Posts by Daniel Rickman
The right way to build a website – A Case Study
I’m proud of every single website project we’ve designed and developed here at Ultra Graphics – proud because we used our knowledge and expertise to solve a customer’s online presence problem, and one site launched is one more business or non-profit organization with a larger online voice. Sometimes, though, a project comes along where the stars align, and the whole Read More…
Featured Website Plugin: Formidable Pro Forms
Every website typically needs at least one web form. Usually it’s a general contact form, which is a great way to let your users communicate with website owners in a structured and easy-to-understand format. Web forms allow websites to collect the data that they need to offer quick support, information, or followup by asking specific and relevant questions. We won’t Read More…
How to add video to your website
Adding video to a website, whether it’s on WordPress or not, is actually quite simple. If you upload the video to a streaming provider such as YouTube or Vimeo, it can be as simple as pasting the video’s URL into a post or page (for WordPress sites), or the video’s provided embed script code into an html or PHP document Read More…
Ten Website-Related Terms You Should Know
Talking about websites with anyone inevitably leads to a breakdown of communication when one party starts throwing terms around like DNS, TLS, and CMS (not to mention the double whammy of the acronym). The web world is a complex one, and while the goal is to make your finished website intuitive for the user, the path and technologies that exist Read More…
4 Ways to Save Money on Direct Mail
The savvy marketer already knows that direct mail works wonders for successful reach and engagement, but just in case you needed some extra reinforcement, a recent survey by Small Business Trends* provides some great insights into the modern consumer: 54 percent of consumers surveyed said they want to receive mail from businesses they’re interested in. 59 percent of U.S. respondents Read More…
Image Optimization: an Intro and Guide
With the rise of image-heavy social media networks like Instagram and Pinterest, the demand for “media-rich” websites is becoming less of a trend and more of a necessity. People expect to see multimedia during their browsing experience, and the days of text-heavy or bland content with no supporting imagery are numbered. On the other hand, the increase in media-rich sites Read More…
What to do when marketing makes you feel dumb.
It’s happened to all of us. Whether it be a multi-touch campaign, a Facebook ad, a direct mail piece, or just a gigantic sign outside your storefront – there have been those times that you were confident that customers would be marching in by the thousands. Days later, when it doesn’t happen, you’re scratching your head wondering why it was Read More…
Website Security – an Intro and Guide
Whenever a new system, program, resource, or technology is unleashed upon the world, you can make a sure bet that someone bad will do everything they can to exploit it. The most widespread technologies are also inevitably the biggest targets, and there’s fewer Content Management Systems (CMS) with a bigger bullseye on its back than WordPress. At the time this Read More…
How Google Teaches Us To Be Better Marketers
Ah, Google… The all-knowing, all-seeing super-algorithm that intrinsically embeds itself in our lives on every screen, 24 hours a day. Gone are the days of having to visit a library and read books to solve a problem, learn a new fact, or settle an argument when an answer is a quick online search away. Google has wrangled the search-able internet Read More…
Marketing Return on Investment: Drowning in Data (Part 2)
“Drowning in data” is an apt summarization of the past few years for most modern marketers. 2015 began with a bang – or more accurately an explosion – of more marketing channels, media, and metrics. With many businesses increasing their marketing budget as a result of either the economy slowly nursing itself back to health – and owners realizing the Read More…
Marketing Return on Investment: Drowning in Data
“Drowning in data” is an apt summarization of the past few years for most modern marketers. 2015 began with a bang – or more accurately an explosion – of more marketing channels, media, and metrics. With many businesses increasing their marketing budget as a result of either the economy slowly nursing itself back to health – and owners realizing the Read More…
Case Study – MSUB Wine & Food Festival
Ultra Graphics is proud to announce a recently completed redesign of the MSU Billings Wine & Food Festival website. During the design and development stages, we identified and addressed a number of pain points related to the existing design and functionality. Working closely with MSUB Foundation we were able to rebuild a modern and functional website to house all the Read More…
Marketing Tips From Google’s Search Quality Guidelines
Who’s got two thumbs and spent four hours poring over the recently released Google Search Quality guidelines? This guy* *I’m pointing my thumbs at myself There’s of course a ton of little tidbits that we can learn about SEO from a document whose initial purpose was to be a resource for actual quality testers for Google. A rarity for the search giant, Read More…
Quick Tip – How to trick your desktop browser into thinking it’s a mobile device
Google recently updated their Search Quality Rating Guidelines, and – no surprise – mobile experience now plays a bigger role than ever in determining search ranking. If you have the time, it’s a good read here. In light of Google’s newest guidelines, did you know that you can spoof mobile devices using Firefox to test your website on many different mobile devices, Read More…
The Power of WordPress
A look at how WordPress leverages a solid foundation and community support to be the most preferred CMS, and how WordPress is the right choice for Ultra Graphics and our customers. WordPress is a CMS (content management system) that was first created in 2003 by a limited few who wanted to streamline the website development process by “enhancing the typography”. Read More…
Marketer’s Guide to Photography – Part 3
Welcome to part 3 of the Marketer’s Guide to Photography from Ultra Graphics. In this article, we’ll be discussing editing software. Missed the earlier parts? Read part 1 here, and part 2 here. This guide exists to give marketing professionals the equipment and skills to make their product/service look its best while keeping within a budget, and will be split into three Read More…