1.  Main Objective – What is the reason you are having a website built? What are you selling, or what information are you making public for the world to see? Do you expect your website to turn a profit for you? Or will it be built as an online brochure for informational purposes only?

When clients come into a project knowing what they want out of their website and what their long-term goals are, this helps us formulate the best plan and build the site accordingly starting from the initial design steps all the way up until the new site is ready to launch.

2. Page Count – We like to get a feel for how many pages your website will need. Theoretically, we usually know this before even quoting you a price for your project, but especially for the design stage, we will ask you to layout a list of pages needed. We can also always add to them as we go, though we prefer a pretty accurate starting point.

3. Website Examples – Before starting on any design work, we love to get a feel for what type of website you like. We will ask our clients for 2-3 examples, plus a description regarding what you like most about each of them. This really helps us hone in on getting a 1^st draft close to what they want, rather than shooting in the dark.

4. Domain Name – Ideally it’s a good idea to have a domain name in mind before having your website built. Often times, our clients will have multiple domain names that they either need registered, or used as redirected domains to their main website.

5. Realistic Goals – The biggest thing we can recommend is setting realistic goals for your project, before, during and after your website launches. If everyone is on the same page from the beginning, the project will go very smoothly.

When starting a new website project, it is important to keep these 5 keys in mind. These will help you get off on the right foot with planning and executing your online goals.

Until Next Time!
Josh Olswanger
Thrive Web Designs – A Boise Web Design Company 

This is definitely a valid question and one that deserves some explanation as to why it does/doesn’t help.

Back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, one of Google’s ranking factors for your site was how many domain names forwarded to your site. These links are known as 301 redirects as they merely do nothing but point the name servers to the website in target. People would buy up as many domain names as possible that included their keywords they were trying to market, and for the most part, this worked.

But then Google got smarter, because they had to. Their rules changed because the drastic scenery of websites was growing by mounds and mounds, which meant much more competition for ranking higher, etc. What started happening was that Google was forming their ranking factors on more honest approaches for SEO. In other words, doing things like buying 100 domain names and pointing them all to your site stopped working.

Lets flash-forward to 2013. A lot has changed when it comes to online marketing and SEO. To start with, multiple 301 redirects that point to your site will not help your website’s SEO. Optimizing the key elements of your website including content, internal linking, external back-links to your site, and many more common factors are what will help your website succeed.

Are there any benefits in buying domains that contain relevant keywords for your industry in 2013?

Depending on your industry and who you are competing with, buying domain names can still play an important role in your internet marketing strategy which is summed up into one word. DEFENSE.

By you owning many domain names that are keyword heavy for your industry, you are simply playing defense against any competitor that may come in and threaten your marketing net.

So, when it comes down to SEO, multiple domain names won’t be the game-changers anymore, however they are still important when it comes to driving a successful and well-guarded game of marketing.

Until Next Time!
Josh Olswanger
Thrive Web Designs – Your Boise Web Design Team
 

The beauty of including video and audio on your website in 2013 versus 2000, is that there is so many more options for doing so without eating up the bandwidth on your own web server. Back in the golden days of the internet, if you wanted a video on your site, you would have to upload it directly to your server, which would usually take lots of resources. Same with audio, where your music tracks and players were stored on the actual website.

Nowadays, there are a few great options that will help you streamline the ways of including this media without it touching your site.

For Video:

Utilize free video sharing sites like YouTube and Vimeo. Both of these sites let you upload video to their database, then simply embed the video stream into your site. This allows the video to play on your website, but it is still streaming off of the video site. Both YouTube and Vimeo also allow you to customize the video’s starting time, customization of appearance, etc.

For Audio:

Although there are some realty clean audio players nowadays that will work great directly installed on your site (primarily JQuery), we still recommend using one of the music sharing sites like Reverbnation.com for musicians. Reverb Nation gives the user a free embed of their music widget where you can upload music to, and then simply embed the player anywhere on your site. No music files are actually on your site, just streaming from the bandwidth of Revernation.com’s site.

To summarize, there are plenty of options for including video and audio on your website without resorting to the old-school techniques of bandwidth-eating players. Utilize the free and easy methods provided to keep your website’s file structure as fast and lean as possible.

Until Next Time,
Josh Olswanger
Thrive Web Designs – Your Boise Web Design Team

Regardless of the website, we always look to the logo for design direction and starting points. Since your logo is the center of all branding efforts, we will almost always match the website based on the logo’s color, orientation, etc. Occasionally our client will not have a logo, and in these cases we’re able to formulate some type of logo based on text, rather than any illustrating like a traditional logo would require.

Examples:

We will always ask our clients to look at other websites they love the looks and feel of. We will use these as reference when designing the website layout. The reason that we ask our clients to do this is because it helps center our focus on a layout design that they will be fairly happy with at first, which means that the revision process won’t be as tricky. If we get close to what they are wanting with the overall colors, looks, feel, this makes the process go much smoother and makes the development stage come sooner.

