Blog - Page 2 of 2 - Blue Star Business Services

by staffordassociates on March 13, 2020

Your Coronavirus Communications Plan

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, your organization may need to take extra measures to communicate with the public about changes to your operations. Your office hours, your ways of doing business, or your event schedules may be changing, and you need to let people know in the most effective way possible.
We want to let you know that we are available to help you with these efforts - please reach out to Evelyn Rios Stafford or Bob Stafford, and we’ll be happy to discuss your needs.
This can include email blasts to your audience, social media posts, changes to your website, social media advertising, mailers, or other methods of communication. We can work with you to write, distribute, promote your messages. Many of you are on our monthly service plans and your available hours can be used for these efforts.
Again, don’t hesitate to reach out if you need help.

Evelyn Rios Stafford
Blue Star Business Services
479-879-2068
info@bluestarbiz.com
facebook.com/bluestarbiz
twitter.com/bluestarbiz

by Jennifer Buss on March 14, 2017

New SC Logistics Website

Here at Blue Star Business Services, we’re proud to have recently worked with SC Logisitics Services LLC on launching a new website, creating a logo, and designing their business cards, letterhead, tri-folds and other promotional materials. SC Logistics Services is a new interstate contract carrier based in Fayetteville, Arkansas and operated by Ted Wade and Scott Finley of Stone Consulting. Here are some of the highlights of their new website at sclogs.com:

Logo

The SC Logistics logo was created by our Art Department and fine tuned to the specifications of the client. We like to point out the details in this logo, such as the road design on each side of the circle signifying the roads the trucks drive on. The arrows pointing in both directions around the circle indicate that SC Logistics ships to and from virtually anywhere in the continental U.S. This logo clearly shows the company name, indicates what the company does, and will be used for years to come. The company has already used it on the large awning above the front door of their new offices.

Web Design

To make this site really stand out, we put a lot of work and creativity into the design. We customized each aspect of the site, from changing colors of icons as you scroll over them, to creating a unified color scheme. This makes the website easily navigable.

Responsive Design

One of the most important steps to take when creating a website is to make sure it functions well and looks good on both mobile and desktop. We use responsive design to achieve this, where the page layouts are fluid depending on the screen size. We made sure every aspect of this website was readable and easy to look at on both mobile and desktop. As you switch from desktop to mobile some icons are stacked as opposed to side by side, text will get bigger or smaller to easily fit into the space.

Custom Images

The Homepage is arranged so that the first thing that draws the eye is the large image of a truck, which our artists photoshopped the SC Logistics logo onto. At a glance, the site visually communicates to visitors what the company does along with a recognizable logo.

Icons

All the icons on the Homepage and the Services page were created from scratch by one of our artists. The icons are simple and uniform, yet descriptive, making it easy to navigate through the website to find what you need.

Call to Action

An important part of any website are the call to action buttons. We created two very visible call to action buttons on the SC Logistics website. One button is the phone number on the top of each page. This allows an easy way for any customer to reach the company. Another call to action clickable button is the ‘Request A Quote’ at the bottom of each page. This button turns red as you scroll over it. These buttons invite visitors to click and take action while on the website. We also made the contact information visible and easy to find at the bottom of every page of the website.

Services page

Services are the main part of this company website. We created a service page that was simple yet interactive for customers. Each icon shows a simple picture making it easy to find what you are looking for. The icons are interactive, meaning you can click on the plus sign to the right of the icon and a drop-down will appear with a description of the service. Each description was written with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in mind. This is part of an ongoing effort to ensure specific keywords related to the logistics and trucking industry show up in Google search results, along with the SC Logistics name brand.

Our Team Page

Great businesses always have a great team behind them. In SC Logistics’ case, they have an amazing team, and we wanted to highlight that. Ted Wade and Scott Finley, partners of SC Logistics, have held leadership positions at Wal-Mart, J.B. Hunt, Red Rock Oil Field Hauling and more. We emphasised this on both the home page and the team page. The team page shows everyone who works at the company, while individual pages for the founders outline their careers and showcase their significant accomplishments.

Social Media & Search

It’s important for today’s businesses to have a presence on social media and Google. This helps SEO and provides more avenues for you business to be found. For SC Logistics it made sense to have a Facebook, LinkedIn and a “Google My Business” Listing. Our team created each of these pages for SC Logistics, with custom images and copy, so they can keep customers up to date and reach potential new customers.

