Showcasing The Work Of A Commercial Real Estate Firm
In just about any line of business, Five works to find the best ways to provide case studies and real world examples to feature on a company’s website.  West’s website has specific pages to view both their industrial properties and retail properties.

The West Real Estate sections feature a photo gallery per project, location map, details about the property and the ability to print, share via email, share via social media and bookmark.

Recap Of This Web Design Project
Here is what Five Technology provided for this website project:

• Custom web design
• Photography of all commercial properties
• SEO friendly web design
• Web content creation
• Property feature, photo gallery & details

The West Real Estate web design project turned out just like their commercial real estate projects, valuable and professional.

Visit the website: http://www.westreinc.com

A Complete Web Application
Rear Window Media runs their business right from their website.  The back-end is a web application that allows advertisers to manage their ad(s) showing, their ad budget and other campaign details.  This application (screenshot below) is the hub of their client interaction and gives complete control to their advertising clients.

Incredible Tracking
RWM advertisers also get to view detailed maps on just exactly where there ads are showing.  How’s that for tracking?  By integrating Google maps with their web application, an advertiser can see what block in downtown Minneapolis thier ad appeared or what mile market on Interstate 35W.  Real time advertising, real time tracking.

Here is a screenshot of the map tracking report.

Web Design Project Overall
Five completed the front end of the web design and as well for their marketing interface.  This project really shows our ability to handle both the marketing front of a project and the complex web application backend, far past our great CMS features.

This project included:

• Web design
• Search Engine Friendly build
• Custom WordPress blog for RWM news
• Advertiser account & log-in
• Web application management for advertising
• Custom Google maps reporting
• Content management platform (SMC)

If you haven’t yet, visit the site:  http://www.rearwindowmedia.com

The project is fully recapped on the Taste Trend blog.

Five also photographed the restaurant and many menu items for the Shorewood to use on the new website.  Below is a photo of their Pepper Seared Ahi Tuna.

• Visit the website:  http://www.shorewoodgrill.com

For those of you new to the term Usability, it covers how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process. So in short: making it easy to use your website.

First up we’ll take a look at an easy adjustment for any website to make, making your web content easier to read.

Rid your website of long blocks of content and use sub-headings and one or two sentence paragraphs.  This simple rule easily makes your content easier to digest and a more scanable read.

Here is the wrong way to display content:

Here is the right way to make content easy to read:

So take a look at your website’s content and keep these usability tips in mind.  It’s simple to make these adjustments and improve your site quickly:

• Avoid large blocks of content (blocks=boring)
• Use 1 to 2 sentence paragraphs when possible
• Use sub-headers (size or color variance used correctly)
• Use bullet points or other call-outs

Give your page the scan test.  Can you look at it for 10 seconds and grasp what it’s about?  If not, apply the tips above and see your improvement take shape.

In making your content easier to digest for your user, you will likely make it easier for search engines as well to understand what your page is about … but the SEO benefits of usability, that’s a whole other blog post.

WCCO doesn’t offer a video embed, click here for the video.

Five Technology worked with Rear Window Media’s President Jessica Netter and created both the web design and an extensive web application that runs the Rear Window advertising management.  Rear Window clients can manage ad rotations, budget and track their advertising with GPS mapping right from an online account. We’ll post more on the Rear Window Project in a future blog post.

How valuable for an advertiser to know exactly what spot on Interstate 94 or what block in downtown Minneapolis their ad was displayed? Sounds like smarter marketing to me.

Check out the video, you’ll see the Five Technology logo in a few shots as we have some ads on their network.

Regardless of the service being controversial or not, Rear Window has seen a significant spike in both drivers wanting to use the service and advertisers for their network since the story aired. Any publicity is often good publicity, no matter how the story is spun.

Congrats Rear Window!  http://www.rearwindowmedia.com

Ranchline Network is a national real estate listing website, focusing on high-end land and ranches for sale. The website features hundreds of listings from brokers and agents all across the US and even Internationally.

Ranchline was founded by real estate broker Paul Taylor III who has achieved incredible success in the industry.  Paul and the Ranchline team saw a great opportunity to bring their marketing and Internet success to others in the Real Estate industry as a tool for them to market their properties and homes for sale as well.