Layout Design:

Once we have some layout examples and a logo file to work with, we jump into the design process that normally takes a full week to complete. Once we have a design that we feel comfortable with presenting to our client, we’ll send the layout over to gain their response and feedback. We are very relaxed with layout revisions and never charge our clients extra for any changes during the design phase. Once we go back and forth and our client is completely satisfied with their layout design, we move to our next steps, development.

Web Development:

Web development is the 2^nd half of the website process and is arguably the step that takes the most time, depending on the complexity of the website, which functionalities the client needs it to include, etc. For normal brochure-type sites, development can take as little as 2-4 days to complete. For bigger sites that need extensive development including a database, custom programming or more, up to 6 months.

During the development process, we will build the framework of the website by breaking the design into pieces and then constructing the pages using HTML, PHP, CSS and other web technologies and languages. Once the pages are built, we will take the client’s content and images to use for each page and place them. Once the content has been put into place, we will double-check everything and then send it over to our client for them to give their final review.

Upon final review, we will fix and edit anything that is necessary before launching the site.

We take great pride in our work and value our clients’ feedback every step of the way. This is why you will always feel part of the process with us. Our job is to ensure that you are 100% satisfied with the final product and we will work with you until we achieve just that.

Until Next Time,
Josh Olswanger
Thrive Web Designs – Your Boise Web Design Team

One of the things that we are very proud to stay consistent with is our ability to stay up to date with our client’s requests for updates. After starting our business, we soon learned of how many other competitors, both local and nationwide, would take nearly a week to get back to their clients and perform certain simple updates, like changing a link, or revising a paragraph. From that moment on, it was our mission to deliver unmatched customer service so that their frequent and urgent updates were addressed within a very timely manner. Read more about our affordable boise website maintenance package.

As Thrive continues to grow significantly each year, we will never have our clients suffer longer waiting times when it comes to waiting for updates. That is a promise we continue to keep, year after year.

Thrive Web Designs offers some of the most competitive and comprehensive options for your new or existing website. We have, and will always make it our goal that our customer service remains at the top of the food chain when serving our clients everyday.

If you have a website and need a company who can address your updates efficiently and affordably, we welcome you to give us a call and see how we can help!
Have a great week ahead!

Sincerely,
Josh Olswanger
Thrive Web Designs  - Your Boise Web Design Team

For years, many designers would completely write off the fact that images and slideshows are useless for helping one’s website become optimized for search engines.

Back in the “good ole’ days,” Flash ruled the web world. Flash was bulky, non-SEO friendly, and was a pain to change with updates, etc.

Nowadays, JQuery has proven to be a much more efficient tool for slideshows.

So can images actually help your SEO?

Yes, and here’s how.

Images have what are referred to as an “alt attribute,” so since Google can’t do anything with the actual image file for your photo, they can read the relevant keywords in the “alt attribute” of every image. With this being said, it is wise to include product-specific keywords within your alt attributes, without going overboard.

For example, if your image is of a concrete construction company in Portland, a great alt attribute might be “Portland concrete construction.”

I am amazed with how many websites online today either have no alt attribute tags on their images, or if they do have them, they are not optimized for important keywords.

Optimizing JQuery Slideshows:

Jquery slideshows store slide images that can also be optimized by Google with alt attributes, titles, links, etc. The most important thing to remember about slideshows is that including text that fades in over the image is better for SEO than text that is part of an image. With slides that include both, you have that much more room to squeeze some optimization into each slide.

Although many  will overlook the benefits of optimizing images in websites, make sure you stay ahead of the ball with utilizing alt attributes.

Until Next Time!
Josh Olswanger
Thrive Web Designs – Your Boise Web Design Team

Manu Up Crusade’s mission is to provide women who have been domestically abused with resources to help get them out of dangerous situations. They hold numerous events each year to help raise money for their cause, some of which are sponsored by the Caldwell Night Rodeo.

We are rooted in our community and each year we choose to give away a website to a local non-profit, charity, or similar organization in need of some web help. We feel really good about contributing in this way, and Man Up Crusade came to us at the end of 2011 to discuss a potential website.

Long story short, their new website is a modern and effective site for obtaining volunteers, getting the community involved and aware of their cause, etc.

If you have a non-profit organization and are needing some website help, contact our dedicated team of Boise web designers!

Until Next Time,
Josh Olswanger
Thrive Web Designs – Your Boise Web Design Team

Domain name authority is how important your domain name is only, usually based on age. Google heavily uses this when weighing one website against another.

Why is domain name authority so important?

It is extremely important to understand how important domain name authority can be to your website’s SEO. Websites that have been live for years are going to “weigh” more to Google. More specifically, sites that have been around long and have had an impact to offering relevant information, staying out of SEO trouble (Black hat SEO), etc.

This topic comes up a lot when we are explaining to our clients what we predict their website will do once it’s launched. Often times, our client will have a website that has been around for a few years and they will have us re-design and develop their site. This is almost always the situation that leads to really good SEO results as we are merely improving and building on years of SEO optimization and history with Google for that specific site. So when Google recognizes a new site has been launched and they index all of the newly added content, optimized images, and more, this will almost always yield in great results.

On the other side of the playing field….

