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Website Development

Mar 23, 2015

Portal Websites: Powerful Web Designs for Powerful Websites

Here at Five Technology we have completed a variety of portal websites over the past few years. A  web portal is a website that brings information together from diverse sources in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displaying information (a port-let); often, the user can configure which ones to display. Portal web designs act much like online magazines . These informational ...

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Nov 13, 2014

Mapping and displaying Google Analytics Data

Google Analytics (GA) provides valuable detailed statistics about a website’s traffic and traffic sources but they can only be seen in Googles backend interface by the admin and shared users of the account.  Is there data from GA that would be valuable to display on your actual website? Those of us in the industry for the past 20 years remember the “visitor counter” everyone displayed on their site similar to Facebook “likes” ...

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Oct 6, 2014

Twenty Years and Counting

Five Technology works with organizations and businesses on the planning, implementation, and maintenance of common to complex cloud/web based application development. We do so with the intent to win and maintain your business relationship for years to come. On March 1st, 2015 Five Technology will be celebrating its 20th Year in Business. I can’t help but reflect on how it all came to be, the changes we have seen, and what will keep us on track or ...

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Sep 20, 2014

Is Apple Pay Going To Get Mobile Payments Right?

Announcements about Apple Pay  have been everywhere this past week. Since its reveal at Apple’s iPhone event, we’ve gotten emails from our banks, credit cards and payment gateway providers touting support for the new system. With it comes the promise of contactless near-field communication (NFC) payments, eliminating insecure physical cards and a fast, secure way to make payments from within iOS applications. But is any of this really ...

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Jul 30, 2014

What is an Inbound Link?

Lindsay Kolowich, writer for HubSpot, shares of what exactly an inbound link is. One way to grow your traffic online is to get more links. However, there are different types of links you can use to drive this traffic. There are three different categories of links: internal, outbound, and inbound. Although all three are important, Kolowich believes that inbound links have the highest importance. So, what exactly are inbound links? How are they different from ...

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Jun 13, 2014

5 Do’s for Dynamic Website Development

Experts in website design and development understand the importance of uniqueness, innovation and practical ideas for generating websites for clients. It’s no lie that marketing and advertising methods have taken an entirely new direction with the invention and progression of the Internet. One of the basic reasons behind this change is that not a large percentage of businesses have been shifted to online. Christian Smith, editorial writer for ...

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Jun 6, 2014

The Importance of Website Development in Internet Marketing

Today, pretty much everyone is online for various activities like shopping, job searching, etc. One of the best ways to reach your audience is through a website development . If you’re planning on taking your business online, hiring a professional website development company is probably your best option. These days, people start planning to make a purchase from your store even before you communicate with your potential clients. And it is all because ...

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Mar 17, 2014

Custom Website Development Enhances Real Estate Listing Management

Lately, we have done a lot of work with ranch real estate firms out west and in Texas. All of these clients have had slightly different needs, but all have had one thing in common. All of these real estate brokers needed an easy way to update their property listings on their website. Now these were specifically ranch real estate firms, but this issue would relate to any type of real estate focused business. As a real estate firm, it is important to have the ...

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Feb 17, 2014

Custom Website Design for a Ranch Real Estate Broker

Five recently designed and implemented a custom website for a ranch real estate broker in Houston, Texas. RanchLand Network is a premier sporting and ranch property brokerage. Keep reading to learn more about this great addition to our web design portfolio . RanchLand Network approached us to enhance its online presence. It needed a way to display its ranch and sporting properties and its team of real estate agents. Our solution was to create a custom ...

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Feb 5, 2014

Power of Photos for eCommerce Websites

eCommerce websites are a crucial part of eCommerce businesses’ success. If you’re selling products online, it’s pretty easy to measure conversions:  if you get a sale that’s a successful conversion. A lot of things go into designing and implementing a successful eCommerce website, and one of those is quality photography. High quality images can really enhance your website design and increase the number of conversions, which is the ...

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Jan 22, 2014

Custom Website Design for a Local Law Firm

We recently finished up a custom website design project for a Saint Michael law firm that included a unique element of custom website development that will make this business stand out from the rest. Gries Lenhardt Michenfelder Allen (GLMA) was in need of a website redesign , a logo redesign, and some custom website development. GLMA’s old website design was outdated and its logo needed a major revision because it was going under a name change; Gries ...

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Jan 16, 2014

5 Things to Consider Before Your Website Development Project

Custom website development can be a big commitment. Ultimately, you are considering website development for your website because you want to enhance the usability of your website and/or make your business more efficient. So, you want to be sure that your investment is going to accomplish the goal that you had in mind. Here are five things you should consider when embarking on a custom website development adventure: 1.  Determine your ...

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Dec 16, 2013

Custom eCommerce for a Minneapolis Company

Most eCommerce websites are pretty straight forward. You have a company that sells a product and its customers can buy the products online and have it shipped straight to their door. But what happens when you have a company that has hundreds of products, sells only to businesses, and each customer has slightly different pricing based order amount and frequency? The solution would be a custom eCommerce website that you adapt to fit your client’s needs. ...