Ranchline Network – A Better Website
At the core of the Ranchline Network website is a focus on making real estate research easy for the consumer.  The website offers the ability for a user to create an account to save properties and searches.  The layout is clean and offers clear navigation in multiple formats for any user to find their desired property.  These include:

• Type Navigation like Ranches For Sale, Land For Sale & Waterfront For Sale
• By State Navigation like Montana For Sale, New Mexico For Sale, Texas For Sale
• Search filters for land type, location, price range, listing ID# or keyword
• Visual map search with listing population numbers by state (see below)

In moving through the real estate listings users are presented with both strong visuals, clear navigation and over property details. Once into an exact listing the page consists of a variety of images, content, details, maps and more.

Content Management System To The Extreme
Our web platform is extremely flexible, scalable and capable of some great custom features. This project offered us the chance to program some great features for the updating and adding of listings.  The back-end offers a great feature and tool set including:

• Online creation of client accounts
• Online payment of one-time advertising & membership fees
• Uploading of listings, data, photos, video and more
• Listing statistics for agents to view stats on searches, impressions, views, clicks & contacts
• XML feed capabilities to automate listing population & updating process

Overall Website Project Details
The Ranchline Network project was a very expansive project and the client is not engaged in online marketing strategies with Five as well.  As an overview, the web design project involved:

• Custom web design
• Content management system integration
• User accounts and agent accounts
• E-commerce & merchant account
• Multiple search & filter features
• Banner ad network
• Photo gallery features
• Google maps
• Various XML data feeds
• Search engine optimization
• Pay per click marketing
• Web analytics

Check it all out for yourself, we’re proud to work with Ranchline as part of their team and business success.

Visit the website: http://www.ranchlinenetwork.com

CTI does some amazing things with concrete floors for both commercial and residential clients.  From large retail to a modern kitchen, they can handle your concrete flooring needs.  The client hired Five to improve the visual impact of their website as well as its search engine visibility. They will even be dropping some solid knowledge on their concrete blog in the future.

This web design project involved:

• Custom web design
• Built on the SMC for content management
• Project photo gallery
• Custom blog design
• Search engine optimization
• Content structure

Both the client and Five are excited to release this new web design.  If this design and coding work has “floored” you, maybe it’s time you holler at our Minnesota Web Design firm to go to work for you.

MotorSportsGearUSA.com

The Motorsports USA Gear site is the flagship of this e-commerce network of sites.  The initial release of the site only lists snowmobile gear for sale, but will eventually offer ATV, Motocross and more.

Brand Focused Websites
The other aspect to this site is that we are producing product line focused websites.  The first one we produced is focused on Klim snowmobile clothing and gear.  The main site will feed product information to each of the brand focused websites.

E-commerce Website Features
These e-commerce sites feature the following:

• Custom e-commerce design (we also made the site easy to re-skin for the brand focused websites to follow)
• Product catalog & shopping cart
• Multiple navigation locations for category, brand & search
• Product preview & product detail pages
• HTML sitemap & product sitemap
• On-page SEO
• Product options & product codes
• Authorize.Net merchant account

We’re excited to release these new e-commerce web designs and make winter a little more fun.

• View http://www.motorsportsgearusa.com
• View http://www.sledgearusa.com

Scott Breuer Homes has an outstanding reputation and track record with over 30 awards in their 20 year construction history.  In addition to custom home building, they offer home remodeling and real estate services to meet homeowner’s needs.

Currently Scott Breuer Homes has a model home featured in the Fall Parade of Homes, model #184.

This web design project included:

• Custom web design
• Built on our CMS for content management
• Model home & neighborhood features with photos, maps, social tools PDFs & more
• Photo galleries
• News & blog feature with custom WordPress blog design
• Increased usability & flexibility for future additions
• Search engine optimization

We’re excited about the final web design outcome, which has already been featured on CSSmania.  Five Technology is looking forward to continuing to build on the Scott Breuer Homes success and reputation.

Visit website: http://www.scottbreuerhomes.com

S.K.i.N. has been a fun project and client for us as we’ve had our hands in many elements of helping launch this business. From the logo design, to photography, to the website, to a social media campaign.

This web design project features:

• Custom web design
• Transparency & JavaScript elements
• Built on our CMS platform
• WordPress custom skincare blog
• Custom drop-down menus
• Search engine optimization

Here are a few photos from our photo shoot this week as well.

Visit website: http://www.irresistibleskin.com