated areas. This increases brand awareness, traffic, awareness, and loyalty

The list of benefits goes on and on. Here are some of the tactics we employ:

Creating keyword-heavy content to attract searches of all different types
Developing links to the site from authority sites
Getting on directories, lists, blogs, finance discussions and talking about Superior
Creating and submitting press releases to online press distributors
Developing content and getting published on online industry sites

For more information on social media and online PR, visit our Denver Internet Marketing site at: http://seo.fusionbox.com.

Fusionbox Launches SEO Site

2007-12-31T21:04:00.000-07:00

Since we are getting so much Internet Marketing business, we launched a site to share some of the success stories and resources about our services. Our Denver Internet Marketing clients have told me how valuable this information is because it describes search engine marketing techniques in laymen's terms.

Take a look at our SEO website and let us know what you think.

Fire Your SEO

2007-07-27T20:37:00.000-06:00

Next month I'm teaching a seminar on search engine marketing at the Chamber of Commerce and how small businesses can take advantage of many free tools (including Blogger) to help boost their search engine ranking.

Many SEOs make search engine marketing seem technical, difficult, and ever-changing. It's really not so. It takes time, and some knowhow, but anyone can do at least part of it. You might not be able to optimize your code, but you can effect your ranking.

If you are interested in this Denver search engine marketing seminar, you can sign up here.

There Really Is a Social Network for Everyone

2007-06-12T10:56:00.000-06:00

Today, while getting my daily dose of online gossip, I saw an ad for a dating site for pot smokers. Yes, www.potpartner.com. I'm impressed that pot smokers actually motivated to get this site up with no less than 5 grammatical mistakes on the homepage and just a few broken links.

Yeah mannnn- websites are cool… huh huh.

Here are Grayson's suggestions for other dating sites:

OCDate.com
Tagline: Never get tired of the same old thing?

LatterDate.com (for Mormons)
Tagline: Find the loves of your life.

ShortDate.com (for midgets)
Tagline: See eye-to-eye.

BlindDate.com
Tagline: :. .. . ::: .

UrbanDate.com
Tagline: Yo baby needs her a daddy.

HillyBillyDate.com
Tagline: Find you a woman.

That last one would have to be dial-up, though.

I will never...

2007-06-07T20:04:00.000-06:00

Wear a dress over pants

Eat a tempeh burger

Get my nails done

Wear Crocs

Drink Zima

At work, I will never cease to be amazed by the number of Denver SEO companies who don't know what they are doing.

I'm really good at:

2007-05-29T20:56:00.000-06:00

Losing my keys
Getting food on my shirt
Breaking glasses when I wash them
Dropping my cell phone
Forgetting to get gas
Being late for appointments

It's a wonder how I manage my job at Fusionbox, a Denver web design company.

What are you good at?

Usability Nightmares

2007-05-24T16:33:00.000-06:00

Incredible how many of the sites that are most popular and that we use everyday are usability nightmares. Here are the top sites that I wish our Denver web design firm, Fusionbox, could get a hold of and redo:

MySpace - seriously horrible ColdFusion crapfest
Amazon - could they make it any harder to actually buy something?
eBay - you'd think with their millions of dollars, they'd redesign.
Zappos - I'm a shoe addict, but I shudder every time I go to Zappos. The design is just so, so 1994.
Zaadz - I love Zaadz. But how about some bigger font for those aging hippies?

Who is on your list?

Denver Web Design

2007-05-23T22:54:00.000-06:00

Working for a Denver Web Design company is so rewarding. I get the chance to share my knowledge with marketing people in all kinds of industries, from Construction to Software to Restaurants and beyond. And I get to learn about their companies' internet marketing challenges. Sometimes when I meet with potential clients, they want to know if Fusionbox has experience in their vertical. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don't; it doesn't matter either way. The principals of user centered design, usability, and search engine friendliness are the same across all kinds of businesses.

If you agree with our design sensibility (not everyone does), and our skill sets match your needs, we can create an effective web presence or service for you. Sometimes we aren't a good fit for a client and we tell them so and try to match them with a company that will fill their particular needs. There are quite a few companies out there doing good work. If you are looking for clean, search engine-friendly design, and solid open source software solutions, we're a good fit for you.

Subaru Drivers

2007-05-17T18:34:00.001-06:00

Here's another list. The worst drivers:

Subaru Drivers (consistently slow and defensive)
Saab (something an asshole buys)
Audi (self-absorbed)

Seriously, the next time you are behind a Subaru pay attention to their driving and you'll see why I avoid driving behind them at all costs.

Stealing Content

2007-05-17T18:23:00.001-06:00

For some reason today I decided to Google our website content to see if anyone had scraped or used our content. Well, it turns out that one of our Denver Web Design competitors has used our exact content from our services section for their service section. This competitor is even in Colorado. If they had edited our content just the littlest bit, I never would have known. I guess they were lazy and didn't think they would ever be found out. So now they'll be receiving a nice little letter from our attorney. Do yourself a favor and check your own content.

TailRank

2007-05-10T14:53:00.000-06:00

Does anyone use TailRank? I don't understand how they could possibly compete with Digg.

I posted a link to our offer for a free Denver SEO review. It'll be interesting to see if we get any traffic from it.

The List

2007-05-07T17:53:00.000-06:00

Our Denver web development team went out for lunch on Friday. The topic of discussion was your most hated actors and actresses. We agreed on most of the members on the list, though Jen has a top three who she said she would take out if she had a deadly illness and had to die anyway.

Here they are in no order of most hated:

Jamie Lee Curtis
Whoopi Goldberg
Cameron Diaz
Gary Busey
Robin Williams (what happened to him anyway?)
John Travolta (John Revolting)
Joaquin Phoenix (in everything except Walk the Line)
Kirsten Dunst
Tom Cruise (of course)
Jude Law (needs to go away)

Jen's list was Gary Busey, Nick Nolte, and shoot I can't remember.

Who is on your list?

Organic Postioning Takes Work

2007-04-25T21:02:00.000-06:00

We'ver been really busy at the Denver web design firm Fusionbox that I work for. I haven't been doing much search engine work and it shows. We've gone down from position 5 on organic search engine results to 8 or 10 in the last couple of weeks.

I always tell clients that search engine marketing takes work and maintenance. Now, I just need to follow my own advice. The Denver search engine marketing landscape is a competitive one. In order to stay at the top of our game, we need to work at not only adding content to our site, but by following the other techniques that we teach our own clients.

Flash Intros

2007-04-06T21:41:00.000-06:00

Flash Intros

At a seminar that I gave last winter, I told a group of marketing people that if they were considering Flash Intros that they should seriously reconsider this choice. About half of the group had "uh oh" looks on their faces. They had all planned Flash Intros and had no idea why these intros will kill traffic to your site.

Flash intros are the bane of users. Users hate waiting for them to load and about 90% of users skip them anyway. Whenever I see a Flash Intro, I bail immediately. This means you are losing site traffic right away. We always tell our clients not to use them because, besides being usability nightmares, they usually cost quite a bit and don't add any value to your site.

Perhaps the only audience who actually watches these things are marketing people. That's because they are marketing people. Your users aren't marketing people and your Flash Intro is not going to convince them to buy your products or services.

Do your bottom line and your users a favor and don't add a Flash Intro to your site.

Fusionbox is a Denver web development company.

Denver Internet Marketing

2007-04-04T16:49:00.000-06:00

The rules for internet marketing have changed drastically over the past couple of years. Internet marketing is no longer just optimization-- it's really more Public Relations than anything. It takes time to do, but pays off over and over again, especially now that users are finding companies not just through search engines, but through social media outlets, press releases, articles, and forums.

This is good news for our clients because we can teach them how to use these tools themselves. Clients are no longer tied to an SEO for life.

The best rule of thumb for increasing your organic search engine ranking is adding value to your users. All of your efforts should work toward this goal. This means adding helpful, relevant content, putting resources out on the web, and establishing yourself as an expert in your field.