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Mar 28, 2013

Automation.com: A Responsive Web Design for Online Magazine

Recently, Five Technology worked with a partner to design and implement a responsive web design , one that adapts to whatever device it is being accessed from. It was a industry  portal website design for Automation.com, which acts much like an  online magazine for professionals in the automation engineering industry. Our strategic partner assisted with all of the graphic and user interface design work, while Five took care of the CMS integration and ...

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Aug 17, 2012

City Government Web Design: Things to Look for in Professional City Website Design

Have you ever tried to design a website for your city internally with a limited staff? If so, you will know that it is difficult because of minimal programming knowledge, lack of time and resources, and small budgets that lead to limited functionality. Your staff struggles to manage and edit essential community content, and you are left without a useful operations tool you had hoped would streamline less efficient tasks. So what do you do? Many ...

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Apr 25, 2012

Cross These Items Off Your List Before Launching A New Website

A vital part of launching a new website is having a checklist handy. Ideally your list should be completely checked off, signed, and dated before launch. In this post, I will give you a glimpse into some of the items on our checklist. There is much more than can be added for each unique project, but this is a pretty general list that can apply to every project. The Checklist Square away all domain and DNS information. Figure out the email ...

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Mar 28, 2012

Add Online Scheduling to Your Website

Five Technology was approached by Hansen, Dordell, Bradt, Odlaug & Bradt (HDBOB) Law Office to create an online calendar based appointment scheduling application.  There were several requirements to this project. Online Calendar to display available time slots Form that needed to be filled out at the time of scheduling Email notifications to all parties of scheduled appointment Privacy of all parties for a scheduled appointment Ability to ...

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Mar 22, 2012

City Website Design for Delano, MN – Online Agenda & Meeting Minutes

With the first quarter coming to end soon, I wanted to shed some light on a city website redesign that was sent live back in February. The web development project, of course, being the official city of Delano’s government site .  While this online marketing project included web design, custom web development, content management, etc., I want to give some attention the online Agendas and Meeting Minutes application . Custom Programming for ...

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Dec 21, 2011

Providing a Communication Link for K12: The Delano School District Website

Schools have an overwhelming amount of academic and administrative information to provide parents and students.  Five Technology can help your school district put all of that information in one easy-to-access place. Five Technology’s website for the Delano School District provides an easy, effective communication link between their parents, students, teachers, and administration. Your district can benefit from this same convenient ...

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Jul 18, 2011

Removing a URL from Google’s Index with Google Webmaster Tools

You have a beta site in production and project completion is weeks or months away. By chance you catch that the site has been indexed by Google. It could be that your staging server has been indexed. Or maybe your client has shared the beta site’s link on twitter or facebook. Regardless of how it happened, you are going to want to get this off Google’s index ASAP. The site could start getting visitors who would be viewing ...

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Jul 14, 2011

Facebook has Provided the Blueprint

Facebook has put social media on the map, and there’s no sense in debating whether it is here to stay .  I think we can all agree that it’s not going away anytime soon, but what is debatable are the benefits social media marketing and Facebook can offer your business or organization.  For some, the negatives of bringing Facebook into the work day far outweigh the positives, while others are using the medium to ...

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Dec 1, 2010

Web Design Project: Whole Cottonseed for Cotton Incorporated

Our latest web design project was built to communicate the benefits of whole cottonseed for dairy cows.  The project was a microsite for Cotton Incorporated and involved working with the great team at Harvest PR . A Website With A Message The fun part about a microsite is the focused message. Cotton Incorporated needed to reach dairy farmers with the benefits of feeding whole cottonseed to their herds in new ways online.  The website is ...

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Oct 19, 2010

Web Design Project: COMPAR

The latest Five Technology web design project is for COMPAR , a Minnesota technology and computer products reseller. New Web Design The old web design for COMPAR was out of date, lacked proper navigation and content structure.  The new web design focused on aligning best web practices with a design that represented their brand today and where they are headed in the future. Content pages, like their technology solutions page, were enhanced ...

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Feb 4, 2010

Web Design Project: Rear Window Media

One of our recent web design projects has been grabbing some attention .  Rear Window Media is a real-time, digital marketing start-up that utilizes LCD screens in vehicles to run ads while on the roadways.  Simply put they are mobile digital billboards, but RWM has done so much more with it. A Complete Web Application Rear Window Media runs their business right from their website.  The back-end is a web application that allows ...

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Dec 5, 2009

Five Technology Client Appears On WCCO-TV

Rear Window Media , a Five Technology client was featured on WCCO news for their mobile digital advertising service.  While the story played to the “controversial” angle of vehicles displaying ads, we’re excited for our client’s exposure of their unique advertising service. WCCO doesn’t offer a video embed, click here for the video . Five Technology worked with Rear Window Media’s President Jessica Netter and ...

