Denver Business News Highlights – Week of Febuary 18th, 2008

February 24th, 2008

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.

Not Redirecting Your Web Pages is Just Plain Rude

February 14th, 2008

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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SmallBusinessNews Launches Small Business Directory

February 12th, 2008

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.

Network Solutions Domain Registration: Grade F

January 28th, 2008

Network Solutions FailesLast week I stopped by a client’s office to talk business. While I was there, he told me he bought some domain names to forward to his own business website. This is a great practice for business websites, and we highly recommend it. Type-in traffic has some of the highest conversion rates among any advertising avenue. For example, we have registered a few domains such as Web Designer In Colorado.com and Web Designer in Denver.com. If a person types one of those domains into their browser, they will be forwarded to our main website, Shycon.com. While these domains don’t rank for anything, the type-in traffic of a couple hits per year each will really add up over time. The domains will easily pay for themselves over the course of a few months and you always have the ability to develop them into websites should you choose to do so.

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Is your Business Website “Doggin'” on Email Marketing?

January 24th, 2008

Email marketing is the most undervalued and underused marketing tool within a business owner’s arsenal. If you have a business or retail website and you aren’t collecting emails from your visitors, then you’re missing out on a lot of potential revenue. Don’t ignore email marketing anymore!

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Why You Should Never Use an Online Web Site Builder for Your Business! (And When You Should)

December 11th, 2007

Online website builder

An online web site builder is a platform that allows people to build and update their own web sites. They can cost anywhere from $10 to $50 a month, or more depending on the features. While they seem like a great bargain, there are a number of reasons that any business owner should never use them.

And when we refer to “updating your own web site,” we do not mean a content management solution that a website developer has integrated for you. If you have a website specifically designed for your business with content management built-in, these issues discussed below do not apply because custom integration should address all of these problems.

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What REALLY makes a great, effective web site?

December 10th, 2007

Effective web sites

Let’s define effective when it comes to web site design. Effective means visitors. It means visitors who turn into sales, leads or ad revenue. Web sites are simply online advertising, and if you don’t see a return on your investment then it hasn’t worked.

This is a topic of special interest to Shycon Design(and likely to many other professional web design companies). There are a lot of web design companies out there. A lot. It seems like everyone and their uncle’s friend’s brother can do some sort of web site design. With that said, I can probably repair basic mechanical issues on my car, but does that mean it won’t break down in the middle of the freeway next week?

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Help! I Need a Web Site for my Business but Don’t Know Where to Start!

November 26th, 2007

Need a business web site

It’s been said before, and we’ll say it again: Every business needs a web site! Just by knowing your business needs a web site already puts you ahead of your competition (the competition that refuses to come into the 21st century, that is.) But finding a great web site design company to build your business on the web can require a lot of time and research if you don’t know what to look for.

Using this guide, you can make the process of finding the best web design company for your business much easier. If you know what you want in a web site beforehand, you will make it much easier for designers to give you a fair and accurate price quote.

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