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.

The Future of Copywriting

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

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

Search Engine Marketing Builds Brand Awareness

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?

• “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

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

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

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...

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:

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.

Subaru Drivers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.