Executionists - We Get Web Done

Where can a college student go to get stuff he or she needs? Where can a parent of a college student go to send useful gift packages to their child? The answer is Snagola.com, a new service that specializes in gift cards and promotions with major retailers aimed at college students.

We helped them develop their website from scratch. It’s really two sites in one, each built on a highly customized WordPress framework. The two nested sites: www.snagola.com and www.giftcard.snagola.com are powered on the financial side by CashStar, a digital gifting platform specializing in gift card promotions via web, social media and e-commerce. Cashstar works with leading brands such as CVS, The Home Depot, GAP, and more. We were the first web development firm to integrate Cashstar  and “eShop” (a popular Word Press plugin) successfully into a WordPress website.

We worked with the client’s designers on the look-and-feel and then themed the WordPress template. WordPress allows the website administrators to manage their promotions and keep the site fresh. So think of Snagola for sending gift cards and discounted promotions to your favorite college students.

Executionists, Inc. is pleased to announce a strategic partnership with REGARD Solutions, a leading software development firm specializing in Social Media, Mobile Applications, and eCommerce Development.

By pairing our award-winning front-end solutions with REGARD’s expertise in mobile, social, and eCommerce, our clients can expect a seamlessly integrated total solution for driving business across all platforms.

Areas of Expertise:
Our clients range from startups to Fortune 500 – Our projects range from HarborFreight.com, the highest-grossing Magento-powered site on the web, to targeted mobile apps such as City Sourced, a free smartphone app that allows users to engage directly with city agencies.

Contact us to see our Magento, Social Media and Mobile App Portfolios.

We have completed site enhancements for our client Pinnacle Construction Company, a leader in the construction industry in Southern California. Our work included revising their home page transition, updating the color scheme, updating and adding new projects.

We just launched a customized WordPress website for Chin San Asian Bistro in Thousand Oaks, CA. Chin San Asian Bistro is a family-owned restaurant specializing in Pan-Asian cuisine. As a popular eatery, they needed a great looking website to put an attractive face on their web presence. We customized and re-skinned a WordPress template to suit their branding style and implemented all the basic functionality to serve the needs of a food service website including a photo gallery, catering page, menu page, contact us form and an email signup for specials. So if you find yourself in the West Valley with a yen for Asian cuisine, check out Chin San Asian Bistro. And if you’re craving a fresh website makeover, give us a call at 310-310-754-3807!

We recently launched a totally redesigned site for client Primary Color, specializing in a comprehensive array of print-media products and services for enterprise-level clients. We designed their site from scratch, based on design direction from the client. We built a robust and customized WordPress-based CMS (Content Management System) to handle a multiplicity of products, services, and solutions they offer their clients, as well as several different blog streams. The home page includes dynamic flash animation that showcases some of the wide array of print solutions Primary Color provides.

Many ecommerce stores cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop and maintain. Magento GO is a low-cost, full-featured ecommerce solution. Because it is a templated, hosted solution you will be somewhat constrained to the available templates and functionality. One of the best ways to see if Magento GO is right for you is to review the features and functionality they offer and see if it will be sufficient for your business.

Full list of features: http://www.magentocommerce.com/go/features/
Plan pricing: http://www.magentocommerce.com/go/plans/

Then sign up and select a template that has a basic layout you like. Then we can create custom graphics and modifications around that template to better promote your products and brand.

Our Magento GO services encompass the following:

Consultation: The initial consultation is free. This should allow us to understand your basic requirements and provide you a proposal on next steps.

Discovery/Definition: Many times our recommended next steps will include a Discovery and Definition phase. This phase will allow us to more clearly understand your business goals, determine if Magento GO matches your requirements, and plan out the scope of the effort.

Interface Design: Magento GO already has a variety of templates that you can use for your store. Most businesses will want to customize them with their branding and design that reflects their desired customer experience. You may have an existing design ready to go or we can work with you to customize the interface design and page layouts within the Magento GO framework. Once you have approved the design our technical team can code it using HTML/CSS and PHP.

Technical Integration: Our developers will take the approved interface design, which is usually in Photoshop PSD files, optimize the files, and convert them to HTML/CSS code. This code will then be integrated into the Magento GO templates as required. We can enable various features of the templates and enhance them within the constraints of the framework. Once the templates have been customized we will import several products. The remaining products will be uploaded by the client or we can do it for you at an additional cost.

Maintenance Services: Post-launch, our design and technical teams can provide services to help you keep your Magento GO store up-to-date.

Marketing Services: Our team can provide SEO, email campaigns, Social Media, and other promotions to help advertise your online business.

