If you’re looking for video production services in Colorado, Weiler Productions is the place to go! Mark has over 20 years experience behind the camera. He and his crew can shoot any kind of project that you can throw at him. Weiler Productions has a ton of video production gear for shooting projects indoors and outdoors.

View Mark’s Demo Reel to see his work. Big name clients include The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, The History Channel, and the Weather Channel. In addition, Weiler Productions has corporate clients that range from Coors to Qwest, and has done many Music Events.

Shycon Design is pleased to announce the launch of our latest website, Complete Commercial Services. Complete Commercial Services has a unique approach to cleaning office spaces, commercial properties, medical, industrial, and other commercial spaces that sets it apart from your traditional cleaning company. The Two Team Approach offers a complete cleaning solution. One team performs your daily duties such as emptying trash and tidying up, and a second team performs detail functions that are often overlooked by traditional cleaning companies.

If you are looking for office cleaning in Denver, Colorado or the surrounding cities, do not hesitate to get in touch with Complete Commercial Services. Visit their website to get the full scoop on their unique cleaning services.

Face it. You wouldn’t buy a “brand new stereo system” from a guy driving a white van around in a parking lot. And if for some reason you did, you would only go home to open the box and find a shiny new package of sand and bricks. Then why would you expect people to hand over their personal information on your website if they cannot trust you? (i.e, your website looks like that white van driving around the parking lot)

Establishing trust on a website applies to every webmaster and designer out there. Whether you are a blogger, web designer, retailer, or plain ol’ entrepreneur, the people who visit your website will have to trust you before they take action on your website. And what is trust exactly? On the Internet, it essentially boils down to people being comfortable enough with your website and company to hand over their personal information, such as their address, credit card, or other sensitive information.

Are you getting blown out of the water by your competitors? Even if you get more visitors, your website could be losing the battle simply because visitors to your website do not trust you. There are a few simple things you can do on your website to build more trust, and there are a few more strategies that take time, work, and money. In all cases, each technique will add another layer to your website’s “trust factor.” Before people hand over their information to your website, they have to reach a certain threshold of trust that is right for them.

Provide Easily Accessible Contact Information

Do not expect your website to do all of your work for you. It’s a tool, not a salesperson. There will certainly be plenty of people that buy from your website without ever talking to you, but there is also a significant amount of people that must talk to someone before making the final purchase.

Have your phone number in plain view. Provide your address information and hours of operation. For local businesses that is especially important. For businesses that sell nationally, then address information is also vital. Another tool you can add to your arsenal is a Live Chat feature that allows people to speak with a person through your website.

Would you rather buy from a great website with no way to get in touch with a real person, or a good website that has a friendly, helpful support staff?

Be Absolutely Clear about What You Are Doing

When people buy stuff on the web, they want to know when they’re going to get it. When people hand over sensitive information, they want to know how you’re going to use it (ideally, not selling it to third parties or spamming them.)

Providing clear-cut, easy-to-understand answers to visitors’ questions can greatly increase your sales and conversions. Provide a Frequently Asked Questions page. Be very clear about who you are and what you do as users navigate throughout your website.

The best way to do this is to get a friend or relative to navigate through your site. If they can’t figure it out, then most people will not either. For bigger companies, you should have analytics software installed on your site to understand when and where people abandon your website.

Keep Your Website Current

There are plenty of websites out there that were built in the last century that are still online today. You can register domains for 10 years at a time and prepay for hosting forever. But how is someone supposed to know that you’re actually still in business? Is your website talking about technology that went obsolete 5 years ago, or promoting a product that was recalled last year?

Keeping a website current has many benefits. First, it shows visitors that you still have heartbeat. Second, it builds repeat visitors. One of the easiest ways to bring repeat visitors is to build and maintain a blog. Not just a self-serving blog, but a helpful resource of information. Do that, and the third benefit of increased search engine traffic comes naturally. The better your website is at providing helpful information, the more likely people will share it with others. Sharing equals linking, and linking equals traffic.

