Here I am reflecting on the past year with a grateful heart.  We more than survived 2020, but thrived.  That I am very grateful for.  We've watched so many companies suffer through the pandemic and many not survive.  Not one of Pixo's clients that I'm aware of had to permanently shutter their doors this year, which is amazing!  We work with some remarkable organizations.  And we watched many of our clients transform in some very interesting ways.  Streaming video offerings and upgraded websites were a big part of what we saw our clients doing to better support their customers. 

Remember how at the beginning of the pandemic you got dozens if not more emails from businesses with their COVID statements.  We sent out our own, but a couple of weeks before most of those emails.  We saw the handwriting on the wall, had warned about the possibilities the September prior and rolled up our sleeves, started consulting our clients through their online marketing efforts and it saw results.  We learned from the 2008 Great Recession and started passing that experience on to our customers how enhance their website presence in ways to reach more markets and retain customers.

We look forward to 2021.  We don't expect it to be easy.  Your competition has streamlined their businesses during the past year and everyone is ready to sprint to the finish.  Let us show you how to get an advantage with our website development, website design, content management and search engine optimization (SEO) services.  Give us a call at 720-334-7496 for a free consultation.

Looking for a concrete5 developer or developers?   You've come to the right place!  At Pixo we've been developing concrete5 websites for 12 years.  If you need a concrete5 full stack developer, we have extensive experience with everything from enterprise level development to working with small businesses.

For concrete5 beginners we have two tutorial videos that have been extremely popular.  In all, we've had more than 46,000 people watch our videos which is amazing.  Thrilled to be able to give back to the community in this way.  Our first video titled Full Concrete5 Training Video (Latest Version) is for the latest versions of concrete5.  The Full Concrete5 Training Video is for concrete5 sites that are version 5.6 and earlier.  Both videos give full details in an easy to learn way on the most important tasks that concrete5 beginners would use.  The video even has information that more advanced concrete5 content management system users would appreciate.  No technical knowledge required.   Watch the tutorial video, play around with your new knowledge on your and build an incredible website.   If you need help with your concrete5 website.  Give us a call at 720.334.PIXO.  

• The top four most important factors to increase your local rankings are: 1) Google My Business (GMB) ranking, 2) Reviews on your Google My Business, 3) website ranking in the search engines, 3) Links to your website
• To rank in local organic results, the most important areas to focus on are: 1) On-page optimization, 2) Links, 3) Behavior
• Google My Business has grown importance since 2018 - rising from 25% of local ranking factors to 33% in 2020
• Online reviews are now the second most important factor for local pack rankings - overtaking links
• Key local pack ranking factors: 1) Primary GMB category, 2) Keywords in GMB title, 3) Proximity of searcher
• Our research has found that  the top local organic ranking factors are: 1) Quality of inbound links, 2) Volume of quality content, 3) Keywords in anchor text of inbound links including your city location name.

Okay.  I just got to get this off my chest!  Some might feel offended, but they need to understand.  If you are a business owner or manager, this might save you some time and money down the road.  But great website design services should usually and almost never should be created in InDesign or Adobe Illustrator!  Why?  They weren't built for it!  Can a wrench be used as a hammer?  Yes, I've done it before, but not ideal.  As any good web designer or developer will tell you it complicates the building process and can make the build time a little longer.  Can a good web designer build a perfect design from InDesign and Illustrator?  We do it all too frequently to the satisfaction of everyone (except for maybe the designer that has to build it).  But 98% of web designers will tell you that a good Sketch, Figma or Photoshop file makes life easier and will save you some money down the road. 

Are you a small business just starting up or have been hit by COVID and looking to improve your online marketing.  Google has announced that this week in International Small Business Week.  To support those efforts we are offering 15% new websites until July 1st, 2020.  Looking for a great website that works for your business and allows you to easily manage so you can make changes at the speed of your business?  Or looking for someone to manage your website?  Contact us today at 720.334.7496 and get a FREE consultation and 15% off your new website today!

