Colorado monogrammed gifts retailer, little dreamers, has big ideas for their new e-commerce website that went LIVE last week. Business owners Nicole and Paula sought a better web design to brand their unique monogrammed baby gifts and more and they needed it powered by an easy to use content management system and e-commerce solution. Five’s custom web design coupled with the SMC was just the right solution.

Some of the project details for this e-commerce website were:

• Custom web design
• SMC for content & e-commerce management
• Enhanced product detail page visuals, details & options
• Layered item option selections for monogram options
• Payment gateway integration with PayPal Pro
• Search engine optimization & SEO friendly URLs
• Email marketing integration & web analytics
• Project, usability & e-commerce consulting

The complexity of the monogram options definitely gave us a challenge (great work Josh and Travis) that led to a longer production schedule then expected, but the final outcome more than makes up for it. Many times during the process and content entry phases, little dreamer’s commented on the ease of use the SMC offers and their excitement over launching the new design. We’re excited to see how our work impacts their business too.

See the new little dreamers website for yourself, maybe even get a unique monogrammed gift for someone you know and if you are looking for a fabulous e-commerce web design, give Five a shout!

I was so busy tending to a few web projects and tomorrow’s Five e-letter that I didn’t bother checking out our Woopra account to see how the daily traffic was flowing.

It seems I was missing out on some big things as the Five website made the front page of CSS Vault today, one of the most respected CSS Gallery websites out there. Nothing like a surge in traffic (over 350 users) and some street cred among peers.

The various CSS Gallery sites are definite inspiration to us in our design work and we have been honored to be displayed in many of them since launching the new Five website in February. Here are a few of the others we have appeared in:

• CSS Mania
• CSS Based
• CSS Star
• CSS Ultra
• Most Inspired
• CSS 2.0
• Best CSS Gallery
• Ala Brasil

Thanks to all of those great web design galleries for showcasing us, we love the attention and hopefully we’ll get some client work onto those same great sites. On another note, we’re busy in our own kitchen cooking up some gallery type web food with a Minnesota flair. More to come on that soon …

The power of Internet video. It’s already big and continuing to grow. By luck I have two great Internet video examples today.

The first, since it has the mass appeal, is the US Open golf playoff going on right now. Thanks to the US Open website, I can watch streaming LIVE video of the bonus playoff round today between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate while I sit at my desk.

Without Internet video of this, I would be checking updates every 10 to 15 minutes or taking a long lunch at the bar around the corner (still sounds like a good option). Internet video brings more eyes to the web. I”ll be interested to find the stats on the increase in web visitors and viewers for todays playoff round.

Drumroll please ……
My second example is our new Five Technology company video. We finished up this minute and a half segment last week, added it to our website as well as a few video sharing sites on the net. Internet video is a great way to showcase your company in an overview, offer customer testimonials or feature a specific product or service. Five’s Internet video production can help you plan, script, shoot and edit your own video segment to really enhance your website. Todays’ website visitor needs more than a few lines of text to engage them and video on your website grabs a hold of the user and lets you tell your story. It truly is a powerful and engaging medium.

Here is our web design company video below in a YouTube player, but if you visit our Why Five page you will see we can customize and embed a Flash video player into any website or page with endless customization.

Give Five a holler with your video production needs for your website.

Five has a few web design projects that are getting ready to go LIVE in the next few weeks so I thought I would give you a sneak peek. If you are in need of a great Minnesota web design firm, holler at us!

Besides looking good, these sites have functionality including e-commerce, an account/user management system and more.

It shouldn’t be news to you that you need to write web content that engages and informs your website user / visitor first and foremost and attracts the love of the search engines second. It can be very easy to accomplish both user friendly content and search engine friendly content when you consider that visitors to your website these days are more like the search engines than ever.

1. Be basic and straight forward. Users appreciate less marketing jargon and more answers on today’s Internet.

2. Use a good mix of your main keyword term, but also mix in related or secondary keyword terms. Try to use both the industry or professional terms (if applicable) but also consider how the general public might understand your product or service.

3. Apply these basic elements to your page header, beginning paragraph, supporting information or bullet points.

You want an example? Ok.

Here is just a simple example of what I might write for a steakhouse in downtown Minneapolis. Lets consider that their downtown location and the fact that they are a premier steakhouse are the big keyword factors.

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page header (H1):
Award Winning Downtown Minneapolis Steakhouse

intro paragraph: Peter’s Steak Palace is a downtown Minneapolis steakhouse and offers the best steak and food for your Minneapolis dining experience. With prime rib, filet mignon, porterhouse and our famous Pete Cut Steak, you can enjoy our award winning restaurant atmosphere and menu of steaks, salads and more.

supporting (h2): Visit Our Minneapolis Restaurant

• View our steak and menu items (list items)
• Make reservations online or call
• View our dress code and other helpful info
• View a map of our downtown location

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As you can see from above I would also recommend finding a way to present your top keyword terms in anchor text to supporting pages. The “downtown Minneapois steakhouse” link can go to the “about page” and the other link to the menu page. With a bit more content, a photo or two correctly tagged and page meta data completed, you have a very well optimized page for the search engines that also helps the user (the main goal!). Mix in a few links pointing to the site and you’ve got a good SEO process starting to work.

Take a look at your content, is it basic enough? Does it clearly address what you do or offer? Where? How? If not, you would benefit from giving it a basic tweak or two that will benefit both your website visitors and search engines.