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Dec 3, 2009

Web Design Project: Ranchline Network

Sometimes you have to go bigger, the Ranchline Network web design project is an example of that.  The Ranchline brand has 4 other websites on our web platform and I have worked with them for years, including on their logo design. 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. ...

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Oct 30, 2009

E-commerce Web Designs: Let It Snow(mobile)

Our latest e-commerce web design projects come in a 2-pack and cater to the snow loving crowd. MotosportsGearUSA.com and SledGearUSA.com feature snowmobile clothing, gear and accessories for the snow and machine enthusiast. 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, ...

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Jul 28, 2009

Five Tees Up A Golf Course Web Design

Five Technology is proud to release the new web design for Wild Marsh Golf Course .  Wild Marsh is a fantastic golf course located just west of the Minneapolis metro area in Buffalo, MN . Our web redesign aimed to capture the beauty of Wild Marsh and it’s surrounding nature, while making it easy for interested golfers to get all the golf course information they needed to make a tee time . This web design project involved: Custom web ...

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Jul 22, 2009

New Web Design Project For The Mental Health Association Of Minnesota

Five Technology is excited to announce the release of the new website for the Mental Health Association of Minnesota (MHAM).  This non-profit was the state’s first mental health advocacy and education organization founded in 1939. MHAM works to meet the needs of the mental health community, respond to those needs, and work to make positive changes in the lives of individuals and in public policy.  The organization had utilized a web presence for the ...

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May 18, 2009

Hunting Gets A Bit More Social With Our Latest Web Design Project

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 ...

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May 6, 2009

The Golden Age Of Web Design

– Post written by Five Technology web programmer Brad Greenwald During the last decade, millions of websites were released year after year.  In a great trend for all involved, user experience became the dominant focus. Social media is now skyrocketing in nearly every sector for every audience. Websites are now being used on mobile phones and devices. Desktop applications are interacting with websites. Businesses are integrating a large amount of ...

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Aug 21, 2008

Website Redesign: When & Why

While there is no specific rule of thumb in web design for when you should redesign your website, there are many factors that signal it is time to revamp things. I addressed this topic in our August e-letter and decided to post it to our blog as well. Are you in need of a website redesign ? Here are some points that might be telling you it’s time. + Time If you want to consider timeframe as one rule, an industry average is every ...

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Aug 17, 2008

Our Web Design Skills Rev Up For A Breast Cancer Awareness Event

We recently launched our 2nd donated non-profit website ( see the 1st ) for 2008, this time for the Lynnda Laubach Breast Cancer Awareness Ride .  This growing event offers a day of fun while raising money for the Cancer Center at Regions Hospital .  The main event is the 100 mile motorcycle ride and the evening ends with two LIVE bands and a pizza dinner in Rogers, MN. The 4th annual event is on September 20th and you can see all of the ...

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Aug 12, 2008

Web Design Projects: A Sneak Peek In August

The past few months Five has been very fortunate to land some great new web design projects . The initial creative and design process is always full of fun, energy and challenges. Below is just a sampling from four of our current web projects in the works. These designs are being integrated into our SMC content management system. Stay tuned for future posts on how they turned out and the specific web design, development and marketing aspects they ...

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Aug 4, 2008

McWebsites: Not Where You Should Order A Website

I get the question in many meetings to compare why thousands of dollars spent with Five Technology is better than using one of the template web design options or a packaged web solution.  Of course you get what you pay for, but here is a little question I fire back.  Would you go through a drive-thru to order a website from McWebsite’s? Yes I get a laugh, but then I also break down what I’m talking about. Guidance, ...

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Jul 30, 2008

Trucking Company Web Design Project Is An Oversized Success

Otto Transfer hauls the big things others can’t.  Giant telephone poles and other oversized loads are the common freight for Otto’s trucking and hauling services . Owner Kevin Otto came to Five with two needs.  One was to get a professional website up and the other was to make it a valuable resource for his cusotmers and staff by adding online account management and quoting.  Kevin had tried to put up a Yahoo ...

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Jun 9, 2008

Web Design Projects In June

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.

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Apr 18, 2008

Converting Your Website To A Content Management System (CMS)

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. ...

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Apr 8, 2008

Tools For Presenting a Web Design Project Proposal

I thought I would share with you a simple overview of some of the tools I use when presenting a web design proposal to a client. While each situation can involve much more complex communication, examples and conversation … these basics are pillars of my presentation. Also consider in 90% of cases I am presenting in person and when at all possible in our office. In the case of national clients, I will jet to see them depending on the budget and scope. ...

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Apr 2, 2008

Web Design Projects Underway

Five landed some great new web design projects in March and we are currently designing and programming our little hearts out. I will be sharing more on each project as it launches but here are a few little layout snippets from a couple of them to keep you satisfied.

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Mar 25, 2008

Increase Your Business With Web Development Enhancements

Many of the small business owners and managers I talk with in the past few months are looking to apply more focus to their website and how they can better serve customers online. Most have had a website for at least a few years, some have had success with it as a lead generation tool and others admit they just created something to get it “out there” and have given it little attention. The theme with almost all of them is that with the economy ...

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