To learn more about Internet Marketing, give us a call at 720-956-1083.

Writing for the Web

2007-03-29T12:13:00.000-06:00

Many of our clients want to write their own copy which is fine if they know that writing for the web is much different from writing a brochure, sales letter, or print ad.

Here are the basics to look for when writing for the web:

Rule #1 - Users don't read, they scan.

Use:
Bolded Items
Short Sentences
Bulleted Lists
Short Paragraphs
Use Headings and Subheadings

Rule #2 - The longer the line of text is horizontally on the page, the harder it is to read and comprehend.

Use:
Narrow column widths (there is a reason newspapers are they way they are
Left aligned text (never right or center align it)

Rule #3 - The good stuff should be above the fold.

Use:
Calls-to-action and offers above the fold
Linked keywords above the fold

Rule #4 - Your content makes or breaks your search engine ranking.

Use:
Keywords and phrases in title, tags, headers
Keywords as far up the page as possible
Often, but not too often
As internal links

Rule #5 - Less is more except when it comes to search engines

Use:
Less than 100 words per page, if possible
Case Studies, Articles, Blogs to add content that everyone may not read but that is important for search engines

Follow these rules and you'll have happy users and high search engine ranking.

Ivy Hastings is a Project Manager at Fusionbox, a Denver Internet Marketing and Web Design Company.

Fusionbox is offering a complimentary review of your site's search engine marketing friendliness.

Contact us to sign up.

Exito Travel Case Study

2007-03-27T16:45:00.000-06:00

We recently were contacted by Exito Travel, a company based in Ft. Collins, Colorado that provides travel deals for passengers going to South and Central America. They needed our expertise in design, usability and search engine optimization. Their current site needed some help in these three areas. The goals for the project were to:

• Redesign with a cleaner, more modern look and feel that appeals to their target audience. Use design to drive user actions like performing a flight search, or calling Exito.
• Increase leads by improving the lead generating forms.
• Create a central navigational system that considers key user paths.
• Rewrite the code in order to increase organic search engine ranking.

All of these goals supported increasing site traffic, page views, time spent on the site, and of course leads and bookings.

Here's what we did:

Design
When redesigning a site, Fusionbox always considers the following rules:

• What is the first thing you want a user to do when on your site? How will the design support this critical user action?
• What is the second thing you want a user to do on your site? What are the key user paths and how are we going to make them as efficient and readily available as possible?
• How will we tackle the 30 Second Rule? (Showing users who you are, what you do, and what the user should do next within 30 seconds.)
• How are we going to most effectively use prime real estate - the area of the site above the fold in a user's browser?
• What design look and feel supports the brand and appeals to the target audience?

For Exito Travel, the first thing they wanted users to do was pick up the phone and call them. The second action was to do a flight search. With these key actions in mind, we made the phone number much more visible and placed the flight search tool at the top right of the page where users expect to perform an action (this is according to eyetracking studies).

We tackled the 30 second rule simply by keeping the logo at the top left of the page where the eye goes first, and creating calls-to-action that underscore what Exito does and what the user should do. For example: Book a Flight, Search Group Flights, and Search Flights to Mexico. This way users knew exactly who Exito was, and what option they should use that fit their needs.

In the previous design, important calls-to-action were placed below the fold in 1024x768 meaning most users would completely miss them. This most certainly meant lost leads. We made the most of the real estate above the fold by moving up these important calls-to-action that support key user paths.

The current design had some great elements, and then some that weren't necessarily working toward an end goal. We redesigned to appeal to a young target audience (20-40) by using modern colors, rounded, contemporary, 2.0 looking shapes, and removing stock illustrations.

Here’s the old site:

Here’s the new site:

Usability
Users complained of "getting lost" and not knowing how to get back. To improve usability, we created a central top navigational system that was missing from the previous site so users could navigate around to different sections without getting lost. We also added a breadcrumb trail to help users orient themselves on the site. We developed a left nav that was very clear and also managed to use keywords, i.e., Flights to Mexico, Belize Tours, etc.

We put the all important Booking Tool on every page in the same place so users could take advantage of booking from anywhere on the site. This way, users could be reading about a Tour in Guatemala, and then book that tour immediately on the same page. This increased bookings dramatically.

Before the redesign, the lead generation forms were lengthy and bulking. We recreated the forms and eliminated unnecessary information from the tools. Fields like Mr./Ms./Mrs, Fax Number and auto filling information whenever possible. We also presented the information in the form in steps rather than one long form that is intimidating to users.

Search Engine Improvements
The most dramatic success of redesigning Exito Travel’s site was the boost in site traffic by 50%. This is due to the search improvements we made to the existing code. By optimizing and streamlining the code, Exito Travel’s organic search engine results improved dramatically. We did not launch any other internet marketing strategies, and did not change the content in any way, but Exito still increased unique page views by half.

Fusionbox is a Denver Internet Marketing and web design company.

Exito Travel Traffic Increases by 50%

2007-03-22T17:34:00.000-06:00

We've recently finished a project at Fusionbox where we redesigned and redeveloped a travel web site for Exito Travel.

The goals of the project were to:

Improve website design look and feel
Improve usabilityIncrease organic search engine ranking

All of these goals support the end goal of getting more traffic and conversions. The project has been an overwhelming success.

Here's the old site: old.exitotravel.com

And the new one: www.exitotravel.com

Right away you can see the difference in design. The site is more modern looking, less complicated and contains clear content areas. The code is clean and search engine friendly. These changes have resulted in 50% more traffic for Exito.

Increase Ecommerce Conversions

2007-03-15T14:39:00.000-06:00

Research says that 59% of ecommerce users abandon the process before it is complete (Clickz.com). The reasons why users abandon the process are:

Not revealing pricing up front - Users want to know exactly what they are in for. You need to be up front about product pricing and, shipping and handling costs. Don’t try to trick users about pricing. Ever.

Poor usability – The process needs to be seamless, fast, and intuitive. Make buttons big and obvious. Error handling should make it very easy for users to go back and fix mistakes.

Asking for too much information – Fields like Mr./Miss/Mrs., Title, Company, Fax, Home Phone and Business Phone are not particularly valuable to you, and can really frustrate a user. Eliminate them and make the process shorter. Auto fill any information that you can. Have the country field default to US. Auto fill the shipping address.

Not presenting the process in steps –users respond to processes that are presented in steps. They also want to know where they are in the process and how much they have left to complete. We’ll segment the checkout process.

Forcing users to register in order to buy – Buying should be as easy as possible. Users have a block when it comes to registering. These are busy people. We need to let them get in, buy, and get out.

Presenting outside links or navigation –How often have you clicked on an outside link and then come back to find all the information that you have just added missing? Let’s keep the users focused on checking out.

Follow these best practices and you will increase your conversions dramatically. By giving your customers a pleasant buying experience, you will turn them into lifelong advocates of your products and service.

Ivy Hastings is a Project Manager at Fusionbox a Denver website design company.

When AdSense Goes Wrong!

2007-03-14T18:00:00.000-06:00

Dave Gannon, a Denver freelance designer, noticed that we had a competitor listed on one of the AdSense ads. The fact that this competitor is advertising with AdSense pretty much shows that they don't know squat about getting organic results. So, as far as competition, I'm really not worried. They are an ad agency and every ad agency I know, offers web design and then just outsources it and marks the work up by 50% and is more concerned with design and flash than usability, web best practices, etc. Too bad their poor clients don't know that too!

Check out his blog entry here: Dave Gannon :: Denver Freelance Web and Print Designer Blog

Jabbits Launches

2007-03-09T10:06:00.000-07:00

This is a development project that we did at Fusionbox. We did the design, the Flash video, and an engine that connects to your web cam automatically to record questions and answers.

Soap Opera Names

2007-02-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

Today someone told me that I have a Soap Opera name. Hmm. I'm not a soap opera actress, though my life does resemble a soap opera from time to time. I'm just a lowly project manager at a Denver web design company.