Get your Certificates (SSL, BBB, Hacker Safe, etc)

If you’re dealing with credit cards on your website, then an SSL certificate is an absolute must. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone crazy enough to give out their credit card information on a website that is not secure.

For e-businesses, the key is to build trust: Running a successful online business requires that your customers trust that your business effectively protects their sensitive information from intrusion and tampering.

-via Godaddy’s SSL Information

But did you know you can also get an SSL certificate when you’re dealing with non-credit card information, such as an address or social security number? While it might be overkill for some websites, some people will be more inclined to work with one website over another simply because they are securing their personal information.

Example: Gieco’s Get a Quote Form which requires a Social Security number.

There are many other site certificates out there that can apply to your business. They can get expensive, but when you are dealing with sensitive information there should be no cost on your customers’ safety. Did you know 71% of people actively look for 3rd party seals?

Testimonials Can’t Say Enough

You can never have too many testimonials on your website. Often they can be the reason people buy from you or move on to the next company. If you’re a new company, wait it out until you have enough satisfied customers to collect a good number of testimonials.

If you’ve been selling products for a while, you can kill two birds with one stone by offering a customer satisfaction survey. You can get some critical feedback on your business, and at the same time have a whole slew of testimonials to put on your website.

People Are Smarter Than You Think

Good business is integrity. Bad business is deception. When you’re building your business on the web, do not take shortcuts because most people can see right through them. Don’t write fake testimonials. Don’t Photoshop your office building. Don’t steal other people’s work and take the credit for it (that’s a hit on designers that “borrow” portfolios.) Don’t lie about your number of employees. And so on and so forth.

Remember, trust doesn’t happen overnight. Have patience. You can slowly but surely increase the “trust-factor” of your website. The good thing is you do not have to be the size of Amazon.com or have the name recognition of Dell to build a successful business online.

Trust is transparency. When people trust you, you can be one person in a basement and outsell a 10-person company.

Parker Days, or The Parker County Festival, is a Parker Colorado tradition that has been growing year after year. This summer the Festival will happen from June 13th through the 15th. The small city of Parker doubles in size as thousands of people (up to 100,000 people over the 3 day period) from all over Colorado come to enjoy drinks, food, music, dancing, and carnival rides. There’s also an American Idol spin-off called Parker Idol! The festival has been going on for over 30 years and is hosted by the Parker Chamber of Commerce. It is a whole lot of fun, so if you live within driving distance, we recommend attending the festival with your friends and family.

While Shycon Design won’t have a booth, we will be attending and volunteering at the festival. You will likely catch us working in the Beer Tent on Sunday Night, and the rest of the time hanging out in the VIP tent.

For those landlords and property owners out there, haven’t you always wanted a background check that goes beyond your traditional credit check and criminal history report? Well, now you have it! It’s called the Renter Hall of Shame, the ultimate in past-performance databases.

How many times have you been ripped off as a landlord or property owner by a bad or difficult renter? Were you burned by late or no payments, or was your property left in horrible condition? The Renter Hall of Shame is the place to go for new tenant background screenings. This network of landlords and property owners is growing by the day, so submit your bad renter experiences today!

Wouldn’t you be great if you knew that the person you are about to rent or lease to was known for bad checks, property damage, or a large array of other violations? Background and credit history checks only go so far. You need a past-performance database that tells you everything you need to know about the person you are about to rent to! With this website, you’ll be able to stop landlord tenant issues before they even happen because you’ll know if a person is worth renting to in the first place.

Monday, 2/18/2008

Centennial Bank completes merger into Guaranty Bank and Trust - All 15 branches of the former Centennial Bank of the West are now operating under the Guaranty Bank and Trust Co. name, parent company Centennial Bank Holdings Inc. said Monday.

UPS targets Colorado, seven other states for faster shipping - United Parcel Service Inc. is aiming to deliver quicker ground shipments in eight states, including Colorado.