When clients who have never had a website before, or ones that have a site but want to start a new one with a brand new fresh domain name, they will usually experience a tougher climb to the top of Google as their domain name is very new, fresh and little to no domain name authority.

In conclusion, if you are looking to get your current website re-designed or developed, it is often smart to keep your domain name, as choosing a new one will warrant lots of extra work and patience to get your website cranking great SEO results online.

Until Next Time,
Josh Olswanger

Thrive Web Designs – Your Boise Web Design Team

But as the internet continues to grow in the form of online communication, it is important as a small business owner to nourish the fundamental elements of how business relationships were and still are formed, created and maintained.

Here at Thrive, we often talk about what good customer service really is. In fact, some may argue we talk about it too much. The point is that good customer service starts before your potential customer buys your product, or your client hires you for help. The roots of good customer service come when you are trying to sell your product to a client.

So how does offline marketing and customer service relate? 

Back before the internet was one, people talked over the phone, they met in person and conversed in real life conversation. It was these principles that drove business, earned trust and maintained good business to customer relationships. Nowadays, although many businesses will follow these rules, many find themselves stuck in the comfortable state of “we’ll just talk with them online.”

Now don’t get me wrong, many customers and clients will prefer to communicate via email, chat, etc. It may very well be more convenient for them. For those customers, I say that online communication tools are key. For those “brick and mortar” customers or clients, it’s important to reach out in ways that they are used to conducting business.

A few tips have helped us gain a steadily growing client base:

1. Contacting the potential client soon after they inquire about your services.

The longer you let a potential customer/client or “lead” sit, the less chance that you will earn their business. If you can call them back or answer their email soon after you received their inquiry, this shows them that you are serious about earning their business. It is also fresh on their mind, so replying back 4 days later is usually very ineffective as they have probably already found a company that gave them better and faster response.

2. Meeting with customers before they buy.

Many times, meeting with a potential client before you close the deal, gives them all the reassurance they need. They like to see your face and know you are not some type of robot. People will also remember you more as you now have that visual reference to go by. It also shows your lead that you care enough about earning their business that you will meet with them before they commit to buying.

3. Following Up

This is a big one. Let’s face it. Business owners are busy people. So many times they may be interested in your product or service, but may forget to follow through with things. If a lead receives 5 quotes from other companies plus yours, they will remember the ones that follow up and show enough interest in earning their business. Remember to be helpful with any questions and always be receptive to their ideas, proposals, etc.

All in all, regardless of the fact that online businesses operate online, don’t let the offline fundamentals of selling your services or product be overshadowed by the luxury of clicking send on an email.

Until Next Time!

Sincerely,
Josh Olswanger

Thrive Web Designs – Your Boise Web Design Team

Here at Thrive, we take great pride in simplifying the web design process for our clients. From large companies to one-person businesses, the objective stays the same. Make the process easy for our client.

Below is an ordered list that we may present to you when you decide to hire us for your professional website needs.

1. Contract & Agreements, Deposit, etc.

Before we get started on any work, we ask our clients to fill out and sign a web design contract explaining the terms that both parties have agreed upon. Our contract is a simplified and reiterated version of the web design proposal we first send to the client before they decide to hire us. Along with the contract are any other agreements for additional services like web hosting, maintenance, logo design, etc. Once we have all of the documents in place and signed, we’re ready to begin the process.

2. Initial Layout Design

The initial layout design stage is the first step in creating your new website. Since we don’t design or develop off of any pre-made template, every layout is custom designed from the ground up. During this process, we’ll usually ask our client to provide us with 2-3 website examples of sites that they like the looks and feel of. This helps us gauge the client’s taste for design and lets us know which direction to design towards. Once we have some examples, we will start the layout design stage. During this stage, we design a front-page mockup of what the new website will look like, all of the colors that will be included, menu placement, slideshow holder, etc. This lets the customer see the looks and feel before we move forward and build the layout.

* Thrive does not put a limit on revisions needed to the layout design. We design and revise it until the client is satisfied, simple as that.

3. Development

Once our client has given approval of the layout design, we will have them sign a 1-page agreement stating their approval and nod to move forward. The next step of the process is the web development stage. This is where we take the layout that we have designed and construct the website pages using html, php, css, jQuery and other languages. This process normally takes about 5 business days from beginning to end.

4. Content

Once the pages have been developed, we will ask our client to provide us with the content that we need to fill out the pages. If the site has a photo gallery, we’ll instruct them on submitting the images to us either via Dropbox, physical CD, etc. Once the pages have been filled in with content and all of the components for each page are in place, it’s time for a final walk-through.

5. Review

The final stage is the review stage where we’ll let our client cruise the site for any changes/additions they see. If everything looks great and they are ready for their site to go live, we will submit our final invoice and launch your site.

In the end, we want the web design process to be as simple and enjoyable as possible for our clients. Although our design & development process is normally around 4-6 weeks, some projects can be completed with 3 weeks, and other 6 months, depending on the complexity of the project. Regardless of the site, our goal is clear. Build quality sites and deliver on our promise of exceptional customer service.

Until Next Time,

Josh Olswanger

Thrive Web Designs – Your Boise Web Design Team