Here is a list of what I think are good soap opera names. Please add yours to the list.

Male:
Roman
Stone
Clint
Hank
Storm
Forrest
Landon
Sterling
Palmer
Dr. Rick Slater
Nash
Beau
Alan-Michael (This is a real character on Guiding Light played by my longtime friend, Michael Dempsey. Isn't he cute?)

Female
Chrystal
Bianca
Caitlin
Brooke
Sage
Victoria
Starr

Planning a Web Site Design

2007-02-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

The Denver web design company I work for, Fusionbox, almost always has clients who call with rush jobs. Sometimes we miss out on jobs because we insist that the project cannot be done correctly within a certain timeline. What we have found is you can do it quickly, or you can do it right.

Seventy-five percent of a successful project is planning. That means beginning with measurable goals and objectives. Your goals and objectives should always tie back into your company's mission. So, if your company's mission is to be the market leader in widgets, your site's purpose should be to do that. It's also important to set measurable goals. This will prove that investing in your web site, pays off. Plus, it'll make you look good to your boss.

Once the goals are set, your planning is still far from done. You'll want to examine your target audience or audiences and get in their heads. This means finding out who they are and why they are on your site. Then, you'll need to make sure you are fulfilling their needs. Identify what actions each target audience will take on the site. If it's someone purchasing a widget, make widgets easily available from the homepage. Research show that people who buy on the web want to see products right away and they want to see images and prices. Put your widgets on your homepage with a small image, title, description, price (users hate to drill down to get pricing), and a "Buy Now" link.

The next step is to determine the specifications of your functionality. It sounds scary, but it's not. Most developers can work with a list of statements like, "I want a user to be able to rate products on a scale of one through five." Write down everything you want the site to do and even include what you might want it to do. For example, "An adminstrator should be able to log into a content management area and add a press release." You get the idea. Along with your specs, you'll need to include a database discovery. This means determining all the possible fields for everything that might be stored and served in a database. For example, a product might have an image, a title, a description, a price, a product number, etc.

Now that you know who your target audience is and you have identified key user paths and you know what the site should do, it's time to start creating your information architecture. This determines the flow of the site. Build the flow of the site to best accomodate those key user paths. These should give the user what he or she is looking for in three clicks or less.

After you have determined your information architecture, it's time to create wireframes. Wireframes are like a blueprint of your web site. You'll want to identify all of the content that will be represented on each page including navigation, logos, images, and content. This is a very important step because it takes all the guess work out for the designer, and you can do a usability gut check on your key user paths and the flow of the site itself. You can even build a test site based on the wireframes and run a usability test.

The next step is to get your content together. Start with a content strategy. What are you trying to accomplish with your content? Don't forget to include a search engine strategy that defines what your key words are and how you will leverage them in your content. Is all of your content working toward your goals and objectives? Too often I see meaningless stock images like the ubiquitous handshake. Web users are jaded amd images like these just distract the user from their mission. Do yourself and your users a favor and leave it out. Instead, use images that are meaningful and I'm not talking about the butterfly that signifies growth.

Only once all of the above steps are taken should you even start to think about design. So many web design companies lead with design. Then the client ends up with a site that may be gorgeous, but doesn't support goals and objectives. It is also of the utmost importance to design around content rather than creating a design and then stuffing the content into it. Your design should support your brand and serve as the wrapping paper to the gift. And again, make sure the design supports those key user paths; the first question your web designer should ask you is, "What's the first thing you want users to do when they come to your site. Don't forget to integrate the look and feel of your site with your offline materials-- if you don't, you'll just end up diluting your brand and your marketing efforts.

Your planning is still not done. The last bit is to plan the actual work--who is going to do what when. Who needs to give approval for what when. Throw in some milestones, stakeholders, and deliverables and you're done. In other words create a project plan. And by all means, plan the launch of the site. Make it deliberate, not an incomplete, rushed event because someone has it in their head that this just must be done before the end of the year, or else Create some buzz and PR for the launch of your new gorgeous and effective web site. Remember, you only have one chance to gain or lose users; if a new user comes to the site and does not see what their looking for, they're gone, forever, and you've just lost a possible new lifetime customer.

By planning, and doing it right instead of quickly, you'll have an end result that is not only effective but also matches everyone's expectations-- your boss, your sales team, your marketing people, and most importantly your users and your bottom line.

Fusionbox is #1

2007-02-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Hooray! Fusionbox has achieved number one ranking on Google for the keywords "Denver web design and development". At least for now!! How cool is that?

We've been spending about two hours a week for the last three months improving our organic listings. We weren't even in the top 1,000 results three months ago, and now we are on the first page of Google.

I'm not going to tell you how we did it. Let's just say we know what it takes to get there. One of the techniques is not even being used by Denver internet marketing companies. And, the best part is, it's not that hard to implement.

If you need help with your search engine results, contact us.

Creating Targeted Landing Pages

2007-02-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

Marketers often make the classic mistake of launching a pay-per-click campaign and having users land on a page that is not targeted towards that PPC ad.

Take this example. A Denver oil and gas company, which will remain anonymous, has a suite of products including land management, an ERP System, and Accounting Software. They launched several targeted PPC campaigns (good idea) but had each click-through land on their homepage (bad idea). The homepage unfortunately does a miserable job of describing their various services. So, what they found was users would click on the ad, go to the homepage, and then bail.

It's so important that you have users land on a page that is clearly tied to the contents of your ad. You'll also need to include a strong call-to-action that is directly related to the ad. What good is it if a potential client comes to your site and then fails to become a lead.

By giving users what they are looking for and what they expect, you'll ensure that you maximize your PPC spending dollar.

Here's more information on our Denver web design company, Fusionbox. With this, and other tactics, we can help you make the most of your PPC budget.

Ten Ways to Instantly Improve Your Usability

2007-02-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

Whether it’s an e-commerce site, an online tool, or just your company’s corporate sites--smart marketers know that web site usability is key to the success of any online presence. What a lot of marketers don’t know is the basic principles of web usability and how to apply those rules to their own online presence. Here are ten very easy ways to make an immediate impact on the usability of your site:

1. Home – Users want a home and they expect to see a link to home in the same place: the top left-hand part of your site. Don’t try to be creative and place your link on the right hand side, or at the bottom of a left navigation, or even worse, leave it off your navigation completely. You’ll just end up frustrating your users.

2. Links – Make links look like links. Designers hate the ugly blue, underlined text that indicates a hyperlink, but users love it. The standard blue, underlined text shows users implicitly that the content is a link. Now you don’t have to use that blue, underlined text, but do make sure your links look like links. You’ll want to also make sure that a visited link changes color.

3. Text Size – Another Designer pet peeve is text size. Designers tend to use the smallest size they can get away with. If users can’t read your text, they’ll bail out. Make sure your text size is 11pt. or above. One of the great trends that stemmed from Web 2.0 is the use of really large text, buttons, and features.

4. Navigation – Your navigation is central to the usability of your site. Your navigation should be placed on the top of the page under your logo, or down the left side. Never place your navigation on the right hand side, or worse change the location of your navigation Users are used to seeing navigation in the same place. If you make them hunt for it, they’ll bail and you’ll lose out on that sale, lead, or client.

5. Orientation – If your site is deep, meaning it has a lot of pages and many levels of navigation make sure that users know where they are in the site, and how to get back. A great way to accomplish this is by adding a breadcrumb trail. This basically shows users their click path. For example, a user who is shopping for skirts might see: Home > Women’s > Clothing > Skirts. Each of these categories should be a link that takes the user back to that category.

6. Content – Though content is usually not mentioned as an aspect of usability, it is so important to use web best standards for your written content. In this case, less is always more. Your site is NOT an online brochure. Web users don’t read, they scan. Use short, active sentences and calls to action that are engaging. You can do this with bold, bullets, buttons, and call-outs.

