What is the purpose of your website? Is it a content-based website, like a blog or magazine? Do you sell products? Will users need to register for a class or event? Every website has a purpose, and it’s important your users know what it is, instantly. In many cases, the site’s purpose may be to attract more traffic and hopefully convert your visitors to potential customers. In order to accomplish this, your website needs to…
Whether you’re working on a paper or building out a presentation for a client, I’ve found that starting with a project outline is a really valuable exercise. As a web designer I create outlines all the time for both new and existing projects; these outlines are known in the industry as wireframes. Like an outline, the wireframe is the skeleton or backbone that everything else like imagery and text is built upon. Without a skeleton…
The internet has been abuzz with talk about the upcoming film Star Wars: A Force Awakes and fans across the world can barely contain their excitement. I will be standing in line with the rest of you opening night, but I am pretty sure I can already predict the outcome of the upcoming film. The Star Wars saga is, at its core, nothing more than the story of good vs. evil. So why all the…
Happy New Year, Friends! As you may have guessed from the title, we have lots of new services and ideas to offer this coming year. Big changes have been made to improve our customer service and bring you a more comprehensive and streamlined customer experience. Let’s get started!
In the last few years there has been some controversy on the topic of republishing your content multiple times on social media. Some people advocate for always creating fresh new content to share, while others see the value in reposting quality, evergreen content. As you can imagine, there are strong feelings on both sides. Here at BK, while we believe in the power of fresh content, we're also in favor of reposting content and commonly…
I'm out of ideas. What can I write that people will want to read? How can I make my post different than the hundreds of posts out there? Who is going to read this post anyway? I give up. I think I'll go make a sandwich. Sound familiar? Listen, we've all been there.
According to the Baymard Institute, 67.91% of all shopping carts end up abandoned - that’s HUGE! For online retailers, it’s time to take some of that back. In the old days, we had to broadcast promotions in a wide range of media, hope our message got in front of the right audience, and hope people took action. With early analytics, though, we really only got quality metrics on those who completed the process. Without information…
At the beginning of June, I found myself walking the brightly lit streets and timeless casinos of Las Vegas. It was my first time in Sin City, and though "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” I couldn’t help but take away a lesson about our clients and their websites.
Are you a World Cup fan? Do you wake up at two in the morning to watch your teams play? If so, you should definitely create a Twitter account (if you haven’t already) because you don’t want to miss what they are bringing to the table for #WorldCup2014. Before we dive into Twitter’s new offerings, I encourage you to watch this 1 minute video produced by Twitter to get you into the spirit of this…
Fresh, engaging content is essential to building a strong, healthy web presence. It's not a trade secret, it's common knowledge. Despite this, many businesses have yet to dedicate the proper resources to content creation. If your doctor told you to cut back on salt because of high blood pressure, you'd do it, right? If a coach told you how to improve your game, you'd practice, wouldn't you? Odds are, you'd listen to these people and…
What is the point of your website? What do you do you need or want it to do for you? It seems like an obvious question; most people would have an answer like “lead generation” or “to sell products.” While these may be end goals, there are many steps between someone’s first visit to your site and completion of such goals. Your job is to move them through the site with as little resistance as…
For years, a few generic Top-Level Domains like .com, .net, .org, .edu and .gov have been the foundation of the internet landscape. Now, 25 years into the life of the World Wide Web, that foundation is getting an expansion. Since October 2013, 175 new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) have been added, with as many as 1,300 possible in the next few years.
We have an important announcement for nearly a third of all computer users worldwide: As of today, April 8th 2014, Microsoft has ended support for Windows XP, which means you need to upgrade your system.
Going organic has become extremely popular in recent years, but there are a surprising amount of people who just don’t get the benefits of switching. At the onset, it seems more expensive, but in the long run the savings and payoff are both greater. When the goal is your long term wellness, there’s no question that going organic is the best option out there. So if you want to be found on Page 1, you’ve…
Last month, I moved across Denver from a house into an apartment. I had lived in the house for almost two years, and while that’s not an astounding amount of time in the grand scheme of things, it was long enough for me to collect lots of… stuff. As something of a ‘serial renter,’ I’m accustomed to moving and the head (or back) aches that come with it. In order to save myself some trouble…
Everyone’s familiar with the old adage, “you have to spend money to make money.” There’s always some kind of investment involved before we can start raking in the dough, what’s important is keeping track of those numbers. Imagine you own a company that sells four different products. After your first order, you realize bookkeeping is hard and decide not to record anything. At the end of the month, you know that you’ve sold some stock,…
“If you build it, they will come.” Sure, sure, that’s not even the right line,* but much like another often-misquoted (into fans) line of his from Star Wars**, it’s so deeply ingrained in our movie vernacular that changing it now is impossible. Jones’ character, Terrance Mann, truly believed that Kevin Costner’s corn-field baseball diamond would attract visitors–even if they didn’t know why–helping him stave off bankruptcy and allow him to keep his house. In the…
"Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil Queen and Jack." If you used Google Fonts, you’d know exactly what that meant. Back in 2011 Google Fonts, then known as Google Web Fonts, released a directory of 19 licensed fonts that ranged from serif and san serif fonts to script fonts. Google believed that everyone should have access to quality typography to improve both their online and offline presence. The birth of Google Fonts opened…
A child sits uneasily on a bicycle, while a parent runs alongside, gently pushing them down the sidewalk, keeping the bike upright. Eventually, the parent has to let go and let the child succeed or fail on their own, but giving up that control, that security of safety, can be tough. Enter: training wheels. Even after the parent lets go, the child still has support to help them succeed. No parent has to give their…
Few companies can claim to be as interconnected into the daily lives of their customers as Google. I use Gmail and Gchat, Youtube, Google Maps, Calendars, News, and Drive (previously Google Docs) on a daily basis, and I know I'm not alone. All of this was born from a simple search engine which grew with such popularity that their company name is now synonymous with internet search. It's interesting, in that sense, to consider how…
When Alice first arrives in Wonderland, she's faced with a dilemma: she wants to enter the beautiful garden, but she can't even fit her head through the door. By drinking the little bottle marked 'Drink me' Alice is able to shrink down to a size where she can fit. Realizing she's now too small to lift the key, she eats the small cake marked 'Eat me' and grows again. Alice continues to shrink and grow…
Once upon a time, our company really built up the ease and advantages of using a content management system (or CMS, for short). As with much in our industry, however, it didn't take long before views started to change, which in turn led to a shift in the way we work. A number of our clients have excelled at using their content management systems and have been able to manage and update their sites successfully…
The look and function of the Internet has changed dramatically within the last decade, and since it initially rose to prominence in the mid 1990s, there have been massive advances that we can't even really comprehend because they've happened so quickly. From slow, noisy dial-up to DSL and cable. From white, bulky desktops to sleek towers and flat-screen monitors. And from old, hefty cell phones that couldn't do anything but call people to hand-held computers…
What does your website say about your business? Or better yet: what does your website say about your business... after someone has left it? It may seem like a dumb question with an easy answer, but there's more to it than simply "we sell and install car stereo equipment." Sure, if someone visits your site and that message makes it through, that's a step in the right direction, but not it's not everything. The internet…
Since May of 2011, I've written over 31,000 words on this blog. That may seem like a lot of content, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not very much. The average novel is 60K - 100K words in length, meaning I'm only halfway to my first book. Break it down and I've averaged just 89 words of content development per day since January of this year. Obviously, the actual creation was much more…