Website Design and Development News
New Website for CROCBOX!
We are thrilled to announce the launch of our latest project, the website for the newest practice sports net on the market, the Crocbox. Having completed a full content migration and style re-design, M Street continues to build additional features for the site. Check it out today!
New website for Lampeter-Strasburg School District
We are thrilled to announce the launch of our latest project, the website for the Lampeter-Strasburg School District. L-S is a school district in Lancaster County that serves students in Lampeter, Strasburg, and Willow Street. Having completed a full content migration and style re-design, M Street continues to build additional features for the 400+ page site. Check it out today! more
New Website for Barebones Bicycle
M Street is proud to launch its latest website, Barebones Bicycle, based out of Strasburg, PA. Buy a new or used bike, have one repaired, or take classes to learn about maintaining your bicycle. Barebones covers all the bike basics that you'll need to enjoy the ride!
New Website for CASA of Lancaster
New Website for Negril Jamaica
M Street is thrilled to launch our latest website, Negril Onestop. This site features over 3000 gorgeous images in the galleries and over 50 exciting videos. You'll be booking your trip to Jamaica faster than you know it after perusing this beautiful new website. Yah Mon!
Announcing a website for Sealed Wish
M Street would like the announce the launch of its newest website, Sealed Wish. Sealed Wish is a unique service that allows you to discreetly create, plan and preserve specific products and messages to be delivered to your predetermined recipients upon your death.
We all know that tomorrow is not guaranteed, so be prepared to let your loved ones know how you feel about them in the event that you pass away.
LS Lampeter Strasburg Soccer
M Street has donated a small website to the LS Soccer Booster.
New Website for Asphalt Consultants
M Street is happy to announce a newest website, Asphalt and Paving Consultants, based out of New Holland, PA. Asphalt Consultants is a paving management consulting firm and mentor to those seeking expert paving advice, guidance and project management to existing and/or new asphalt and concrete pavements. Check out their new website and learn more!
New Website for Transagra
M Street is proud to launch our latest website for TransAgra International Inc. For over fifty years, they have been providing unique, all natural microbial fermentation products for animal feed, forage, and agronomy customers around the world. Check out this dynamic new design here.
Colorado East Community Action Agency
We are thrilled to have launched a new website for Colorado East Community Action Agency! CECAA serves low income, disabled and senior residents of several counties in rural eastern Colorado employing a holistic approach to self sufficiency. Check it out here!
Thinking Like An App Designer
There’s more to designing mobile apps than meets the eye. The task requires a deep knowledge of devices, and it often means changing the way we think — even if that means leaving behind much of what we've learned from designing for the web.
Website for I Am Fit
We are pleased to announce the new website for I AM Fit. Personal trainer, Ernie Groff, wants you to get in the best shape you've ever been, and he's the one to help you get there! Check it out here
Rio Grooming Gets a New Doo!
We are please to announce a new website for Rio Grooming School and Salon. Rio is one of the most vibrant dog grooming schools in Minnesota. Check out their new grooming website today!
Become Intelligent: Use Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts to your Advantage
You are able to add custom intelligence alerts to your Google Analytics that update you of any changes that are important to you (e.g., when your traffic increases by 10% day over a single day). The tool makes it possible for you to respond faster to changing data, and you can also use it to keep your colleagues up to date.
New Website for My Glamour Paws
A Pet Groomer in Fort Myers Florida
M Street is proud to announce the re-launch of My Glamour Paws. My Glamour Paws offers Dog Grooming, Cat Grooming, Doggy Daycare and Overnight Boarding
Danger Zones: 4 Things You Need to Know when Testing Emails
This article goes over some of the common pitfalls and danger zones when it comes to email subject line testing (and, really, testing in general).
How Hashtags Work on Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, Pinterest, Facebook, Tumblr, and Flickr
This article shows how different social media sites make use of hashtags. Most importantly, it shares some insight into how you can make the most effective use of hashtags for your brand.
Introducing The Springerle House
Springerle Cookies, Cookie Molds, and Ornaments
M Street is proud to launch a website for The Springerle House, a Strasburg based Springerle bakery. They offer Springerle cookies, Springerle ornaments and Springerle cookie molds so you can bake your own!
Leanne Leiter
Through various forms of media, Pennsylvania artist, Leann Leiter, documents the abandoned structures she encounters as she ventures through the rural countryside around her.
Her work gives these forgotten places a second life and a chance to live on in permenancy despite their perpetual state of decay.
Come explore Leann's website and discover what she witnessed on her journeys of exploration.
5 typeface challenges in designing for next-generation interfaces
The rise in popularity of smartphones, with their increasingly high-resolution displays and powerful processors, has triggered a spike in consumer demand for better design, more polished graphics and the ability to connect and extend visual language from one device to another as part of a seamless experience.
Checklist For Improving Website Speed and Performance
This article explains the significance of website loading speed for the success of web projects, provides advice and recommendations to be followed in order to have good performances and we will share with you some useful tools and resources that will help you achieve this.
How to optimize blog images to maximize impact on social media and search
Adding images also brings with it another checklist of things to look for as you’re optimizing and adding
Practical tips for Web and mobile usability tests
Web usability and mobile usability may be under the single umbrella of usability, but the approaches can seem like night and day when you think about all the subtleties. When planning your goals, keep in mind the usability functions special to whichever one you’re designing for, its distinct functionality criteria, and the tests best used to study it.
Everything You Need To Know About Google’s Local Algorithm, Pigeon
Columnist Neil Patel provides a summary of what we know about Pigeon, Google's new local search ranking algorithm that was rolled out in July 2014.