7. Placement – Put features where users expect to see them. Your logo goes on the top left and is a link to the homepage. Search belongs at the top right hand side. Contact Us should be the last section in your navigation. Login should be at the top left. Eye tracking studies show that users start at the top right, scan back and forth from left down the page, and end up at the top right expecting to complete an action.

8. The 30 Second Rule – The 30 Second Rule states that users should know who you are, what you do, and what they should do next on your site. Do a gut check and make sure you pass. Ask anyone who is not familiar with your site or business to perform this test.

9. Search – Fifty percent of users prefer to use a search tool rather than drill down through your navigation. Give your users search so they can find what they are looking for fast.

10. Speed – Users hate nothing more than waiting. Do you think they really care about the fancy Flash effects your designer talked you into? Every last study also says that Flash-based intros are useless. So, if you’re considering spending good money on a fancy intro, think again.

At least 8 out of ten websites are breaking at least one of these rules if not all of them. Do your users a favor and fix these issues right away; your bottom line will thank you for it.

Ivy Hastings is an Internet Marketing Expert at Denver web design company, Fusionbox.

Web 2.0 Finance Tracker

2007-02-13T22:39:00.000-07:00

I found an amazing web 2.0 tool today, wesabe.com. It combines finances and social networking to help people take control of their finances. I found it thanks to one of my very favorite sites: lifehacker.com.

Wesabe allows you to upload your bank statements and categorize them by tags, for example restaurants, bars, movies--three of my very favorite ways to spend money. You can set goals, get tips from other users, and just keep track of what is going in and what is coming out. For the checkbook-balancing resistant, this is the ultimate tool.

The best part is that they have created an RSS feed, so you can't not keep track of your finances. If you are on Google Reader, for example, your balance is their in front of you constantly. And, with all the help of your newfound online friends,you may just save a buck or two here and there.

Wesabe is free for basic membership and while your data is 100% secure, Wesabe aggregates information on spending habits--a marketer's wet dream!! They've promised not to collect revenue from advertising because, "The problem with ads is that they generally show you ways to spend your money. There are tons of sites and services that will help you spend your money � we want to be the one that helps you save it." How can you not love that. Plus, the site is amazingly usable, employing AJAX the way it should be--by enhancing user tools and creating a truly simple-to-use web-based application.

So abandon Quicken and sign up for wesabe. isn't it fun when you can get rid of fee-based, client-side Microsoft applications? Oh, and I swear I am no on Wesabe's payroll.

Ivy Hastings is an Internet Strategist for the Denver web development company, Fusionbox.

I am Anna Nicole's Baby Daddy

2007-02-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not. I'm missing a Y chromosome, but maybe this blog entry will get me some traffic. That's what some marketers call the YouTube effect. When YouTube started to get hot, smart spammers and some legitimate marketers splogged or wrote about YouTube to attempt to draw in traffic.

So, if you're able to pick up quickly on the hot topic du jour, and optimize and add content quickly, you may end up with quit a bit of traffic. Is it misleading? Yes, in some cases it is, but if you have something legitamate to say, why not capitalize on some good organic search results, and some social marketing visibility?

Meta Advertising

2007-01-24T11:38:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how advertising has so drastically changed in the last couple of years. The advent of DVRs and online content has completely changed the advertising landscape. Advertisers are pressured to come up with new ways to capture eyeballs. Advertising has become more creative, more edgy, and more memorable. The YouTube category for advertising contains 24,000 results. Advertising has now literally become destination content.

Consider this. Last night I was watching television and I saw an advertisement advertising an advertisement. I'm not kidding. It was an ad for Career Builder notifying viewers to tune into watch the new ad campaign for Career Builder that will be aired on the Super Bowl. The ads have become so popular that the agency is actually promoting the campaign as if it were a feature. Is this the beginning of a new genre called Meta Advertising?

Other advertisers have embraced user generated content. There are numerous contests for users to create the next campaign for products including Sony, Toyota, and L'Oreal. The contests have resulted in thousands and thousands of entries. Now everyone has the ability to become a producer, writer, and actor, why not harness all this free creative talent?

But does this mean the end of the ad agency creatives? Probably not, but in the case of user-generated advertising, ad agencies will have to give up creative control. More and more marketers should embrace this trend as the landscape changes. User-generated content means more options, less agency spending, and advertising that actually appeals to your target audience.

As more advertising becomes destination content, the lines between advertising and content will be even more blurred and we'll be seeing many more ads about ads.

Ivy Hastings is a Project Manager at Fusionbox, a Denver web design and development company. A graduate of UC Berkeley, Ivy has published many articles about Internet Marketing. She currently sits on the Board of Directors for Arts Street, a local non-profit that teaches at-risk youth the craft and business of the Arts.

SEO - The Three Things You Must Know

2007-01-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

SEO - The Three Things You Need to Know

by Ivy Hastings

Clients are always asking me about SEO. They want to know what it is, how it works, and what they need to do.

What I tell them is that SEO comprises of three main components: content, code, and inbound links in that order.

Content is still King not so much because great content creates sticky sites, but because great content does more to help your search engine rankings than many of the other tactics that SEOs use. Knowledgeable SEOs must first and foremost be great writers who can incorporate the right ratio of keywords within your content.

The way your site is coded can have dramatic results when it comes to your organic positioning. Make sure your designer knows what this means. If your web design and development company knows what they are doing, they will know how code affects your SER (search engine ranking). Your site should also be optimized, but that can sometimes have less of an effect on your SER than the structure of the code itself.

Inbound links are perhaps the most time-consuming and troublesome of the three keys to great organic SER. Don't clutter your site with unrelated links that you trade with just anyone. Trading links does not have nearly the effect that inbound links do. Save your energy by increasing links.

If you spend your time and energy on these three core tactics, you'll definitely increase your ranking. And the beauty of it is that these techniques only improve the stickiness of your site, the performance, and your reputation as an expert in your industry.

To learn more about how Fusionbox can help you increase your organic search results, contact us at: 720-956-1083

Ivy Hastings works for the Denver web design firm, Fusionbox. She writes for several publications and blogs on subjects such as search engine marketing, usability, web design best practices, and internet marketing techniques.

Creating Sticky Sites for B2B Companies

2006-12-19T18:18:00.000-07:00

by Ivy Hastings

Many B2B companies are wondering how they can make their web presence much more valuable to their clients. Good marketers know that the days of the web site as online brochure are gone for good. So how does one go about creating a valuable user experience? One tactic is to make the site "sticky" meaning users come back to your site more often and stay longer.

An essential part of creating a sticky site is understanding one's target audience. Before you start thinking about what kind of content or features might be valuable to your users, start with a thorough Target Audience Analysis. An effective Target Audience Analysis includes first determining who the audiences are. They might be clients, the press, or employees of the company, or even all three. Once those audiences are identified, you need to understand their motivations. Why are certain target audiences on your site? What are their motivations? And most importantly how will you fulfill their needs? What about creating new needs your audiences didn't even know they had? During this process, eliminate the guesswork and go straight to your clients and ask them what they want to see.

So now that you understand their motivations, how are you going to fulfill them in the most effective manner? Take for example an engineering company whose clients want technical white papers. Let’s say this is the user’s top motivation for being on your site. You’ll want to ensure that these engineers can get to their white papers as easily as possible. Do this by putting links directly on the homepage, create many ways for users to get to the content with cross links. Develop strong calls-to-action. And make sure that your engineers can get to that content with only one click. In other words, identify key user paths.

Many companies make the mistake of using their sites to brag about themselves. One of our current clients was convinced that they needed an extensive About Us section with Mission, Values, Executive Summary, a Timeline of the company, Executive Bios, and Accomplishments. What user outside of an investor is really going to read all of that?

Rather, take the time and offer information that is priceless to your customers and that really gets them engaged. You can do this by offering white papers, webinars, video tutorials, forums, RSS Feeds, etc. Allow them to interact with you. Your clients will thank you by becoming lifelong clients.

Ivy Hastings is a Project Manager at Fusionbox, a Denver web design and development company.

