Five Technology is excited to announce the launch of TheHuntingAuthority.com web project.  This hunting community website combined a great web design interface with a ton of features.

Bringing Social Interaction To The Duck Blind
The guys behind The Hunting Authority came to us with the goal of being the best website an avid hunter and outdoors person could find.  Great design, great content, great features and most of all, a voice for the hunter.

We jumped at the challenge to build user profiles so that visitors to the site could create their own profile and interact with each other.

Here are some of the social features we built into the website:

• Account creation with screen name
• Ability to add/edit a bio
• Ability to designate hunting interests, areas and the ability to search other members with similar interests
• Status area to announce what you’re up to
• Bulletin board to leave comments on other members profiles
• Photo gallery to add your own hunting photos
• Ability to embed YouTube or other 3rd party video players
• Ability to write your own blog articles and comment/respond
• Ability to rate and review guides, outfitters and gear
• Ability to show your favorite web links

We packed a ton of great interaction and community tools into the initial launch of the website and already have more features slated as the website takes off.  We built out all of these features on our content management platform.

Hunting Blog
The site features a hunting blog that already is packed with great hunting info, wild game recipes, dog training tips and more.

Setting up a custom blog design isn’t a big deal for us, but the fact we integrated the profile account creation and log-in with the blog was pretty great.  This made the user profile creation just a single log-in for the site and simplified their ability to comment on blog articles.  It’s nice to have your CMS and WordPress play together so nicely, for everyone’s benefits.

Guides & Gear: Give Your Review
Once registered, the website users have the ability to add, rate and review outfitters, hunting guides and the hunting gear they use to hunt with. Users can search for hunting guides and outfitters by searching states or Canadian provinces and then view detailed information.

Working Footer
Lately we have voiced our thoughts on website footers being important.  On this website we put both first, second and even some deeper levels of links and pages into the footer.  You’ll see more of this as we feel its a great usability feature.

Success In The Crosshairs
As you can see, this web design project was no small creation.  The website has many more features than what we touched on here.  If you are a hunter, we encourage you to check out TheHuntingAuthority.com and create a profile. We enjoyed the challenge of the project and look forward to continuing to build out more great features.

We can vouch that these guys are dedicated to having the best hunting website on the Interweb.  Great content, great features and giving those with the passion and knowledge a voice; that’s what The Hunting Authority is about.

Let’s face it, you don’t dare build a website for your business without a content management system at the core of it these days. With many choices out there, what flavor is right for you to manage your website?

We obviously like the features and benefits of our CMS, the Site Management Console, so we thought we’d give you 5 good reasons to work with our web platform.

ONE: User Friendly Interface - The SMC interface was designed for the business owner to update website content, not the IT staff (like other CMS solutions). It’s very easy and intuitive to manage content and website features.

TWO: Scalable – Watch your website grow from 30 pages to 3,000 as your content and feature requirements increase. Road blocks for future business processes do not exist, as the SMC is fully customizable to integrate and evolve with your needs.

THREE: Software as a Service (SAAS) – The SMC software and hosting infrastructure are maintained and supported fully by our staff. No requirements to staff a technical crew who’s responsibility is to ensure your website is up and running 99.99% of the time, we cover that.

FOUR: SEO Friendly – Features built into the SMC will not guarantee you will be on the first page of Google for a competitive keyword, but it will ensure the basic SEO standards are easily implemented on your site. With properly designed layouts, the SEO basics such as Title Tags, Page Names, SEO URLs, Site Maps, Alt Tags, H Tags, etc. will all be taken care of when you add content.

FIVE: A Proven Platform – The SMC has been managing websites for over 10 years. The attrition rate on the SMC is amazing. The SMC is loved!

So there you have just 5 reasons of the hundreds we could list off (including fresh bacon, just ask). If you are having a tough time picking the right CMS for you, give us a shout and we can throw a great content management solution your way.

This past month we had the opportunity to complete a website redesign for the Buffalo, MN Chamber of Commerce. It’s a project I enjoyed for the fact I grew up in Buffalo, moved back 4 years ago and have worked with them on and off for the past 6 years.  The Chamber has been on our content management tool, the SMC, for over 5 years but the site’s design was about 7 years old and in need of a serious redesign.

Web Redesign Needs
Visually we wanted the site to feel more vibrant and alive with ample places for photos.  Buffalo is positioned between two beautiful lakes with the downtown right next to Buffalo Lake, so the ability to show off the setting was a must.

We have also built in photo galleries that the chamber will be adding to in the future allowing them to better recap community and chamber events.

Usability wise, we aimed to improve the navigation a bit and utilized drop down navigation for their future expansion and content additions.

