Proliferation

Apr 25
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Fusion 360: Masters of Web Design

By | web development, website design | No Comments

Here at Fusion 360, we do website design better than Martha Stewart does tax evasion. Here are some of the various awards and accolades we’ve won over the years for our sleek and classy Web design.

The Webby Awards – 1x Winner

One of the oldest and most prestigious awards for Internet excellence, since 1996 the annual Webby Awards have honored the best and brightest in the world of digital marketing and website design. Presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the Webby Awards cover everything from social media and video content to outstanding website design.

To win such an award is considered “the Internet’s highest honor,” and Fusion 360 is proud to have been a recipient.

The Davey Awards – 3x Winner

The Davey Awards are designed for the small advertising agencies with big ideas. Offering awards for all kinds of creative content from both digital agencies and ones that work in traditional print, the Davey Awards honor those that take an exceptionally creative approach to the challenges marketing and design companies face everyday.

With three different wins for our characteristically creative, user-friendly website design, Fusion 360 stands up tall against the big ad agencies — just like how David stood up against Goliath.

The W3 Awards – 1x Winner

Presented by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, the W3 Awards honor everything in creative excellence on the World Wide Web. The W3 Awards honor advertising agencies big and small — and everyone in between. With awards in marketing programs, videos, website design, mobile features and social media, the W3 Awards truly feature all of the Internet’s best content.

As a one-time winner of the W3 Award for our outstanding website design, Fusion 360 joins the ranks of the Internet’s best and brightest. When it comes to Web design, why would you go with anyone else?

Creative Excellence, Quantified

As one of Utah’s top advertising agencies, our clients don’t just trust we’ll deliver the best results — they count on it. While our current stash of awards may be nice and shiny, we’re always looking to bring home as many as we can.

For the agency of the future with the awards to back it up, count on Fusion 360 to bring you the best website design money can buy. We guarantee it.

Apr 19
0

The Facebook Metrics You Should Care Most About

By | content marketing, digital marketing, Facebook, marketing agencies, Social Media, web development, website design | No Comments

Facebook boasts just over a billion daily active users, making it a huge storehouse of potential customers that businesses can pursue. Since most businesses and digital marketing firms are on board the Facebook train by now, the next step for them is understanding some of the metrics Facebook provides — and how those metrics can be used to improve posts.

Page Views

Page views refer to how many people have visited your Facebook page. This is useful because it can show you how many people were either curious enough about your brand to look you up, or wanted to interact with more of your posts after seeing them on their news feed.

Reach

For Facebook, reach refers to how many users viewed your post. This helps digital marketing firms because you can see which posts gather the most reach, compared to which aren’t doing so well. While this information is useful, it it’s not nearly as useful as seeing how many people engaged with a particular post.

Impressions

While reach refers to number of people who saw your post, impressions refer to how many times your post was seen. This is different, because the same user can see your post more than once if one of his or her friends shares the post. Impressions are a useful metric because they give you a clearer picture of how many times your message is appearing to your audience — and can be a good indicator of how shareable it is.

Engagement

For digital marketing firms in particular, the keyword for social media is, of course, “social.” Engagement measures the percentage of people who interacted with your posts, either through commenting, liking, sharing, etc. This is one of the most useful metrics — because the best type of content is the kind that’s interesting enough for people to share with their friends. The beauty of Facebook is that if you’re sharing something your audience likes, they will do a lot of the legwork for you.

Videos

A major focus for all digital marketing firms is video. If you’re posting videos to your Facebook page, you’ll want to know how many people are actually watching them, right? What’s more useful, though, is seeing how long people have watched your video. Facebook will provide you with the number of times your video has been viewed for at least ten seconds. If videos consistently under perform and people begin to watch but quickly bounce, that’s a solid indicator that your videos need some improvement.

In Summary

Facebook provides these statistics for a reason, so don’t forget to make studying them a regular part of your social media strategy. Only by analyzing stats and understanding how your posts are performing can you continually improve your digital marketing game.

Apr 18
0

The Importance of a Company-Wide Style Guide

By | web development, website design | No Comments

For any company or brand maintaining consistent style, branding and visuals are absolutely essential. No matter whether you’re working at a small startup company or a multi-national corporation, having a style guide to refer to is invaluable for anyone in the website design profession. Here’s why.

Let’s say you’re working as a Web designer for a small company. As the sole designer, you come up with all the company logos, fonts, colors and other miscellaneous elements yourself. Now say the company is expanding, acquiring new big clients, and now you’re working with a team of website designers and Web development professionals. Do you want to have to personally teach each new employee that comes in the specifics of your company’s style and branding? Of course not!

Enter the company style guide. With a handy style guide that covers everything a Web designer needs to know, from fonts and hex values to logo sizes and placement, you’ve just saved yourself a hell of a lot of time and effort.