Conclusion

We enjoyed working with SC Logistics on creating their website, logo, and custom printed materials. We believe the design and technical aspects of the website we created will provide desired results for years to come.

If you operate a business, we’d love to help you too! Contact Blue Star Business Services today for help updating or maintaining your website. In addition, Blue Star can help you with social media, branding, logos, direct mail, and a variety of other services. Check out our Services for more!

by Evelyn Rios on July 26, 2016

New Fayetteville Public Education Foundation Website

Here at Blue Star Business Services, we love supporting great community organizations! One of the Northwest Arkansas nonprofits we're proud to have recently worked with is the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation. The foundation raises private funds for special resources, programs and opportunities that are not normally available to Fayetteville Public School students through the district's normal operating budget. In the past, FPEF grants have funded cool things like rocket ships, terrariums, and sewing machines - things that help teachers enhance their students' learning experience.

Going Mobile

Recently, we helped the foundation launch a new mobile-friendly website at www.fayedfoundation.org. Although the foundation already had an existing website, it had been built years ago on older technology that was not designed for use on the mobile web. Readability and ease of use had become an issue on the wide variety of mobile devices that a majority of people now use to access the web every day. In short, it was time for an update.

Responsive Design

The new site uses responsive design, allowing it to look good and function well, no matter the size or dimensions of the device you're viewing it on. For example, the main menu now shrinks down to an expandable icon on mobile sized screens. Side-by-side columns on desktop become vertically stacked columns on mobile devices. The site was built using the WordPress platform, so this process involved swapping out software behind the scenes and in some cases rebuilding entire pages on the new site, all while the old site continued to serve the public. While we were at it, we also made several other design improvements.

Behind the Scenes

Staffers at smaller nonprofits often need to wear many hats, and many do not have their own IT departments. In some cases, they need to be able to make quick changes to their own websites and social media accounts, without lengthy delays dealing with external vendors. For the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation, we made a few improvements behind the scenes so that they now have the full ability to alter every element of the site themselves if they so choose. In this case, we installed the Beaver Builder drag-and-drop visual page design system, and trained staffers how to use it.

SEO

Another big consideration for any site is Search Engine Optimization. We installed the popular Yoast SEO plugin. This allows staffers to optimize new content so that it ranks highly on Google and other search engines. Having the ability to use search engines to your advantage - essentially promoting your message for free - is a big plus for smaller organizations.

Social Media

We also installed and activated a feature called Jetpack's Publicize, so that new blog posts get automatically posted to the foundation's social media accounts.

Call to Action Buttons

One of the most important aspects of any website is getting your site visitors to take an action you want them to take. That could be buying your product, signing up for your newsletter, or contacting you. For nonprofits, getting people to donate can be crucial for the health of the organization. In all of these cases, it's important to design the site in terms of layout, color and other factors, so that visitors are psychologically encouraged to take action. For the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation, we changed the call-to-action buttons so that they visually "pop" on both the Home page and the Donations page. One design improvement we made was to change the color - making these buttons a complementary blue, opposite on to color wheel from the site's predominant "yellow pencil" color scheme.

Other Design Changes

Also on the Home page, we put the foundation's Corporate Leadership Circle Sponsors into a pair of rotating sliders, in order to dynamically showcase these generous corporate donors.
Widget areas allow the foundation to create their own slideshow of featured announcements of any length.
We added second column of blog posts to showcase a "Donor Spotlights" section. Both columns are now filtered by category, so the right posts always show up in the right place.
A new call-to-action box allows visitors to subscribe to the foundation's e-newsletter.
On the site's interior pages, a new sidebar contains a gallery of images of children who've been helped by the program.
The Endowments page now has informational popovers about the different endowments:

Conclusions

We're happy to have worked with the Fayetteville Public Education Foundation on this project, helping to support the great work they do to advance the education of public school children. We believe the many technical and design changes we've made to their website will serve the organization well for many years into the future.

If you operate a nonprofit or small business, we'd love to help you too! Contact Blue Star Business Services today for help updating or maintaining your website. We also do training. In addition, Blue Star can help you with social media, branding, logos, direct mail, and a variety of other services. Check out our Services pages for more!