Tuesday, 2/19/2008

Denver residents more pessimistic about money - A sense of pessimism pervades the feelings of Denver residents surveyed about their financial security.

Website created for rental housing during DNC - A new website has launched to offer a conduit between people with homes to lease and people attending the Democratic National Convention who need a place to stay.

Adam Aircraft files for Chapter 7 - After failing to secure additional funding to stay in business, Adam Aircraft filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado on Feb. 15, according to court documents.

Committee moves to eliminate Colorado tax for many businesses - A proposal to effectively eliminate the business personal property tax for more than 30,000 Colorado businesses was unanimously approved by the House Finance Committee on Tuesday.

Founder of Denver Bears, Broncos dies - Bob Howsam, who co-founded the Denver Broncos, died Tuesday in Arizona. He was 89.

Wednesday, 2/20/2008

Colorado foreclosures up 40 percent in 2007 - Colorado foreclosure filings jumped 40 percent in 2007 compared with 2006, according to a report released Wednesday by the Colorado Division of Housing.

Denver CPI shows year-over-year increase - The Consumer Price Index for the Denver area rose 1.9 percent during the past year, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics said Wednesday.

Ballot initiative would hold execs accountable - A state board gave preliminary approval Wednesday to a proposed November ballot initiative that would hold top executives accountable for corporate fraud.

Coors, Wal-Mart winners in Xcel energy contest - Xcel Energy Inc. on Wednesday announced that 10 local companies won its Colorado Energy Efficiency awards and collectively saved more than 28 million kilowatt hours of electricity in the last year.

Thursday, 2/21/2008

Abengoa Solar plans world’s largest solar power plant - Abengoa Solar will build what it calls the largest solar power plant in the world, the company reported Thursday.

Xcel Energy wants wind farms - Xcel Energy Inc. on Thursday issued a request for proposals for companies to build wind farms capable of generating up to 150 megawatts of power.

Friday, 2/22/2008

Sunday liquor sales bill advances in Colorado Senate - Coloradans are another step closer to making beer, wine and whiskey runs on Sundays now that the state Senate approved a bill that removes a “blue law” that prohibits liquor sales on Sunday.

Payday lending bill gets preliminary OK in Colorado House - A bill that targets the payday lending industry got preliminary approval from the Colorado House of Representatives on Friday after an intense, mostly party-line debate.

Have you ever visited a link from a website and ended up at an error page that let’s you know you’ve just wasted a few seconds of your life you’ll never get back? Whether it’s a 404 Error page or Missing Document page, a missing page is the black hole of the internet.

We’ve been updating many client websites and have come across missing pages a lot lately. By providing links to other web pages, your website can provide additional information for the visitor at the external resource. If these pages have moved or have been renamed, then they are worthless to the visitor if they haven’t been redirected to their new pages.

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SmallBusinessNewz, a resource for professional business information dedicated to bringing the best business information on the net, launched the Small Business Directory today. The Small Business Directory is a free, hand-edited directory that promotes businesses which provide resources for other businesses. Submit Your Website to the Small Business Directory here.

The Small Business Directory is a human-edited directory focusing on resources that can help aid in the success of small businesses.

This is not your everyday catch-all directory full of spammy sites. We monitor this one to ensure that it remains a helpful resource to find information and help related to a wide variety of business topics.

The Small Business Directory is currently divided into 44 categories, but this number will likely grow in the future as the directory itself grows, lending itself to even more niche categories.

Categories range from Brick and Mortar and Signage to eCommerce and Search Engine Marketing.

We are always open to submissions from those who offer a site that can be useful to someone starting and/or operating a business. This is not a place to submit any site you may have. Spammers need not apply.

So if you run “Alfie’s Donut Shop”, this is not the place to submit your site. You may, however find the directory useful for finding information and advice to help you run your donut shop more successfully.