So what does a style guide for company website design typically entail? A company style guide can include information regarding brand voice, company colors, brand logo, positioning and terms of use, typography, specific icons or icon sets and much more. You can even include information on brand history & vision, social media guidelines, copywriting guidelines, design layouts, grid standards and examples, depending on your company’s needs.

A comprehensive company-wide style not only ensures everyone at your company knows what they’re doing, it also ensures that some inexperienced designer doesn’t come along and ruin all your hard work. For freelance designers, a style guide can function as a great housekeeping tool, allowing you to return to work with an old client without too much hassle.

Above all, a company-wide style guide ensures your work will stay consistent, and certifies an efficient, high-quality level of production. For website design professionals everywhere, your style guide is your instruction manual — don’t forget it!

Apr 14
0

How Colors Affect Your Website

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Colors are very curious — they can make you feel something and change your mood. As a web designer, it’s important to pick the right colors for your clients’ websites. You wouldn’t want a yellow website for a funeral home, or a black website for children. As a web developer, it’s important to know what color schemes to use to help set the mood of the website. 

Color Theory

When it comes to picking colors, it’s important to understand three words: contrast, complementation and vibrancy. There are different shades to every color, so knowing what colors are going to contrast the colors you’ll be using will be important to you.

Complementation is similar, but these are colors that will accent each other such as blue and yellow.

Vibrancy is where mood setting comes in; picking a warm color will tend to energize the user, while a cooler color will be more relaxing. Knowing these basics will help you understand how the colors are going to work for you.

Design Principals

One easy design principal to remember in web design when picking colors, is to put a lighter color on your background, so that your text is easy to read. When designing around text, don’t get super creative — you want to keep the area simple.

If a web developer is looking to get a reader’s attention, make sure that you have colors that are contrasting, like using a gray background and lighter foreground. People’s eyes will usually look at the brightest color first — usually white, and that color will grab their attention. Using a variety of contrasting colors will help keep focus on certain page elements.

Color Scheme

Web designers can find a variety of color schemes, and picking that scheme can be a tough decision. Colors can bring out different feelings in people, like cool colors versus warm colors. As a web developer, there are different tools you can use to find schemes such as Adobe and Photoshop. These tools can help you find what color scheme and mood you’re trying to set.

Apr 14
0

How to Tell If Your Website Is Doing Well

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You’ve just completed an amazing website, complete with videos, graphics and intelligent copy. You know you and your family and friends have visited the website, but what about the public? How can you tell if your website design company did a good job? There are different tools you can use to measure the traffic on your website, so you can see just how popular it is compared to your competitors.

Mistakes You Could Be Making

At this point, you’ve probably noted that millionth visit on your page — and that does deserve a pat on the back — but does that really show how popular your website is? Don’t always focus on the upward trends, because you may be missing what’s going down. You may be getting that millionth visit, but how many monthly visits are you getting? This is important to understand, because people may not be returning to your website, due to your website design or some other reason.

Looking At Metrics

Looking at metrics can help you to see what is popular on your website and how many people you are pulling in. Let’s say you’re measuring the time people spend on your website — this can be another way to measure average engagement per visit. When you are able to measure the time on your site, you can see how engaged people are on your website. Say you find that on average someone is on your site for 50 seconds, and that you have an average of four page views a day. You can measure this for weeks, and when hits go up, this will help you notice if changes occur due to your website design, or for another reason.

Be Aware of Conversions

When a customer visits a website but does not interact much with it, such as when browsing Amazon, this does not result in a conversion. The website design itself isn’t the problem, this is actually something called “multi-channel conversion.” This means that you have visitors, but you’re not gaining loyal customers, whether your website exists for purchasing items or not. As a Web designer, it’s important to create something that will help your customers find the answers they are seeking. It may take time to gain loyal customers, but it’s a place to start.

Checking your metrics and other resources to see how popular your website is will help you decide what website design changes you may want to make, or help you find a new way to market. Keeping these in mind will help you to better understand both your website and your visitors.

Apr 07
0

The Alpha and Omega of Web Development

By | Utah, web development, website design | No Comments

Although almost every Website is different (or should be), the basics of the Web development process stays relatively similar. From the beginning phases of planning and gathering information through the end steps of development, testing and delivery, the Web design process involves several integral processes.

Research and Information Precedes Design

An appropriate amount of research must be done before the design process can begin; inadequate background information could result in a haphazard end product. As perhaps the most important aspect of the Web development process, research involves several different tangents. Before design and development can begin, the purpose and goals of the project must be completely designated. Is the purpose of the site to provide information? To sell a project? What are the goals of the site? After these items have been finished, you can identity your target audience and specify the type of content you want on the site.

Create a Design for Your Target Audience

After the initial planning and research phase is complete, it’s time to move onto the design portion of the Web development process. Perhaps the most important aspect of this step involves creating a design for your target audience. A retail site developed for younger audiences will have a much different design approach than a site targeting a financial planning audience. Whatever your target audience may be, your web design process should adequately reflect who you’re targeting.

