http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewreply/367485/

“We are thrilled to receive such an honor and we are very grateful to Mid-Rivers for giving us the full creative authority to run with this site,” said Amy Comparato, Principal at jWeb.

The Hermes Creative Awards are administered by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals to recognize and honor the outstanding work of creative professionals in the traditional and emerging media industries.

This year, the organization received roughly 4,700 entries from all over the United States and several other countries.

Thanks to Mid-Rivers and everyone on our team who helped build this great site!

It’s no secret that Google is by far the most preferred search engine of Internet users with over 70% of the market on its side. Now while we know that every company would like to be the top result for every search engine, it only makes sense to focus on the one most highly trafficked. This is true of SEO and it’s also true of pay-per-click marketing.

Thousands, maybe even millions of potential customers are online right now searching for your service. With the right keywords and a few catchy ads, your company could be the one they find. If your SEO efforts just don’t seem to be paying off or you have a special offer going and need traffic NOW, Google AdWords may be the answer.

What’s great about Google AdWords:
-No hidden fees: It costs nothing to run your ad; you only pay when people click.
-Total control: you choose the keywords, you write the ad copy and you manage the budget.
-No commitments: you can start, stop or edit your campaigns at any time.

jWeb can help you set up and manage your campaign, write your ads, select your keywords and send you monthly reports to show you their progress. If you’re interested in starting a Google AdWords campaign any time between now and June 30, jWeb has an exclusive coupon from Google that offers new AdWords customers $100 in free advertising!

Contact us today for more information.

From wikipedia

π (sometimes written pi) is a mathematical constant that is the ratio of any Euclidean^[1] circle‘s circumference to its diameter. π is approximately equal to 3.14. Many formulae in mathematics, science, and engineering involve π, which makes it one of the most important mathematical constants.^[2] For instance, the area of a circle is equal to π times the square of the radius of the circle.

1. Show off your Smarts: Blogging is a good way to show your customers (or potential customers) that your company stays up-to-date on what’s new in the industry. Posting a weekly or even monthly blog may just give you the edge over your competition by proving that you make the effort to stay informed and continue to gain business knowledge and insight.

2. Promote Social Sharing: A blog can be used as fresh content to post on your social media sites. You can kill two birds with one stone by using blogs to update your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

3. Get Customer Feedback: Enable commenting on your blog for customers to leave comments and questions. Giving the opportunity for interaction and two-way communication shows customers that you’re open to their opinions and value their feedback.

4. Boost Search Engine Optimization: Instead of trying to rewrite your static site content over and over, blogging gives you an unlimited amount of space to optimize for specific keywords with freshly updated content, title tags, images, etc. Blogging on services offered or products sold will quickly build up a wealth of information that will vastly improve your rankings.

 5. Give a Voice to your Brand: Blogging gives a faceless brand a human element, a personality. Blogging allows businesses a chance to speak their mind and lets employees connect to their customers to give insight and answer questions. A blog should be filled with pertinent and relevant information, written with the customer in mind.

We would like to thank all of our clients, friends and colleagues for helping us achieve this honor. We hope to see you next year!

jWeb has participated in this growth over the last 15 years with different products including custom built tools, off-the-shelf proprietary packages and open source products. We believe in the right tool for the job, and endeavor to make the tool fit the business and not the other way around.

Enter Magento.

Magento is an open source eCommerce platform that enables vendors to set up and get started with an enterprise level set of features at a very low entry fee.  The Magento platform started out as a community open source product, and has since expanded into a platform with enterprise versions for businesses that need access to proprietary features.  The community edition of Magento still exists to this day and accounts for the large merchant userbase that they have amassed.

As an open source product, the cost of adopting the base software package is zero.  jWeb brings a vast amount of experience customizing and maintaining the community edition of Magento, in addition to providing our clients with a tailored experience for their business and end users.

Key Features of Magento

• Multi-Store Support
• Feature Rich Product Catalog
  • Custom Options
  • Digital Good and Delivery
  • Custom Fields
• Organic SEO Support
• Highly Flexible Promotions Engine
• Third Party Payment Integration
• Quickbooks Integration
• Mobile eCommerce Applications
• Mobile Platform Administration (Customer Service, Order Processing)
• Built in Web Services Architecture
  • Great for Direct vendor integrations
• International Features
• Shopping Analytics

Why we use it

jWeb adopts Magento as an eCommerce platform because it gives us to the tools to quickly enable our clients to get to market with their products and services with their own custom user environment.  Magento comes out of the box with a suite of features that far exceeds other products on the market and a user interface toolkit that is simply unrivaled.

As a development agency, we feel we will be able to meet each client’s exact needs with customizations that utilize the highly extensive architecture in the system.  The Web Services layer has allowed us to build custom integrated fulfillment systems so that orders can be placed by customers 24 hours a day, information can be exchanged in real time with integrated vendors and customers receive their orders, all without having to take action.

