To date this year, Five Technology has donated our web design services and content management solution for two different local organizations.  The first was to the “Vote Yes” committee in Delano for their efforts in getting two school referendums passed.  The second website has just recently been released and is for the non-profit Buffalo, Minnesota Food Shelf.

After I read a local newspaper article on the challenges the food shelf was facing for 2008, I decided that helping them launch a website would improve their ability to communicate with the community to increase support and also offer their services to those in need.

While the web design and site features are very basic, the site greatly increases the food shelf’s ability to gain visibility and share their mission.  One of the fun ways to help is by golfing in their 4th Annual Green Bean Open coming up, for which you can register online.

I also want to pass along thanks to the food shelf Director Jill Ask for the time she put in to helping us gather information to pull the website together.

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!

In landing a website redesign project for a window washing company we knew it had to be a clean web design, streak free content and a clear focus on local search results. Ryan Doliber, the owner of Sparkling Clean Window Washing has been in business for a few years and realized it was time to move up in the web world and decisively differ his brand appearance from the competition.

Sparkling Clean Website Before

When launching his business in 2005, Ryan utilized a do-it-yourself website building tool (Yahoo Sitebuilder) and put together the site himself. It was a web presence, better than nothing, that covered the basics but it lacked the branding, usability and search engine optimization Ryan truly wanted.

Sparkling Clean’s Website Redesign

As you can see from above and in visiting the website, we pushed things to a new level. Our website redesign was able to accomplish:

• Moving the website to a new domain that contained the business name for better branding
• A new interface design with a more inviting color scheme and stronger visual impact
• Clear content sections for home window cleaning and business services
• Best web practices, proper site structure and page structure
• An easy to use free estimate form with date and time requests
• Focused local search optimization through the use of geographical terms like Minnesota, Twin Cities, Minneapolis and lists of other main cities served.

Overall, we’re very pleased with the website redesign outcome and so is our client. Visit the new website and think about requesting a free estimate if you’re in the Minneapolis area.

If your thinking it’s time to clean up your website, contact us about a website redesign for your site today.

You need a change, you need control of your website. Maybe you have depended on a webmaster or an internal employee with some web skills to make updates to your website, but it no longer is the right method. You want things to happen quicker, you want to enhance your content and functionality and you’ve heard it can be done without knowing all that HTML stuff. You want a content management system and you’ve heard right, it can be easy.

Five uses a content management system called the Site Management Console (SMC), developed by our parent company, Intrcomm.

In simple terms it allows your organization to fully control your website, without web skills … add pages, edit text, photos, create online forms and more. On the complex side of things it can handle just about anything you throw at it from e-commerce to user accounts to database integration.

We usually integrate our SMC tool when we are doing a new web design or a website redesign, but sometimes we will just integrate an existing website design into the SMC. Below is an example of a basic conversion to our content management tool we just did this week.

Content Management System Integration Example
National Wall, a concrete wall systems company, had contracted another firm to build their first website just last year, but they soon needed control to update the site with more information. In reviewing their website, we could see they had more areas for improvement, but getting them control was first and foremost.

National Wall’s SMC enabled website has only been up for two days, but in that time they have already:

• Edited content on their existing pages
• Added a Contact Us form
• Added the KonCote product page (now a Koncote website)
• Added PDF documents for download
• Updated their News & Events page
• Uploaded new logos and project photos

Below is a screenshot of the SMC console for editing basic page content. As you may notice, it’s similar to creating or editing a Word document.

During the SMC conversion process we also corrected some of the site’s structure and usability issues making it a little more attractive to the search engines as well as users. There is still work to be done down the road on the interface design and SEO, but it’s much better off today then last week. If you have the need for control of your website, drop us a comment, a contact form or call us.