Are you receiving an error on your concrete5 site when trying to update content.  We have a fix for that.  The latest release of the Chrome browser has a bug in it that is affecting not only concrete5 but other content management systems as well.  A short term fix would be to use the Firefox, Explorer or Safari browsers when editing.  If you need a permanent solution to fix this content editing error, give us a call at 720.334.7496.  We have different options for you.

Pixo has been a leader in the insurtech development services space for over seven years, developing applications, APIs and websites to support the innovation needs of the life insurance industry.  Insurtech refers to the use of technology innovations designed to add efficiency and squeeze out savings from insurance processing models.  Whether you are looking for STP, integrations of divergent APIs, creating workflow systems, machine learning, CRM integrations, integrations with iPipeline, life insurance quoting and application systems or custom website design we can help you move the needle through our consulting and development services.

Are you a marketing agency that wants to offer websites to your clients or a website design agency that has a concrete5 website that you need help with?  You've come to the right place.  Pixo Web Design & Strategy offers white label website design and development services for concrete5 and Wordpress websites.  We work with everyone from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses and can help you with any size project.  Design, development, SEO and social media marketing are our specialties.  We can do as much or as little as you like to help your clients campaign to be a complete success.  We have over 10 years of experience working with the concrete5 CMS and can work within your budget to get you exactly what your client needs.  Give us a call today at 720.334.7496 to get started now.

These days, adding security to your website is more important than ever.  Website hackers are in full force, trying to find security holes in your website, doing brute force attacks to login to your site or doing malicious activity like doing DDOS attacks to make your website inaccessible.  You need a three fold strategy to keep your website secure. Website security is not just for big enterprise websites.  Small to medium sized websites also need security to keep the bad guys out.  If you've even had to deal with a badly hacked website it can waste hours if not days of your time which reduce productivity and sales.  A small investment up front can save you a LOT of time later.

In this article, we aren't going to cover specific details to secure your concrete5 or Wordpress website.  Every site can be a little different.  What we are going to cover is high level activities that can be used by both enterprise websites and smaller websites.  Good security doesn't have a one pill fixes all strategy.  It is multi-pronged.  And these are the security tips we recommend all sites use:

During the 2008 recession a lot of businesses came to Pixo looking for ways to ignite their marketing after their marketing budgets had been slashed.  They needed solutions and they needed them fast.  What we learned in 2008 applies to the COVID-19 economic slowdown that we face today.  The best thing you can do is to act fast.  Your best friend is to be ahead of the situation and be well positioned for when things see an upturn.  The following are tips and marketing recommendations that can work for all businesses.

Over the years we've talked with and helped 1,000+ different business owners with their websites. Everything from website design, to eCommerce to search engine optimization.  In interviewing business owners I've found there is a pattern that develops when it comes to their perception of the value of their website and their opportunities from it.  Often times websites either start out bad or start out good, but fail to keep up with the competition  over time. These are the top five mistakes that business owners make with their websites.

In 2019, the percentage of millennials who said they never used the internet to find local businesses rose to an astonishing 15% (up from just 3% the year before).  This is a remarkable change in usage.  And this survey was done year-over-year with the same survey group.  Why the wild change in usage?  It isn't quite clear yet.  One possible answer is semantics.  It might be how millennials perceive the phrase “use the internet to find local businesses.”  It might be that they look at that phrase to meaning only using the web browser rather than other apps, voice controlled smart devices and other similar internet enabled devices.  It might also mean that alternatives to directory type listings are being used, like social media recommendations.  Also, make sure you are doing what you need to locally to compete with apps like Amazon.  To Millennials Amazon is just as “local” with two-day shipping and may be perceived as more convenient then driving to a local business.  So, most businesses that are product based need to consider online retailers as their competition.   Either way, what a local business owner needs to realize is that young people’s usage is transforming and their perceptions of the best places to get local business information is evolving. 

What should a local business do?

• Make sure that your Google My Business listing is on the top of the list and optimized properly.  This will help drive traffic from map listings.
• Get more active on social media to get in front of young people and interact with them.  Don’t necessarily try to sell them but build community and gain a voice.  Also, do hash tag type of campaigns, contests and special offers to build interaction.
• Go where the young people are going.  YouTube, Yelp and other outlets can be used to drive traffic back to you website and/or store.