RSS - What You Need to Know

2006-12-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

Many Marketers are wondering how they can use RSS Feeds to leverage their marketing initiatives. RSS Feeds are the ultimate in permission marketing because they allow users to subscribe to content updates that they receive immediately in their aggregators. This means marketers can commumnicate immediately to the clients and partners who are most interested in their company. And the best part is, it's free.

Additionally, RSS Feeds have the added benefit of getting users back to your site. RSS fed content that is filled with links, means users can link directly back to your site and read more about your products, news, or services.

The advent of RSS Feeds could even mean the death of traditional press releases. Take this example from Google. When the government asked Google to release search records, Google made the decision to get the word out by posting it on their blog. This meant that news outlets had to go directly to Google's blog to get the news. This also levels the playing field because industry insiders get the news the same way everyday users do-- by subscribing to Google's RSS feed of their blog.

RSS has quickly changed the landscape for communication with clients, the press, investors, and especially potential clients. Keep your name in front of interested parties on a permission basis by creating an RSS Feed for your blog, news, or even your press releases.

Ivy Hastings is a Project Manager at Fusionbox, a Denver web design and development company. A graduate of UC Berkeley, Ivy has published many articles about Internet Marketing. She currently sits on the Board of Directors for Arts Street, a local non-profit that teaches at-risk youth the craft and business of the Arts.

Beware the Flog

2006-12-18T21:52:00.000-07:00

by Ivy Hastings

Some advertisers thought they'd be clever and launch fake blogs (blogs) to promote products. Users quickly find out that these blogs are staged attempts by advertising agencies to create positive viral buzz about their products but it often has the opposite effect.

Take Walmart for example. Walmart's ad agency decided it would be a good idea to launch a blog from a couple travelling across the USA. They raved about the Walmarts they had visited. Problem was, they were hired writers and personalities who were being paid to write about Walmart.

Soon after the flog launched the jig was up. Suspicious users (because what smart user is not suspicious about what they read on the Web?) figured out quickly that it was all a sham.

The result was obviously a massive amount of negative PR for Walmart. The worst thing you can do on the Web is try to trick users; you'll lose customers forever-- an advertiser's worst nightmare.

So before you decide to be sneaky and clever, think twice about launching a flog. Your users will find you out no matter what measures you take to cover up the scam. Instead, do like Target does and allow users to rate products. If you're putting out a great product, users will do your PR for you, by rating your products positively, and then telling two friends and so on and so on and so on.

Ivy Hastings is a Project Manager at Fusionbox, a Denver web design company.

Website Templates Buyer Beware

2006-12-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

Web design templates aren't always a good idea for a number of reasons. Most importantly because templates rarely fit your needs exactly, and clients often end up spending more time and money in the long run tweaking the design to fit their content. It’s like trying to stuff a large man into a small suit. Fusionbox always prefers to design around your content rather than trying to fit your content into an already established design. Here are some more reasons not to use a template:

1. Code – Fusionbox uses search-engine friendly code. Many web template designers do not. Be especially aware of templates created entirely in Flash. Search engines cannot spider content in Flash sites so if you go this route, you will inevitably have miserable search engine results.

2. Cross Browser Compatibility – The template you buy may not display the same in different browsers and on different platforms.

3. W3C Compliance – The W3C sets the standards for how web pages are codes, we follow these standards, many designers and developers do not. This also means that your site will be accessible to more users and international users. www.w3c.org

4. Look and Feel – It’s important to really understand your goals and objectives, target audience, and how you want your target audience to act on your site. We build toward all of these concepts so that if your goal is to sell more ad space, the user is presented with a call-to-action to buy ad space front and center on your site. We also look at eye-mapping data that shows where people typically look first on the web in order to place important information.

5. Usability – It is important to follow web best practices on where certain items should be placed. (Your logo should always be presented at the top left hand side.) Many web templates do not follow these important conventions.

6. Navigation - The Navigation of templates rarely fit your actual needs so again, you need to redesign that portion of the template. (This is also not to mention the usability issues that many of these templated designs use.)

You'll want to be very careful when considering a web template. Make sure that the template you choose meets all of the above criteria. You just may end up saving quite a bit of time and money.

- Ivy Hastings
Project Manager
Fusionbox

Fusionbox is a Denver web site design and development company.

Fusionbox Featured in the Denver Daily News

2006-12-03T17:24:00.000-07:00

Fusionbox was recently asked for their expert opinion by the Denver Daily News on Denver political candidates web sites.

Web site cost questioned

By PETER MARCUS - October 22, 2006

Congressman Bob Beauprez has paid a company owned by his son-in-law $64,870 since last year to manage the operation of his gubernatorial campaign Web site. The cost reflects a $53,241 discrepancy between that of payment for his opponents Web site.

A search of “Web site” campaign expenditures filed with the Secretary of State’s office indicated that since October of last year, Bill Ritter’s camp has spent $11,629 on its gubernatorial campaign Web site. Almost all of those expenditures were made to Merchant Engine, LLC, a Web site developer operating out of Lakewood.

Beauprez’s Web site expenditures have all been made to Flat Creek Management, LLC, an operations management and outsourcing firm located in Washington, D.C. The company’s founder and president, Allen Fuller, is Beauprez’s deputy campaign manager and son-in-law. He and Beauprez’s daughter, Melanie Beauprez, are expecting their first child in April. Fuller also previously served as the press secretary and communications director for Beauprez.

Beauprez’s campaign manager, John Marshall, said the reason the expenditures are so high is because the campaign lumped Fuller’s consulting fees as deputy campaign manager together with the Web site development fee.

“It’s more of an accounting issue,” said Marshall. “It would be better [to split it up] but we only get a little room to explain the expenditures in the disclosure … it shows the limitations of the system.”

In Beauprez’s filings, separate listings are recorded for “campaign consulting” and “consulting,” but Marshall said the campaign decided it would be easier to combine Fuller’s services for the son-in-law’s particular case.

Colorado state law does not prohibit contributions from family members of a candidate as long as they are within the contribution limits allowed by law, said Dana Williams, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Gigi Dennis.

“If a tangible product is produced as a result of such services, ‘contribution’ includes the reasonable value of the materials involved, unless such value is negligible,” states Colorado State Law.

In other words, campaign expenditures to family members are allowed as long as the compensation is in line with fair-market value for the services.

Following this Denver Daily News report, ProgressNowAction.org is looking into plans to launch an investigation into the financial relationship between Beauprez and his son-in-law to determine if any campaign finance laws were broken, the organization said Friday.

“This is another example of Both Ways Bob at his worst,” said Michael Huttner, executive director of ProgressNowAction. “He asked the public to hold him accountable and now that we’re holding him accountable it turns out that he has been spending campaign resources well beyond the norm. There should be an immediate investigation as to whether Beauprez is violating any state laws.”

Filings with the Secretary of State’s office show that Beauprez’s Web site expenditures were just above average compared to Ritter’s Web site filings from October 2005 through April 2006. One payment on March 24 to Flat Creek Management, LLC, jumped from an average monthly payment of $2,108 to a single payment of $5,000.

But on May 15, Beauprez more than doubled that campaign Web site expenditure with a payment of $10,831 to Flat Creek Management, LLC. No other single payment has since been less than $5,900, and there was a Web site expenditure of $9,975 on June 30.

On the other hand, Ritter’s Web site expenditures have never topped $4,047 when on Aug. 10 a payment in that amount was made to Party2Win, based in Alexandria, Va. All other payments were made to Merchant Engine, LLC, never topping $2,062 with an average monthly payment of $947.

Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said at the beginning of their campaign, they were paying $300 every time a page was added to Ritter’s campaign Web site. But realizing that would add up, the campaign moved away from that format and now pay an hourly fee to Merchant Engine, LLC.

“I like our Web site — it’s functional and easy to navigate, and it displays a lot of information,” said Dreyer. “Maybe the Congressman’s son-in-law is ripping off the Congressman,” he joked.

