Complete Web Design for Aspen, Colorado. Web Marketing, SEO, Wordpress, Flash Design.

Create your web presence

JasonHouston — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:47:03 +0000

Boost your business and get found on the web today with Complete Web. Every website I create has excellent rankings with Google and I have a proven track record of improving business through online visibility. Sunning WordPress Blog websites, fully functional online stores, and corporate websites with members only access are only some of the areas I cover. Each site is fully search engine optimized and a strong link building campaign is provided. I give full tutorials on how to update your website with having to contact a web developer every time you need an update saving you money. I will beat any web developers price and I will have your website up and running faster than anyone else. I am based out of beautiful Aspen, Colorado but my work can be found from New York to Los Angeles.

Contact Jason today to get started.

970-901-6850

jason@mycompleteweb.net

Tutorial Post

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:00:48 +0000

Here is a quick run through of how to add photos to the FIA Gallery:

First Navigate to the FIA Gallery section on the WordPress backend and navigate to “Manage Galleries”

Here is the “Manage Galleries” section.

Add a name for the new Gallery. Click “Add Gallery”

Now upload your images from your computer and make sure to assign the new images to the new gallery name. Here I created “Sample Gallery.”

Now navigate to your “Pages” section

Navigate to the page where your photo gallery is. Here it is “Photo Gallery”

Now you will see the shortcode for the other galleries currently on the site. Place the cursor below “Scroll down to see our photos” and click on the upper right icon of the photo above and to the left of the question mark icon.

You will now see the different galleries. Select the new gallery and click on “insert”

You will now see the new shortcode for the new gallery. Be sire to click on “update” in the lower right hand corner.

That should do it.

10 reasons to buy a WordPress Theme or Template

JasonHouston — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:04:52 +0000

I have been implementing WordPress for 5 years now and I am so happy to see it evolve over the years into the leading content management system. I began using WordPress as a side to my clients’ websites for the blogging page. The main part of the site would be static HTML with WordPress being the sideshow. Now, 99% of my website work for clients is completed using 100% WordPress.

In this blog post I will give examples of why I love WordPress, why using a pre-designed template is a great option, and examples of how pre-designed templates look for my clients when they are completed.

I first noticed the importance of WordPress in SEO. The blogs of my clients’ websites began rating higher than the website itself. Being a very important SEO ranking factor is new and relevant content, it makes sense why a recent blog post would rank higher in many circumstances. There are now some great SEO plugins that when used properly, will make any WordPress site highly competitive in the SERPs (search engine results page). Another SEO factor is clean code. This is where a good template comes in and here are reasons why to use a predesigned template for your next website.

1. Buying a template is a timesaver.

I understand that when you buy a template you are losing the personal touch of having the site being your own work (We will touch back on this subject.) Creating a template from scratch takes a lot of time. Time is money and I would rather spend the $35- $40 for the framework with all the CSS resets and Internet Explorer fixes already implemented. When it comes to the WordPress theme files needed and the endless checklist of things to make a custom theme work, using a predesigned theme is well worth the money. You can also find many free themes but most of these themes lack the documentation and can also cost you time.

2. Clean Code

Having a website with a well organized coded backend will help you be successful in ranking higher with SEO. When you purchase a theme from a trusted author you know the code is up to standards with many of the themes now being coded in HTML5. I am yet to see a theme that doesn’t have a clear structure. The CSS files are in the proper place and most of authors use a 960 grid system which is also a time saver.

3. Buying a theme saves you money

Once again, time is money. In the hours a developer would spend on customizing a WordPress theme from scratch you could have the developer focus on other parts of the website. Especially if you are paying a developer by the hour. Buying and then customizing a template gets a major step out of the way and makes time for SEO, marketing, branding, and social media integration. Using a template will produce the same end result in half the time which usually comes down to half the cost.

4. Support

When you buy a template from a Template website like Themeforest.net, each theme is well documented with details on special features, installation, customization, and author contact information. Most authors will answer back your questions with the theme with-in a couple of days. Many of the themes have websites with forums about the theme and many questions are answered within these sites. This also save time and gives the client 2 layers of support – through the developer implementing the theme, and the author who created the theme.

5. Themes are always improving

Because the authors get paid buy the number of sales of the themes, they are always keeping up with the latest and the best web technologies that can be implemented into the theme. New and more efficient coding styles, HTML5 to replace dying non-compatible Flash, creative new photo sliders and endless amount of plugins to make the theme more versatile.

6. Endless creativity

Just because you purchased a theme does not mean you have to stick with the provided skin or skins of that theme. If you know any CSS or have hired a web designer that knows CSS, you can change any part of your theme to best suite your liking. Backgrounds, fonts, buttons, picture styling, slideshows, etc. When you search for a theme try and focus on the location of the navigation bar, the general structure of the theme, and if it will work with your desired framework needs. Some themes have more features than others. sliders, font collections, admin options, shortcodes, etc. My first step in customization is to find a desired color scheme from a site like Adobe Kuler and implement it throughout the site.