Here’s a list of some of our clients who’ve jumped on the Magento train:

MB Sturgis
Calore Equiptment
Practical Defense International
True Fitness
State Motor and Control Solutions
The Fabric Co
World Wide Liquidators

Large Adopted User Base
http://www.magentocommerce.com/showcase

What is a title tag?
A title tag is essentially a brief page description that appears on the results page when you enter a query into any search engine. They also appear at the top of every web page above the URL.

1. What you see is what you get –A good title tag is what gets users to click on your site in the search results.  Even if your content is top notch and your SEO rank is number 1, a non-descript, poorly phrased title tag will cause users to breeze past you in the search results.

2. Search engines love ‘em! The title tag (along with the URL and content) is one of the main points of reference for search engines and is thus highly relevant. Ignoring your title tags is neglecting a very important aspect of SEO.

3. Don’t lose sight of your brand – It’s always a good idea to use your brand in the title tag. If your brand is well known for the service, including the name will make the user feel more secure. If you’re not as well known, it’s important that your brand be correlated to the service you are offering to gain exposure, especially in the search results.

4. Keywords are key- Choose only one or two phrases that best represent the page content to include in your title tag, but don’t keyword stuff! Make sure your title tag is brief, cohesive and readable. It’s usually best to put your keywords first, followed by your brand name, using a dash (-) or a pipe (|) to separate them.

5. Size matters – Title tags should be short and sweet. Keeping your page descriptions under 65 characters or so (with spaces) will get all your info in “above the fold” as they say.

6.  Title dictates content – The only way your title tags will be effective is if they accurately reflect the page content.  Failing to do this will frustrate the user and confuse the search engines, making it less likely your page will be found.

7. Change it up – Just as you should avoid duplicate content on your site, you should avoid duplicate title tags. Each title tag should be unique to the specific page where it’s found.  This is not only helpful to users but improves page rankings as well.

Mid-Rivers Equine Centre Launches New Website

Mid-Rivers Equine Centre is a St. Louis-based equine hospital specializing in advanced emergency medical and surgical care for horses launched its new website on January 25th, 2012.

The project:

In addition to an updated design, jWeb made several modifications to the new website including:

-A Professionals Forum for veterinarians, trainers, breeders and other equine professionals to engage in conversation
-Horse Health Library and interactive FAQs with information on a variety of topics concerning equine health such as Alternative Therapies, Nutrition, and Dentistry
-Job posting section with online application process
-Success stories page for horse owners to share their experiences

These updates, inspired by the owner Dr. Tim Ellis, DMV, are intended to benefit horse owners and other veterinary professionals by providing ongoing education and resources concerning horse health.

The new website design and layout serves to streamline the site and enhance usability while staying simple, clean and approachable.

A healthy horse is a happy horse at Mid-Rivers Equine Centre!

Take a look: http://www.midriversequine.com/

What is a wireframe?

The plus side… 
Wireframing hammers out all the details of a website, the user experience, the bread and butter. It ensures the client and web agency are on the same page when it comes to functionality.  A pretty website is great, but if users can’t find what they’re looking for, what’s the point?

Usability vs. Design
“I wanted the sign-up form to be in the footer as well.”
“We need a page for testimonials.”
“What happens when I click ‘Submit’?”

These types of client questions and feedback are strictly usability and can be fixed before a drop of color hits the screen. This gray box template may not be gorgeous, but it can save a lot of time and headache down the line when it comes to site navigation and usability.

“I’d prefer a blue background to a green one.”
“That font is difficult to read.”

Aesthetic is important, but it’s also distracting. A wireframe strips the website of all its glitz and glamour and focuses on the nitty gritty of the user experience. It’s quick and easy to fine-tune a wireframe. Design? Not so much.

Development bonus: whoever is coding/building the site will have a much keener sense of what they’re doing if they have a wireframe to click through. Questions like “Where does this link take you?” and “What does this button do?” are crucial for usability and may not always be answered by the design alone.

What’s the catch?
There are some valid arguments against wireframing. One is that wireframes can end up restricting the design. Some feel that once a highly developed wireframe is in place that a designer’s role is reduced to paint by numbers.

However…the good thing about wireframes is that you can make them as detailed or as simple as you want. While you do have the ability to add color, content and images, a wireframe can also be condensed to plain gray boxes and Lorem Ipsum text. This way the designer has guidelines but still retains full creative control.

For some projects that are smaller and more straightforward, a wireframe may slow down the internal process. For an agency that produces more basic, template websites, a wireframe would be an unnecessary step in a process that has probably already been perfected.

However…a wireframe can easily be edited and re-used for similar websites with slight variations. You can recycle a generic wireframe and still retain the important information structure and workflows.

We see it like this:
Designing a website without a wireframe is kinda like constructing a building without blueprints…risky to say the least.