Denver Web Design Company, Fusionbox, Announces new clients

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 Process

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.

More New Clients

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

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

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.

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

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

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

From Search Engine Low Down

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"

Fusionbox Web Site Design and Development

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.

Interactive Agencies are Getting all the New Business

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

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.

I'm really good at:

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

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

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.

Stealing Content

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.

Organic Postioning Takes Work

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.

Writing for the Web

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.

Increase Ecommerce Conversions

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.

Planning a Web Site Design

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

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.