7. They don’t look like templates anymore

Templates have come a long way from the basic boxy, typography deficient, boring look-a-likes. These designs now rock. They look amazing and can suit most any design need. The template authors are from around the world and are competing for your money. That makes the designs much more attractive. Some of the better authors I have come across are Kriesi, Denoizzed, Unisphere, and ThemeBlvd.

8. You learn from the best

Whether you are a developer, or just beginning with html and css, you will learn more from working with these templates. You will quickly begin to learn the styles of others and more efficient ways to code or organize your work. If it works for them, (Most of these authors are making a bundle from the template sales.) it will most likely work for you.

9. Buying a template makes you money

If you choose to leave the template link in the footer of your template and others follow that link to purchase the theme, you can make money. Unfortunately, this takes away from the personal touch of your site but if you have a great looking site and do not mind the name of the original template at the bottom, why not make some money?

10. It can be fun

As I said earlier, these templates rock. When you come across a template you really like, but it doesn’t quite work for the particular project, keep a note of it for a future projects or for a developer to use with your next project. The sky is the limit with these templates and with WordPress in general. Using these templates for yourself or for your clients is exciting. Plugins for WordPress now reach further than apps for the iPhone. If you can think of a use for WordPress, you most likely can find a plugin for it. Welcome to the future of the web!

Here are some of the better templates I have worked with. These templates not only look good but have great features and an easy to use admin. They are well documented and the authors have shown great communication when support was required.

Breeze Theme - The theme currently being used for this site.
Prestige - A well documented versatile theme
Alyeska - My favorite to use theme. Great Theme Admin area, very easy to understand. Great font selections and shortcodes.
If you are in need of a developer to implement a great WordPress theme for your business or personal needs, feel free to contact me to install and style the theme to your preference.

Jason Houston has lived in Aspen, Colorado for the last 5 years. He is passionate about the web, and is dedicated to all areas of it. He specializes in small business web-start up and enjoys making the process as exciting as possible.

Intuit Websites vs. Web Designer and WordPress

admin — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:19:35 +0000

The question here is, do you use Intuit Website Building Software or to hire a web designer to set-up WordPress? To start, you must have some obvious business goals in mind. Like the Intuit commercial most of us have seen before, it starts out with the frustrated candy store owners pulling their hair out over trying to get more business by creating their own website. They give up doing it on their own and go to Intuit Websites and voilà! They have a great website and business is booming. But is this really the case? As a business owner, your obvious goal is to drive up business by creating an online presence. You want a professional looking website that will make your business look credible and trustworthy. You also don’t want to spent $5000 in the process. The site needs to be editable anytime, anywhere and the user interface needs to be easy to use. So, like the commercial suggests, Intuit Websites is the way to go, right?

I recently had a new client come to me that has used Intuit for the past 3 years. They said that they are frustrated with the look of the website, the monthly cost of the site, and they cannot be found in organic search through Google. Hold-on. This is not like the commercial. I thought, with Intuit, you pay $5.99 a month and business will be boosted? Not the case here. With this particular client that decided to go with Intuit they are paying close to $50 a month for a site that is not SEO friendly and looks like all the other Inuit websites – boxy, generic, thrown together pages. So, in order to achieve a decent site with more than 3 pages and more than 3 photos, you eventually will be spending close to $50. Intuit is a major company, and they are in the business of up selling products. They hook you in with the “free” for 1 month, then the $5.99 then eventually up to $50 per month. Oh, and if you want your site to provide a decent size blog or maybe sell a couple items as well, add $19.99 + $9.99 a month getting you up to about $80 per month. Lets say after 3 years of working with Intuit’s Gold package with eCommerce and a blog, your total cost is close to $3000. $1000 a year just to have a company website with a blog? Way to much. Let’s start over here with WordPress.

I am a web developer. I am of course on the side of having someone come to me, and pay me to have their website done rather than someone spending money with Intuit. I will be honest here, I want your business. I will also be honest about Intuit and that before I had my meeting with the unhappy client, I did see Intuit as a threat to the local web designer community. Not now. After doing my research and reading the countless forums and reviews of unhappy Intuit customers, I decided to put Inuit Websites toe to toe with a WordPress based business website. Let’s cover the cost of WordPress and look at it’s features.