“I feel like we get great service and a fantastic product for the amount of money we pay,” continued Dreyer. “Maybe [Beauprez] is paying too much, maybe he’s paying too much because it is his son-in-law.”

Marshall said the idea that the Beauprez campaign is paying more to Fuller because he is Beauprez’s son-in-law is not realistic because of the tight budget they are already operating off of.

“When working off of a budget as lean as we are, I can assure you that we don’t drop one dime that we don’t need to,” he said.

Records, however, filed with the Secretary of State indicate that Beauprez’s expenditures are for “Website” purposes. Local Web site design experts notice a significant discrepancy between Ritter and Beauprez’s site.

“My initial thought is that Beauprez has a more professional Web site, it’s more professionally done, [and] Ritter’s is more of an amateurish Web site,” said Chris Miller, a Web site designer with Denver-based Havoc Interactive.

He said that over the course of a year, it is possible that Beauprez could have spent $52,241 more on his Web site. He added that Web site designers take many factors into consideration, including additional features, content management, e-commerce, to name a few.

“From a design standpoint, Ritter could have gotten a better design for the money he spent,” said Miller.

Ivy Hastings, a Web designer with Denver-based Fusionbox, agreed.

“Ritter should have invested more in his Web presence for a much more professional result,” she said. “He tried to do it cheaply and it shows.”

That being said, after her firm analyzed each site for design, usability, search engine optimization, the quality of the HTML code, accessibility for sight-impaired users, server-side code, features, information, overall quality and budget, she determined that it is unlikely that Beauprez spent $64,870 on his Web site over the course of a year.

“Beauprez spent a lot of money — way too much money,” she said. “He easily could have had his site developed for half of what it cost.”

Fusionbox is a Denver Web Design Company.

Kerry Cooper Joins Fusionbox

2006-12-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

Fusionbox is proud to announce the addition of web developer, Kerry Cooper to its team. Kerry comes from a long background of IT and web development experience.

Kerry's experience spans 20 years and many competencies including PHP, Java, Linux, and MySQL among others.

Fusionbox is a Denver web design company.

Fusionbox Recent Projects

2006-12-03T17:18:00.000-07:00

Fusionbox recently completed the following projects:

Quickbooks – Quickbooks is really an online marketing leader. They are way advanced in what they are doing and needed a good team to implement some of their ideas. We have been developing custom web-based software for them since 2001. One of the most recent projects we completed was to create a tool that allows an administrator to create dynamic web landing pages that are served to users based on either the domain, location, or link from which they are coming. This means, they can serve different content to different users based on all kinds of variables. So, for example, if a user came from an IP address in New York, they would be presented with different pricing models, than say someone from Ohio. We have also completed A/B testing and Multivariate testing. This is also completely dynamic—which means the client can go online, create campaigns on the fly, and then track the success of each creative.

National Geographic – For National Geographic, we are creating a social networking site based around the map community. This means users can track trails on their GPS, upload their waypoints and create dynamic maps. They can then rate, comment on, and share maps. Users will be able to create and join different groups.

McClain Finlon Advertising – McClain Finlon advertising was having issues with their previous website. The usability was terrible, load times were long, the Flash video on the site wasn’t working, and they could not make updates. Plus, their site was not showing up on search engines—even when users searched for “McClain Finlon.” Ouch!! Most of the problem was the Flash programming. The first thing we did was take their site out of Flash and create a combination of Flash and HTML. Then we improved the usability of the entire site and gave them content management, so their marketing staff could update their portfolio pieces (including text, images, audio and video). We also gave them an RSS Feed for their press releases. The result was more traffic, better search engine results, up-to-date content, and a happy agency.

ManiaTV – For ManiaTV we redesigned their entire site and added a “Create your own channel tool” using AJAX technology. This allows users to search and browse video, add them to their favorites and them string them together in a playlist by dragging and dropping thumbnail images into position.

VerusLive – For VerusLive, an Evergreen-based market research company, we are creating a site built around Flash video content. The users will view video and then comment on video using recordings of themselves that they upload directly to the site. The tool will also connect directly to the users web cam and record video directly to the server.

Fusionbox Featured in CU Journal

2006-12-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

Fusionbox was recently featured in the technology section of the national publication, the credit union journal.

The article discusses the use of eyetracking data and how we used this data to place certain elements of the site for better usability.

Fusionbox has designed three Los Angeles based credit union websites. The full article is posted below:

CU Uses Eye Tracking Studies To Create More User-Friendly Website

11/22/2006

by Kevin Jepson, Technology Correspondent

A burst of orange and persimmon floods the eye at the new E1Financial.org.

But not for long.

"We're ready to change the colors," explained LJ Tarman, vice president, marketing, at the $375-million E1 Financial CU here. "Our biggest complaint from members is about color."

Despite the color fumble, E1 Financial mainly hears compliments from members about last year's website "facelift," which was synchronized with the CU's new name and brand campaign, Tarman said.

Text Is "En Vogue"

E1 has also learned that text is "en vogue."

"Web users are jaded," explained Ivy Hastings, director of business development at the Denver-based website development and support firm, Fusionbox, Inc., which helped with E1's new site.

"Better websites are moving away from images and design elements to a clean, text-based call to action and list of the services and features of the site," she asserted.

In deciding where to put things on its new site, E1 Financial relied in part on multiple "eye-tracking" studies, which reveal what users see-or miss-on the web.

"We had six weeks to redesign the site-not a lot of time to really do it right," Hastings explained. "But there were a couple quick and immediate fixes that we knew we could make based on eye-tracking and best practices."

First, E1 moved its logo to the top left, where users' eyes first land, said Hastings.

"This lets the user know who you are, and what you do," she said.

A clearly branded website was especially important as the CU changed its name and logo, said Tarman. "The last thing we wanted was for members to log in and think they were in the wrong place," said Tarman. "To address that concern, for the first several months we had our new logo and our old logo flipping back and forth while members had the site open."

Next, E1 filled the dead center of the page with large, graphic promotions and "calls to action," Hastings said.

"Eye-tracking shows that you start at the top left and move towards the middle," explained Hastings. "Also, we didn't want to use a size that looked like an advertisement, and we didn't use anything blinking or moving."

E1 then dropped in a link to homebanking on the upper right side. "That's where users expect they can perform some kind of action after they have stopped scanning back and forth on the site," Hastings said.

Three Clicks Away

In March, the site will reveal the results of an overhaul that is intended to improve navigation, Tarman said. "Best practices tell us that it shouldn't take more than three clicks to get to anything on the site," she said. "That way, members have more success finding the information they're looking for."

For example, every product on the site will link back to the rates page so that members don't have to search for rates.

E1 won't stop there. "We'll be working with Fusionbox and our agency, Simon + Associates Advertising, for a while. The web is always getting better and faster, and our members continue to demand more information from the site."

"You can never get a site perfect," Hastings added. "You constantly test and refine."

And how will E1 refine the opus in orange on its current site? "We haven't decided on any colors in particular, but our next colors will be more soothing," said Tarman.

CUJ Resources

For info on this story:

* www.e1financial.org

* www.fusionbox.com - a Denver Website Design Company

* www.useit.com

* www.boxesandarrows.com

* www.clickz.com

Fusionbox Featured in Denver Daily News

2006-12-02T21:21:00.000-07:00

Fusionbox was recently asked for their expert opinion by the Denver Daily News on Denver political candidates web sites.

Web Site Cost Questioned
By PETER MARCUS - October 22, 2006

Congressman Bob Beauprez has paid a company owned by his son-in-law $64,870 since last year to manage the operation of his gubernatorial campaign Web site. The cost reflects a $53,241 discrepancy between that of payment for his opponents Web site.

A search of “Web site” campaign expenditures filed with the Secretary of State’s office indicated that since October of last year, Bill Ritter’s camp has spent $11,629 on its gubernatorial campaign Web site. Almost all of those expenditures were made to Merchant Engine, LLC, a Web site developer operating out of Lakewood.