Share The News With WordPress & RSS
The website is most frequently updated with news items and upcoming area events on the home page.  We integrated WordPress into the site so that the news updates would be archived and extremely SEO friendly.  In the near future we will be adding RSS and email subscription abilities for site users to be notified as news hist the website.

+ Check out the new Buffalo Chamber website and let us know what you think of it!

The importance of having a content management system (CMS) integrated within your website has never been more important. The value of an “alive” website with fresh content, SEO value and a scalable platform are just some of the many reasons an organization seeks out a CMS they can utilize to manage and grow their website.

Content Strategy & Web Usability Sharpen The Tool
The Minneapolis Star Tribune recently was the focus of a press release by their CMS and Analytics provider citing a 50% increase in site traffic in the 6 months the tools been integrated. The story also highlighted how StarTribune.com became the top newspaper website in the country for visitor length of stay, which is very impressive.

I couldn’t help but see the true reason for the increases further into the press release though, not so much the specific tools, although the abilities they game them are a factor, it was this:

“Through the integration, editorial staff members increased interlinking within pages to Related and Most Popular stories to augment site visitor stay time. These improvements in viewership have resulted in higher ad rates and a dramatic increase in annual revenue for the StarTribune.”

The tool gave them the ability, but it was having a strategy with their content and making it more user friendly that truly drove their increase. By interlinking from story to story based on relation and popularity, StarTribune.com began to give users more of a path to follow. In turn the users went further down the path. More related information, more links, more insight into what others are reading turned into more time on their site.

So in a simple format, here are the goals and what lead to making them.

Website Goals:

• Land new visitors
• Increase repeat visitors (by making them happy)
• Increase length of stay and page views
• Increase ad impressions and ad values from above items

Web Content Strategy:

• Easy to update content with CMS
• Use analytics to understand the users and content
• Link internally to related & popular stories to keep users interested
• Increase page views & visit length (which increases ad impressions)

With educating and enabling their editors to keep visitors interested by engaging basic content strategy and usability they accomplished their goal. They stopped just adding content and started optimizing it with a strategy.

I often head down this same path with our web clients. We build all of our websites on our content management solution, the Site Management Console but the tool alone is nothing without the right content structure and strategy. Having a purpose and following the right guidelines when adding and editing content can make all the difference.

It’s a great start to have the right tools, but it’s even better to have a strategy on how best to use them.

Over the last 2 years I have become more of a supporter of layout then design.  Yes, layout is an element of design, but in the web design process they have their own areas and purposes.  This post takes a peak at the use of wireframes to help determine a websites layout and also the factors we consider in a web design layout.  It’s a great step for the web designer, production team and the client.

Web Design Layout
Simply put, layout is where things go.  When I start looking at layout needs and options I consider the following in this order:

1. The user.  What do they need to see, read and do.  Usability is a big factor in good layout for me.

2. The target market as a whole.  There are certain expectations a user might have of a small business website compared to a social media website.  These differences determine the navigation, placement and number of “areas” or aspects in the layout.

3. The website owner/company.  In building CMS integrated websites for 8 years, we consider the types of information, the amount of information and the placement of that information.  The areas of the layout will offer up some static areas of content or functions and others will be dynamic or manageable with the CMS. You must give your client the right tools to offer up their message, communication or features.

Wireframes: The blueprint of the layout
Instead of just jumping to a full blown web design, taking the time to create a wireframe to plan the sites layout, usability and features is a great starting point to your visual design process.  It also allows you to worth with your client on these aspects and start understanding the users possible experience.  Q & A about CMS features, user needs and structure all can be determined with a wireframe.

In writing this post and doing a bit of research I also ran across these helpful posts on wireframes:

• The What & Why of Wireframes
• Improving Your Process With Wireframes

The wireframe serves as a great plan, where the design elements are the polish and can include colors, graphics, gradients, photos, buttons, icons and more.  As a designer, it also provides a great in between step for getting your design approved and embraced. You have outlined and provide some foundation to the client, so the first design concept is less of a surprise and of a continuation and enhancement of the wireframe.

A Wireframe Example
Here is a project we are starting work on and shows our wireframe concept and then the first design mock version of the website.  Many web designers will just start adding their design elements right over the exact grid and wireframe once that has been approved.  Some prefer to start on paper sketching as well.  There is no right or wrong way.

As you can see we also provided some notation on the areas.  This is up to you to provide this detail or just keep it to content blocks and usability features.

Next is the web design concept.  Keep in mind that this is a rough version one, the finished product will take on more polish and elements.  But it serves the purpose for a visual example.

I hope this helps you understand the web design process a bit better and the value of wireframes in the layout and design steps.  Feel free to either comment as a client or web designer on how a wireframe has helped your process or maybe you realize it’s time to start using one.