First off, WordPress is free to use. It is called open source and is non-profit. Like Intuit, it has templates to choose from. Except WordPress has thousands more to choose from. A popular WordPress template site that I use regularly is ThemeForest. They have many great templates for around $40 from designers all over the world and these designers make a boat load of cash selling them through Themeforest. That means each template is well-documented and backed personally by each author. I am yet to see an author not respond to any of my questions promptly. WordPress is currently the most popular content management system and it is for good reason. It is primarily a blogging platform and it doesn’t cost $20 a month just to blog! Being based on blogging this immediately makes it great for SEO because new and updated content is king. The back end of WordPress is well organized and if you can use Facebook, you can use WordPress. You can edit any content, change colors, fonts, and add unlimited photos. The add-ons far surpass Intuit. There are about as many add-ons as iPhone apps. Each rated and reviewed (my recent favorite is the ski resort snow report widget.) Now, lets review the cost so far. Right now we only have spent $40 on the template and WordPress itself is free so we don’t have to worry about that. All we need now is your domain name and hosting. A typical domain name is about $12 a year and the hosting for WordPress comes to about $60 a year bringing your total yearly cost to $72 plus the template. Now, if you are like most people, your focus is your business and not how to set-up and customize WordPress. That is where someone like me comes in. Hopefully after a search of your local web designers you can find someone to save you much time by paying them to set-up and customize your new WordPress theme. I typically charge anywhere from $500 – $1200 to fully set-up and customize the WordPress theme. Working with a reliable local designer has many more benefits than working with Intuit and being on the phone constantly to get your site to look the way you want. Having a local designer work on your WordPress site will save you countless hours allowing you to focus on the business at hand. After the one time fee of setting up the site, all you need to pay from here on out is the $72 a year to keep the site going. That is a huge difference compared to $1000 a year with Intuit.

The winner of this match is obvious. WordPress saves you time and money in the long-run. Your site will look exactly the way you want and your business will be found easier in the search engines. The work with your site is kept local instead of putting your money overseas (Intuit outsources much of the work to India). You have great support between the template designer and your local reliable web designer without having to call and give your customer number and password every time. It is for these reasons I give the advantage to WordPress. Long live WordPress and your local web developer!

Free personalized SEO Evaluation

JasonHouston — Sun, 15 May 2011 19:51:52 +0000

Improve the visibility of your website by starting with a free SEO evaluation with Complete Web. Send your website’s link and the code will be reviewed. I will then give you tips on what to do to get your site higher in the search rankings. I will send an email report on my findings and what you can easily do to improve your site visibility. I have extensive knowledge in search engine optimization and this free service only takes a couple of minutes to go over the code of your site, then evaluate the strong and or weak points. This is a free service and the report is confidential. Send me your link with your email address below, I will respond with some great tips and what direction if any, your site should be taking. Feel free to try it and I look forward to connecting!

Follow @completewebCO on Twitter

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Submit website for free review

All reviews and emails are kept private. Depending on number of submissions, response time is between 1-7 days.

Comparing various social media campaigns in Aspen, Colorado

admin — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:54:40 +0000

Social Media is defined as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” In a nut shell, social media is content that is created by its audience. Social media is fun and engaging. In the case of products or businesses, it creates talk in the community and around world bringing awareness and boosting public image, eventually leading to more sales. The 2 main platforms which are connecting people and businesses in the social media world are Facebook and Twitter. Businesses small and large now use these social media sites to engage its audience. Here I focus on the use of social media by small businesses in Aspen and how they use it to create more business.

The Belly Up

The Belly Up would still be one of the most popular venues in Aspen without a social media campaign but with it, they have created a great online image. With their many “likes” people are informed on new concert dates and sample live shows through people’s home feed and are encouraged to join in on the conversation. These conversations are what make these pages so successful because they reach much further than the 6,570 people that “like” the Belly Up’s page. The conversation is seen by other friends that do not yet “like” the page therefore reaching many thousands more. They have a very similar Twitter campaign mirroring many of the Facebook updates to the Twitter page and making the shows known on mobile devices. This type of campaign is an easier sell to people because the product is music and fun but with that said the people at the Belly Up do a great job in executing their Facebook and Twitter pages by really involving the Belly Up community.

Here, the Belly Up offers prizes to the online community and really engages the people that “like” their page.

Jimmy’s Restaurant and Bar

Jimmy’s Facebook page does not engage their fans as much as the Belly Up, but they do put time into it. They post photos showing the good times that people are having there and it has a good positive vibe. Keeping your business page up to date is the most important part of having the page. It makes your business look involved instead of a tumble weed page where the last post was a year ago and it makes one wonder if they are even open anymore.

Rustique Bistro

Rustique has an active Facebook page, but they really use it to advertise itself to other people. This is good by getting their name out, but it can also be a harmful way of using social media. Create to many repetitive posts that look like advertisements and people will block the posts. Even though it’s good to see what specials are being offered, it is good to create meaningful fun posts that “engage” the audience.