Rates: Our rates range from $75 – $120 an hour depending on the tasks required. We can work on an hourly and/or project price. We also offer discounted Retainer Rates for website maintenance work. Please contact us for more information. 310-754-3807 or magento@executionists.com.

by Jessie Jo Blalock

Nearly 1 in every 5 Americans access the web daily and by 2012, 1 in 2 mobile subscribers will own a smartphone. Due to such a rapid growth of smartphone sales and mobile browsing, it is imperative that web designers and developers educate themselves with the best practices of strategic mobile web design. With new technologies comes a new set of challenges, in which case, remember what your mamma taught you:

Less is more

… Especially when it comes to mobile web design! Mobile design should be regarded as scaled down versions of their parent site. And since smartphone screens vary in size and shape, mobile website design must remain clean and simple.  If so inclined, you can always leave the option to visit the standard site through a simple link.

Actions speak louder than words

Literally. There is such little room for content on a mobile web page and mobile users are typically on the go, wherein mobile web designers must prioritize their content with actions (IE a login page, product search, store locator, etc.). Remember: person’s goal for browsing the web from a mobile device is vastly different than a desktop or laptop.

Cleanliness is next to godliness

Clean and semantic markup will guarantee that the browser is capable of accurately displaying the web page and provide the mobile users with a more pleasant experience with little to no errors or difficulties.

Better safe than sorry

An ample amount of white space is essential in mobile web design. Though the objective of most companies’ websites is to engage users and present them with as much information as possible about their products and services, too much content will appear chaotic on a smartphone.  Afford plenty of white space in your site design to ensure your site will be displayed properly on any mobile device.

Waste not, Want not

With mobile Internet connection speeds generally being slower than desktop Internet connection speeds and a variety of screen sizes, implementing images and pictures does more harm than good. Excessive use of images will produce an unfriendly user experience; mobile users want functionality over design aesthetics.

Executionists, Inc. offer mobile solutions for websites, click for a free consultation.

See Our Work

Search engine optimization, SEO, is an integral part of the web business and marketing strategy. People are more likely to locate a product, service, and/or website through search engines than by traditional advertising or social networking. Because of this, people will do anything to gain a competitive edge in SEO. Unfortunately, these dirty little tactics, once thought to outsmart search engines and increase SEO, will now actually lower your rankings and even potentially get you banned.  Google and other search engines have implemented several sophisticated methods to pick up on the following shady SEO practices and will automatically “blacklist” your website and dub you a spammer.

Keyword Stuffing: A common misconception is that search engines focus on the quantity of keywords in your website. Search engines can detect an over usage of keywords and ultimately label your website as “spammy.” Now, websites are given a higher page ranking if there is a balance between SEO techniques both on and off the website

(more…)

1. Social media isn’t just experimental; it’s real ROI and can be tracked and measured

• Similar to website analytics that come with most hosting accounts, there are tools and analytics applications that measure real-time activities within social networks such as Radian6, Infegy Social Radar, Scout Labs, and Alterian
• Free sites like SocialMention.com and HowSociable.com quickly measure your influence and visibility over a broad social media spectrum

2. Get intimate with smart phones

• Social network activity is becoming more local and mobile with GPS in smartphones
• Location based services and features create competition, promote offers, and reward participants. Examples include Yelp, Foursquare, etc.
• Localized results help people connect more intimately

(more…)

By James Copper

There are millions of websites on the internet all competing for the attention of users. This makes the design of your website very important if you want to stand any chance of surviving. You can spend huge sums of money promoting your site, but if the website design isn’t up to scratch then it’s not going to make any difference.

Before you look at SEO or other promotional campaigns, you should first experiment with the design of your site. All good web designers should already be aware about the importance of good website design.

Simple

Sometimes simple is better and this is true on the internet. It is possible to create stunning and very advanced sites. These are time consuming and can also take a long time to load. It is almost always best to stick to simple website designs.

Be careful if you are ever using pop-up windows as most people have pop-up blockers. These can also cause irritation if used too often. Simple websites will load quicker and will be indexed by search engines much quicker.

Titles

Every single page of your site should be valuable. All of these should have a clear aim in mind and should have a title. The title must contain your keywords as this will help to get your site indexed in search engines.

You can find out about keywords which you might like to use by using keyword tools like the one offered by Google.

Images

Using images on your website is great and will look fantastic. However you need to be careful not to overdo it. If you include too many images on your site then this can slow it down and make it take much longer to load.

The same goes for flash. Flash may make sites look professional to some people but it also makes it slow down. It also means that many people will have to download additional software to view your site. If you must use flash then keep it to an absolute minimum, not that many people appreciate flash websites anyway.

The main problem with flash and images is that search engine robots cannot see what they are. They will only index a site based on the text content. Set the alternate labels to try and reduce the impact this has on your site.

Meta Tags

When you’re designing websites it might be tempting to ignore meta tags and other information. However the meta description is used by search engines and should be able to encourage surfers to visit your site. Make sure you create a unique meta description and put the right one on each page.

Text Links

You must be very careful to create text links to different pages of your site even if you have another form of navigation. These are normally displayed at the bottom of each page. This will make it much easier for web spiders and robots to crawl your website and index it in search engines.

You need to be able to consider SEO at the time you design your website. If you design your website correctly then you should be able to make it look appealing to search engines.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.thebigagency.co.uk, and can be reached at info@thebigagency.co.uk