Beauprez’s Web site expenditures have all been made to Flat Creek Management, LLC, an operations management and outsourcing firm located in Washington, D.C. The company’s founder and president, Allen Fuller, is Beauprez’s deputy campaign manager and son-in-law. He and Beauprez’s daughter, Melanie Beauprez, are expecting their first child in April. Fuller also previously served as the press secretary and communications director for Beauprez.
Beauprez’s campaign manager, John Marshall, said the reason the expenditures are so high is because the campaign lumped Fuller’s consulting fees as deputy campaign manager together with the Web site development fee.

“It’s more of an accounting issue,” said Marshall. “It would be better [to split it up] but we only get a little room to explain the expenditures in the disclosure … it shows the limitations of the system.”

In Beauprez’s filings, separate listings are recorded for “campaign consulting” and “consulting,” but Marshall said the campaign decided it would be easier to combine Fuller’s services for the son-in-law’s particular case.

Colorado state law does not prohibit contributions from family members of a candidate as long as they are within the contribution limits allowed by law, said Dana Williams, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Gigi Dennis.

“If a tangible product is produced as a result of such services, ‘contribution’ includes the reasonable value of the materials involved, unless such value is negligible,” states Colorado State Law.

In other words, campaign expenditures to family members are allowed as long as the compensation is in line with fair-market value for the services.

Following this Denver Daily News report, ProgressNowAction.org is looking into plans to launch an investigation into the financial relationship between Beauprez and his son-in-law to determine if any campaign finance laws were broken, the organization said Friday.
“This is another example of Both Ways Bob at his worst,” said Michael Huttner, executive director of ProgressNowAction. “He asked the public to hold him accountable and now that we’re holding him accountable it turns out that he has been spending campaign resources well beyond the norm. There should be an immediate investigation as to whether Beauprez is violating any state laws.”

Filings with the Secretary of State’s office show that Beauprez’s Web site expenditures were just above average compared to Ritter’s Web site filings from October 2005 through April 2006. One payment on March 24 to Flat Creek Management, LLC, jumped from an average monthly payment of $2,108 to a single payment of $5,000.

But on May 15, Beauprez more than doubled that campaign Web site expenditure with a payment of $10,831 to Flat Creek Management, LLC. No other single payment has since been less than $5,900, and there was a Web site expenditure of $9,975 on June 30.
On the other hand, Ritter’s Web site expenditures have never topped $4,047 when on Aug. 10 a payment in that amount was made to Party2Win, based in Alexandria, Va. All other payments were made to Merchant Engine, LLC, never topping $2,062 with an average monthly payment of $947.

Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said at the beginning of their campaign, they were paying $300 every time a page was added to Ritter’s campaign Web site. But realizing that would add up, the campaign moved away from that format and now pay an hourly fee to Merchant Engine, LLC.

“I like our Web site — it’s functional and easy to navigate, and it displays a lot of information,” said Dreyer. “Maybe the Congressman’s son-in-law is ripping off the Congressman,” he joked.
“I feel like we get great service and a fantastic product for the amount of money we pay,” continued Dreyer. “Maybe [Beauprez] is paying too much, maybe he’s paying too much because it is his son-in-law.”

Marshall said the idea that the Beauprez campaign is paying more to Fuller because he is Beauprez’s son-in-law is not realistic because of the tight budget they are already operating off of.

“When working off of a budget as lean as we are, I can assure you that we don’t drop one dime that we don’t need to,” he said.
Records, however, filed with the Secretary of State indicate that Beauprez’s expenditures are for “Website” purposes. Local Web site design experts notice a significant discrepancy between Ritter and Beauprez’s site.

“My initial thought is that Beauprez has a more professional Web site, it’s more professionally done, [and] Ritter’s is more of an amateurish Web site,” said Chris Miller, a Web site designer with Denver-based Havoc Interactive.

He said that over the course of a year, it is possible that Beauprez could have spent $52,241 more on his Web site. He added that Web site designers take many factors into consideration, including additional features, content management, e-commerce, to name a few.
“From a design standpoint, Ritter could have gotten a better design for the money he spent,” said Miller.

Ivy Hastings, a Web designer with Denver-based Fusionbox, agreed.
“Ritter should have invested more in his Web presence for a much more professional result,” she said. “He tried to do it cheaply and it shows.”

That being said, after her firm analyzed each site for design, usability, search engine optimization, the quality of the HTML code, accessibility for sight-impaired users, server-side code, features, information, overall quality and budget, she determined that it is unlikely that Beauprez spent $64,870 on his Web site over the course of a year.

“Beauprez spent a lot of money — way too much money,” she said. “He easily could have had his site developed for half of what it cost.”

Fusionbox is a Denver Web Design Company.

2006-09-25T10:42:00.000-06:00

Usability - The Thirty Second Rule

According to Jakob Nielsen, there are three key things that a user must accomplish in the first thirty seconds of viewing your site. 1. Who are you? 2. What do you do? 3. What should I (the user) do next. If you aren't able to answer these three questions in thirty seconds or less, it's time for a web site redesign.

Let's look at the first question: Who are you? Eyemapping studies show that the first place users look is at the top left area of your site. This is why most well-designed web sites have their company's logo placed there. This is the first step to answering that first question. The placement of the logo at the top left also helps orient the user and helps to bring brand awareness.

Now, the second question: What do you do? This is always difficult for companies, especially when the company itself is not focused on a core product or service, or is having trouble internally defining what it is they really do. When you throw in target audiences who are very different, it becomes even harder. Users don't want to try to glean what you do from a clever tagline, or marketese. The best way to handle this is to come right out and say what you do, simply, and immediately. If you are selling a product, include that right away with an image on the homepage.

Finally, users want to know what to do next. Users want to get off your homepage as soon as they can, and get to the good stuff-- the information, the products, the entertainment, or the service. Again, you may have different target audiences with different needs. Speak to each of them with calls to action such as: Contact Us for a Free Evaluation. Your designer should know how to draw the user's eye to these calls-to-action.

If you currently pass the thirty second rule, congratulations, you are well on your way to having a usable web site. If you don't, it may be a good time to reconsider your web strategy.

-- Ivy Hastings Project Manager Fusionbox

Fusionbox is a Denver web design and development company.

Buyer Beware - Web Design Templates

2006-09-15T10:35:00.000-06:00

Using RSS to Push Press Releases

2006-03-15T15:52:00.000-07:00

Recently, the team at Fusionbox completely overhauled McClain Finlon's (a Denver-based ad agency) web site. One of the goals was to add content that would increase organic search engine results.

McClain Finlon also has a PR arm that has created and sent out thousands of Press Releases. Our strategy was to give McClain Finlon a content management system where they could post all that great, keyword-heavy content. We made sure that the content managment center posted HTML pages that could be spidered by search engines.

As we were doing this, I started thinking about the somewhat antiquated way that news agencies get their stories. While most publications now accept e-mails, someone still has to manually go through all of those entries. McClain Finlon gets a ton of local press from the same publications. So what if those publications just subscribed to a feed rather than having to dig through e-mail? We added an RSS feed for their Press Release section and are hoping it catches on here in Denver where we are a little behind the times.

Then I started to think about how RSS could replace the old Press Release once and for all. Maybe companies will just start publishing new information on their blogs and push new information out via RSS. (I just found out that Google did just that when it announced its response to the DoJ.) This would result in a lot more traffic and an opportunity for readers to poke around the company's site. Not to mention the opportunity for creating keyword links within the press release.

Creating Accessible Web Sites

2006-02-24T18:37:00.000-07:00

Many web designers and developers forget to consider how different disabilities might affect how a user sees or experiences a web site. Statistics show that 21% of the population has some kind of disability, whether it is visual impairment, hearing problems, or difficulty with motor skills. Imagine a colorblind person trying to read red text over a blue image, or, a person whose hand shakes attempting to navigate a complex dropdown menu.