Develop and Test for Different Browsers

Development immediately follows the design phase. Typically, the home page is designed first, immediately followed by an outline for interior/subpages. This template harbors the main navigational structure for your site — including the site map, page navigation and CTAs. After the development phase is complete, it’s time to move on to the testing and delivery phase. Before a site goes live, your Web designer will test the functionality of the site to ensure that all forms and scrips are functioning correctly, and will also test compatibility issues. This critical testing phase is done to ensure that the site can be viewed properly across a large range of different browsers.

Apr 05
0

The Psychology of Color in Web Design

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The color scheme on your website has the power to either adversely or positively affect visitors. With such a large color palette to choose from, how can you ensure that you select the correct color scheme for your target audience? Whether you’re a web development firm in Salt Lake City, Utah or on the East Coast, the rules of color psychology apply everywhere. Here are the basics that you need to know about color psychology and your target audience.

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Apr 04
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Put Your Ego Aside and Give the Client What They Want

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It can be hard as a web designer, and web developer, to put what you know aside and give the client what they want. You may feel that your idea would be more beneficial and look good too, but your client may want something different. Your client may not know best, but they know what they want their website to look like.

When to Give In

Web development and web design is your art, and as that artist, you were hired to do what your client wants. An easy fix may be to tell the client your idea and see how their idea and yours can come together. As the web developer, they may find your idea better, because you know what you’re doing as a web developer. However, if your client doesn’t agree with you, agree to disagree and give the client the web design that they’re looking for.

Don’t Lose Your Job

As the web designer, you are getting paid to make the website they want, and second-guessing a client can cause a good relationship to go south. This website may be your baby — but to the client, it’s a company and a business. The client may want a website that suits their needs; perhaps something that’s easy to use or straightforward and practical.

Relationship with Your Client

You may find yourself second guessing yourself when presenting to a client, wondering: Why did I become a web developer or a web designer? Sometimes the problem is the client, and you may have to cut ties and go your own ways. If a client isn’t giving you the respect you deserve and degrading your hard work, then this isn’t a website problem, it’s a problem they have with you. Just like any other job, you may not be the right fit.

Don’t lose your head over a web design, just listen to your client and do your best to meet that image in their head. You can still add flare to it, but make sure it isn’t all your own doing.

Apr 04
0

Three Ways to Make Mobile Marketing Work for You

By | Mobile marketing, SEO, Utah SEO, web development, website design | No Comments

It can be frustrating to open up a search engine and click on a link on your phone, only to have it freeze, crash — or worse — not be mobile friendly. People now search on their mobile device more than their computers, so making your SEO more search friendly and mobile friendly, is something that you can do and is something that search engine companies are working on.

Google AMP

Yes, Google is the source of all information these days, and Google’s new program called AMP can really boost viewership and help your SEO on mobile. AMP allows your website to run faster, boosts your SEO on a mobile device, and load quicker. Many people will quickly go back from your page and go to the next link hoping it’s going to be faster. So Google literally AMP’s your website up with this new program.

App SEO

Get an app and boost your SEO. According to a story by Criteo, people were more likely to use a mobile app to search for retail and places within the travel industry, rather than use a mobile website. Create an app that is user friendly, and easy to find. Join the new SEO, and get an app to build your business in Utah.

Google is also helping your SEO by making app searching more organic. This allows those searching for an app likes yours to appear on the list of useful apps.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is something you probably should learn about if you really want your SEO to improve for your company. Machine learning can actually help your advertising by analyzing algorithms and statistics. This will help you reach out to different people not only in Utah, but around the world so you can figure out what demographic your users belong too. This will better help you market and find out who you now need to market to so you can grow your business.

Apr 04
0

Why You Should Update Your Cell Phone For the Sake of Mobile Developers

By | Mobile marketing, web development | No Comments

The worst thing that seems to happen when not updating or updating your phones iOS or OS is having an app crash on you, or have an app that isn’t supported by your current iOS or OS. Web development companies are on top of their apps, and will usually release them with the latest phone updates.

What Happens When You Update or Don’t

When updates do come to phones, Web designers and Web development firms are on top of getting their websites updated so that they will work with the latest version of Apple or Android. If you don’t update your phone, you may not be able to use apps you could before. Get the new app if it has been updated and load it up, as certain apps are updated for certain phones. And if your app decides not to work, go and check the app store and make sure there hasn’t been a recent update. If there has, that’s the app you want.

Updates on Your Apps

Apple has a place in their App Stores that allows mobile Web development firms to fix bugs and securities in their apps. Most updates are for this case, so if your app isn’t working properly on your phone, then you probably want to update your phone to the newest OS or iOS. The mobile developers create these updates to keep your apps up to date and working properly. Usually your apps will update by themselves, but make sure that the iOS and OS is going to be compatible.

Most mobile Web development firms don’t release the new versions of their app until the next phone update. Some will release their app for free for a short time, while they’re upgrading the usable app. This is usually to help with sales.

In the end the way to make yourself happy and the mobile developers happy is to update your phone when it needs to be.