Gwyn’s High Alpine

Gwyn’s High Alpine atop Snowmass mountain makes effective use of their Twitter page by posting useful information. This is one of my favorite Twitter feeds in the winter season because they always give a truthful report of how much snow has fallen at Snowmass mountain and they most always report the soups of the day. It’s always a positive post that makes me want to stop in. It’s great to know the specials to any restaurant before you leave your house.

Two Old Hippies

Two Old Hippies takes their twittering to a new level. They make their voice heard, they make it a point to follow lots of people, and it has paid off with their over 3,000 followers. Unfortunately I have found that they “machine gun” tweet and I had to “unfollow” them because they over-tweeted. They do a great job and you have to wonder what kind of campaign they are running here. They have a Tweet that goes off about 3x and hour and many of them come all at once so you know either it is someone who has ALOT of time on their hands or they are using a 3rd party software system such as Hootsuite to automatically send out pre-thought up Tweets. Whatever it is, it works for them and they have an engaged audience with many mentions from other Tweeters.

So these are just some of the social media examples with businesses in the area, and it is great to see other business jump aboard. Marketing a business takes an all direction approach and using social media through Twitter and Facebook is just one of the many ways to boost business. Like most things, it takes time and dedication, and if you don’t have the time to manage your social media campaign then you can hire someone to do it for you. There are many new up and coming companies that can design your Facebook and Twitter page, create interesting Tweets and provide different ideas on how to engage your followers. New companies like a2interactive specializes in running successful social media campaigns for businesses and should not be over looked.

About the Author

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admin — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 20:48:24 +0000

Remodel your website!

admin — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:09:33 +0000

Awebsite today is becoming the standard for representation of any business. It is the first impression people receive when they are interested in buying a product or using services. A website landing page can many times be the difference between gaining a new customer or within seconds, losing a potential customer. When I say seconds, I mean that is how long, by research with Google Analytics, a potential customer will stay on a site that looks unprofessional. This is called the average “bounce” rate of a site. It is much easier now days to browse on a computer than drive to locations looking for a product or service. That said, it is also very easy to click the back-page button with an undesirable site. Unfortunately, a particular business may be a better choice, but with a poorly designed and maintained website, many customers may be driving to the competitor with the more professional looking site. I see poorly designed sites all over the web and much of the reason for this is businesses saving money on possibly doing the site themselves or paying an inexperienced designer small money to do an inferior site. Site design can be expensive, but it doesn’t have to be.

Complete Web Site Redesign

We can take your already designed site and remodel it to look professional and clean lowering your bounce rate and keeping your customers. Your site will have clean code and will do much better with search engines. Keep your photos and the main purpose of your site, but make it look great!

Contact Jason with Complete Web for more information at 970.205.9325

Web Design Referral Program

admin — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:25:57 +0000

Here at Complete Web we pride ourselves in quality web design at a reasonable price done quickly all while keeping great communication long after a project has been completed. We appreciate your business and we look to make the process of having the right web site as painless as possible. Our customers appreciate us and after having a great experience with Complete Web design, many times they have sent us more business from other people. We would like to say thank you to everyone who has referred other clients to us and starting now we are giving back $100 to anyone who refers a new client to us. Unlimited referrals, many possibilities.

Showcase of great Ski Resort Website Designs in North America

admin — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 20:51:50 +0000

In the spirit of the winter season and with skiing on many people’s minds, we decided to take a tour of this years site design of many ski resorts in North America. Many of the sites viewed have similar set-ups with some sort of a side show with photos, a widget with the temperature, snow base depth, and number of trails open. We explored many sites from major ski resorts to much smaller ski hills located in places you wouldn’t think would be associated with skiing. Our favorites included visually appealing sites with good navigation and a smooth color scheme. This was a fun project and hopefully it will get you in the mood to hit the nearest slope! Here are our favorites:

Aspen-Snowmass.com

Not only our favorite site because it’s our home but this site shines all together! It is mainly a flash based site with alternate loading for ipad and non-flash browsers. It has some great animations and interactive widgets through-out the site. The photos are rich and are up-to date. The navigation is not the easiest to navigate but all around it is a very impressive site!

Kicking Horse Resort Website

The Kicking Horse Website is on of the most visually atractive ski websites out there. Very well done with a “Aged” flash movie embedded into the home page. It has tons of style and it is also very user friendly. Excellent Site!

Mountain High Ski Resort

Many of these sites in our post here have a pattern. The closer they are from a major city, the better the design of the site. Mountain High, located in the Angels National Forest about 45 minutes from downtown Los Angeles is a fun site geared toward a younger crowd. Excellent torn paper content area with the cement background. The navigation is clear and being in Cali where gas is certainly not cheap the site has a gas calculator!