Most everyone has seen some pretty flashy websites in their day. They fly around the page, usually have all sorts of nifty animations when switching between pages, and generally look pretty impressive. Some of our favorites include 2Advanced and Web Agent 007. While sites like that are incredibly impressive, their main drawback (in our eyes) was that they were effectively invisible to search engines, an enormous drawback that really limited their appeal to companies who understood that while eye candy is great, the main thing that a website needs to do is rank highly.

Search Engines like Google and Yahoo are effectively blind. The only thing they can see is text like in this blog post. Now web technology has advanced to provide us a solution that has long been overdue. “Searchable” Flash Web Sites, powered by a full content management system like this blog. It’s called fCMS and really will open a new chapter in web site design. With the confluence of incredible animation and the ability to search everything in the site means that we’re going to see some pretty impressive sites in the coming years using tools such as these.

This is simply the beginning. The bright lads at Google have long known that while a lot of the information people are looking for online is text-heavy, the majority (in terms of file size) is in images, video, PDF’s, Flash, and downloadable files. Google and the other search engines are rapidly making progress in these areas. The one people are most familiar with is with PDF’s. If you do a search on Google for IRS Form 1099 the first result isn’t the proper IRS website, but the PDF form. As the years go on, we can expect more and more of the content that was previously available only by manually search on multiple sites. This will allow future websites to be increasingly content-rich and be rewarded appropriately with good rankings by Google.

The future is indeed bright for flashy, fun web sites.

“The Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department contacted Gauge Interactive regarding our first vehicle WRAP for our Recruiting Unit. We wanted this “WRAP” completed before our annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Gauge Interactive did just that: They completed the design, which we were impressed with. The Chief of Police liked the design so much, he drove the “wrapped” Recruiting vehicle in the Parade. We were very impressed with Gauge Interactive’s design! Gauge Interactive did an outstanding job in working with us to make this project a success!!!! ”
- Captain Dean Fagerstrom, Savannah-Chatham Metro Police Department

Say goodbye to our old G5 and say hello to our new Mac Pro, our own 8-core tower-of-power! It’s a hard worker and has at least one good dance move…we’ll see how it works out. I am referring to our new Mac Pro! We had the need to upgrade an older mac that I have had for 4 years, and this is the one we got. They look the same, but the new computer should last us for an equal amount of time. Its got a lot more power and some really great features which will help us to work and communicate better between our offices in Savannah and Denver.

music credit: “Movement in still life” by “BT”

“Gauge Interactive has helped us increase online visibility incredibly by building our new website and managing a highly-targeted SEO campaign, doing it all on time and on budget. With Dan and Mark’s assistance, my business has increased dramatically, making my website the best investment I have ever made for my business. Thanks guys!”
Whitney Ince - President of Pro Location Sound

The more we work in this industry the more we realize that some very common problems are shared by a lot of companies.

A lot of people have been burned.

To quote a favorite movie “Every time you screw up, it makes us look like rockstars baby” (bad boys 2…hey I like it).

And its true…

Every bad site that gets produced makes our good sites look even better.

Some say that bad web companies hurt the industry, contributing to higher prices and lower standards. While that may be true, we look at it as job security. There are so many companies who have a website but the company, or the dude in his basement that built it for them didn’t put it together correctly at all and it isn’t making them any money.

Isn’t that what business is about? Well not entirely, but thats a good bit of it. We have expenses, you have expenses and we all need to pay them with a little leftover for some fun on the weekends. So its with regret and, paradoxically with joy, that I am writing this in the hopes that you are recovered enough from your full body web burn and are ready to fix your site.

I am here to tell you that it isn’t hard (its not easy but you get what I mean), we can most likely do it within your budget (yes you should have a budget for a website), and its not going to take 6 months. We try to have our sites done in 30 to 60 days depending on how long it takes to communicate back and forth.

So please, feel free to at least talk with us, let us know what you think! If you have been burned then tell us about it. Leave a comment below. Maybe we can help and maybe we can’t but its still worth a try. Who knows, maybe we’ll get some interesting stories out of this and we can all have a good laugh.

For now, we’ll just keep doing what we do and hopefully people will catch on to the fact that quality products are still offered in the industry of web design and development.

**web burn cream not available in stores**

“In looking for a new web design company, Gauge Interactive was super from the first meeting till completion. Both Dan & Mark were very attentive to detail, listened to what we wanted the site to be, and helpful in getting the information and format together. I am extremely satisfied with the professional manner in which they get the work done! Great going guys, I will highly recommend others to the guys at Gauge!”
- Rob Kerdasha - Principal - Premiere Coastal Insurance Group

Pro Location Sound
Challenges:
Our friend Whitney is a Professional Location Sound Recorder and Mixer who works freelance for feature films, reality television, live television, and other broadcast media.
Since he works freelance he needed a way to market himself and his rental gear packages. In building the site for Whitney we realized that there was […]