It is so important that marketers consider all audiences when creating a web presence. Otherwise, the client might be missing out on almost a quarter of their target audience. Addressing the accessibility of your site also significantly increases both usability, and search engine results.

Whether you are creating a brand new web presence, or redesigning an existing site, consider these best practices:

1. Do not use color to make important distinctions.
2. Use sans serif and larger fonts for the visually impaired.
3. Use alt tags for images. (These are the little titles that show up when you hover your mouse over an image.)
4. Do not make references to the position on the page, i.e. “click the button below”.
5. Avoid using small graphics as buttons.
6. Do not use audio or video unless you provide a transcript for the non-sighted and hearing impaired.

Just by following these guidelines, you should see an increase in user response and satisfaction. For more information on web accessibility best practices, see the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/

How to Choose a Web Design Company

2005-09-02T14:40:00.000-06:00

Every successful company knows that a web site is an essential marketing tool. Whether you’re in the business of selling widgets, soliciting volunteers, or building your brand awareness, a carefully executed internet marketing plan can reap a tremendous return on your time and money.

You know you need a web site, but how do you go about getting one if you don’t know the first thing about design or development, and you can forget about html, css, php, .NET, the backend, the frontend, and all of those other funny words that web people use.

With a multitude of web designers and developers out there, from freelancers, to agencies, to online templates, how do you know what the right fit is for your company, and more importantly, for your goals and objectives?

The list of questions and tips below should get you started with asking the right questions. And, the best part is, you won’t have to learn what all those crazy acronyms mean.

The first thing you need to do is determine your goals and objectives.

Specifically:

• Who is your target audience?
• How will your target audience find your website?
• What do you want them to do once they’re there?
• How will updates be made to the site?
• What is your timeline?
• What kind of return on investment do you expect from the site and how will you measure it?

When searching for a company, here are a few key questions to consider:

• Does the company’s portfolio reflect the kind of aesthetic that you are looking for? Do they show a range of work from playful to conservative? Are the sites within their portfolio easy to use? Are there any broken links, bugs, or design issues?
• Does the company work with clients in your industry? Have they previously created a site similar to what you want in scope and function? For example, if you need an easy content management system to update your site with new products, have they implemented something similar for another client?

Once you have narrowed down your list to a couple of companies that seem to be a good fit, contact them with these things in mind:

• Were they responsive to your query, or did it take them four days to return your call? Were they friendly and helpful and take time to find out about your company and your needs? (Beware of companies who lead the discussion with just design considerations. How are users going to find your site to begin with and how will the site generate leads or sales?) Did they speak over your head using lots of jargon in an attempt to upsell you on their products?
• What kinds of guarantees do they offer for their products? What kind of support is available? Do they have a thorough testing process? What are the terms of the contract and who owns the final design, source code, and intellectual property?

Now that you’ve found a couple of different companies, and have a couple of proposals in hand, you’ll want to take some time to compare them carefully and check references. Call several of the company’s clients and ask the following questions:

• Did the company meet your goals and objectives?
• Did they follow up after the launch, or disappear once the check was cashed?
• Does the site function properly?
• Are you happy with the design?
• What does your target audience think of the design and functionality?
• Did you get the return on investment that you were expecting?

By taking the time to ask the right questions and checking references, you should end up with a company who not only meets your goals, but exceeds them, and becomes a trusted marketing consultant.

Search Engine Optimization

2005-06-06T09:33:00.000-06:00

In almost every meeting we have with potential or new clients, we ask them what their goals are for search engine placement. Many of them answer by saying they hadn't considered it, and thought that search engine optimization was something that happens AFTER the website is designed and up and running. Most of our clients also say that during the RFP process, none of the other Denver web design and development companies even bring up how the client's search engine placement goals will be addressed.

It seems that many Denver web design companies are not up to date with the latest best practices for building search engine friendly web sites. Additionally, they may be more interested in selling the client expensive Flash features, and elaborate web design that actually work against the clients organic search engine placement.

Almost every day I meet someone who tells me they have a web site and they are happy with the design, but want to know how to get better organic search results and stop paying so much for pay per click campaigns. There are quite a few things one can do, but the most important is to build it right from the beginning. Make sure your web design firm adresses this question with you before you discuss color, look and feel, or any other design consideration.

Fusionbox and Traffic Direct Achieve Top Search Engine Results for QualMark

2005-05-18T14:35:00.000-06:00

Fusionbox and Traffic Direct worked together to redevelop QualMark's website in order to increase their search engine position. The results were beyond our expectations.

Read the case study below:

The Client: QualMark Corporation

QualMark Corporation, the knowledge leader in accelerated testing, is based in Denver Colorado. Their HALT (Highly Accelerated Life Testing) and HASS (Highly Accelerated Stress Screening) methods enable industry leaders in electronics, medical devices, automotive, military and aerospace to launch better products to market faster while reducing development cost.

The Challenge:

Improve search engine positioning for targeted keywords.

The Solution:

A search on Google with QualMark's targeted keywords resulted in QualMark coming up on the fourth page of Google. QualMark's competitors were enjoying much better keyword results, and QualMark, being a leader in the industry, recognized that they needed to maintain a competitive position on Google in order to capture new market share.

Fusionbox and Traffic Direct performed a code review of QualMark's current code and recommended the site be redesigned to eliminate all JavaScripting, and excess HTML. The site was initially designed by a graphic designer who had little knowledge of writing HTML with search engine results in mind. Traffic Direct wanted to decrease the ratio of code to keywords, so the search engine spiders could access QualMark's wealth of relevant content.

The Traffic Direct and Fusionbox teams recreated every single page of the 100 page site using our best practices for building search engine-friendly sites. The code for the home page was reduced from over 900 lines of code to under 100 lines of code. Fusionbox also created meta information and new page titles and descriptions for each of the 100 pages. We also recommended that the keywords be represented as links on the home page if possible.

The Results:

As a result of the recoding of QualMark's site, the company's search engine position increased dramatically. The site went from being listed on the fourth page of Google, to becoming first on Google for its targeted keywords. As a result of the new search engine results, QualMark has received more sales leads from first time buyers.

Fusionbox and Traffic Direct form Partnership

2005-05-16T22:05:00.000-06:00

FUSIONBOX AND TRAFFIC DIRECT FORM PARTNERSHIP
Where Web Design, Functionality, and Search Engine Results Come Together

DENVER, CO, May 5, 2005 - Fusionbox, Inc. and Traffic Direct, LLC formed a strategic partnership that brings together complimentary skills in order to better support their clients' internet initiatives. Fusionbox is a Denver, CO based Web Development and Design Company and Traffic Direct is a Denver-based Internet Marketing Company.

Traffic Direct's integrated approach includes web site usability services, search engine positioning, link strategies, content development and management, data collection and analysis, and lead generating campaigns all with the goal to acquire, retain and build revenue from their clients' online presence. Fusionbox provides search engine-friendly design, programming, and user interface architecture.

Fusionbox found that many companies were approaching their web presence entirely as it relates to the design of the site. By doing this, they find that while the design is aesthetically impressive, it does not work toward high search engine ranking and usability. Not until the site has launched do many companies even consider search engine optimization, when in some cases, it might be too late. "It's really important that a site be designed and developed with search-engine optimization in mind from the beginning," said Alexander Groth, Fusionbox's president. "There's still plenty of flexibility design-wise, but there are ways of implementing that design that can greatly improve your site's SEO. Many of our clients come to us feeling abandoned and misled by their current web design vendor, because search engine results are not considered during design and development." By working in concert from the site strategy, to the content, design, and development, and finally to launch, Fusionbox and Traffic Direct are able to deliver a search-engine friendly product.

Contact Information:

Fusionbox
Ivy Hastings
Ph: 720 953-1083
Email: ihastings@fusionbox.com
www.fusionbox.com

Traffic Direct
Kathleen Maher
Ph: 720 855-7008
Email: kmaher@trafficdirect.com