Intuitive interfaces don’t exist. Why should we use any interface at all, then?
The easy part is harvesting all kinds of data we’re providing computer systems with. The hard thing? Structuring this data, making sense of it, and turning it into features that go beyond pushing actionable notifications to the lock screen.
10 Web design trends you can expect to see in 2015
It is no surprise that the need to be faster and perform flawlessly with zero lag will drive design decisions on many websites in 2015.
What social analytics isn’t telling you this holiday season
"If you use social media data alone to determine how to market, sell, and support your customers this holiday season, or at any other time of year, you’re missing a huge piece of the targeting pie."
"Moms don't purchase products just because they're cheap."
Retailers need a better understanding of the people buying their products. After having that info, companies should change their marketing, branding, or advertising strategies to be more appealing.
Panda 4.1 Google Leaked Dos and Don'ts
This is a must read/watch!
Google is looking at "what users are doing on your site, whether or not they're satisfied with your content, whether they're bouncing back to Google, or they're leaving your site to go directly to some other site."
2015 Pantone Color of the Year
The impactful, full-bodied qualities of Marsala make for an elegant, grounded statement color when used on its own or as a strong accent to many other colors.
Google: Penguin 3.0 Rollout Still Ongoing
"Google has confirmed with us that the shifts and changes reported throughout the industry on Thanksgiving day were a result of the Penguin 3.0 refresh that first began rolling out 6-weeks ago."
Yandex Releases a New Alpha Version of its Browser
Its additional features include mouse gestures, notifications from Facebook and Twitter, document/e-book viewer, safe browsing, and webpage translator, which puts it on par with today’s alternatives.
Launching in 2015: A Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web
Let’s Encrypt will employ a number of new technologies to manage secure automated verification of domains and issuance of certificates.
Google Drops Local Carousel For Hotels, Restaurants & Other Local Listings
Google is dropping its horizontal Carousel display of local search results in several categories: restaurants, nightlife, entertainment and hotels. It’s being replaced by a 3-pack of organic listings and some new secondary pages.
REVEALED: The Demographic Trends For Social Networks
The demographics of who's on what social network are shifting — older social networks are reaching maturity, while newer social messaging apps are gaining younger users fast.Here are a few of the key takeaways
- Facebook still skews significantly female.
- Instagram has more prestige among young users than Facebook and Twitter.
- Facebook remains the top social network for U.S. teens.
- LinkedIn is actually more popular than Twitter among U.S. adults.
- Twitter has begun to lean worryingly toward male users,
- YouTube reaches more adults aged 18 to 34 than any single cable TV network.
- Snapchat is the youngest social network of all.
Cool stuff for web designers
The First Browser Dedicated to Developers is Coming and Adobe launches Brackets v1.0, an open-source text editor for Web designers
Integrity Living Options
M Street is proud to launch a website for Integrity Living Options, a Minnesota based organization that provides Responsive and Respectful Services and Supports for individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities. Give them a visit!
More than Keywords: 7 Concepts of Advanced On-Page SEO
"Most on-page SEO tools still rely on keyword placement to grade pages, and while it remains a good place to start, research shows its influence has fallen. "
What You Need to Know About Google's Penguin 3.0
"The best way to stay protected against future algorithms is to stay away from spammy practices. Don’t try to game the system by manufacturing links and over-optimizing your site for keywords."
Panda 4.1 Still Rolling Out This Week
"Based on user (and webmaster!) feedback, we’ve been able to discover a few more signals to help Panda identify low-quality content more precisely. This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice."
Google Organic Click-Through Rates in 2014
Goal of the study: To find out how many organic visits one could receive for ranking in the top results on Google
Is Your Site on WordPress - This Site Lists All Your Vulnerablities
Wordpress has "proven to be a highly-exploitable platform due to the many vulnerabilities discovered in its own code and in the many WordPress plugins and themes that are supposed to provide added value to website owners."
This website should be useful to those who run WordPress web sites to check if they are vulnerable.
Google Launches Panda 4.1
Google has announced that the latest version of its Panda Update — a filter designed to penalize “thin” or poor content from ranking well — has been released.
Recently From Webmaster World
Choosing the logo you love vs. the logo you’re suggested
"Pick a logo that feels good – one you’re proud to share because it encapsulates the brand story you put together before starting design."
Should I Switch From HTTP to HTTPS for SEO Reasons?
If Google is encouraging “all website owners to switch from HTTP to HTTPS to keep everyone safe on the web,” then you better listen – they do own 68% of the search engine market share.
Social Media: Corporate Attitudes and Aptitudes
It’s easy to get social media wrong, and success depends on the right strategy, proper training, attitudes and aptitudes by those carrying it out.
8 tips for measuring e-commerce ad campaigns
Here are a few tips for measuring e-commerce ad campaigns that will help you make the most of that marketing budget.
Visit Lancaster PA
Things to do in Lancaster
Introducing the authority on Things To Do in Lancaster
This comprehensive directory of Lancaster County is the only one you'll ever need to consult to find delicious food, cozy accommodations, fun family activities, and local attractions in Lancaster County, PA!
Google’s Pigeon Update Solves Yelp Problem, Boosts Local Directories
Yelp and other local directory-style sites are benefiting with higher visibility after this latest Pigeon update, at least in some verticals. Google stated that this update ties local results more closely to standard web ranking signals.
That will benefit big directory sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor — sites that have stronger SEO than individual restaurants and hotels are likely to have.
For those businesses and websites, local search has just gotten a lot more difficult.
Google Analytics Goals
–they need not cause you to “GAG”
Forgive the play on words in the title, but for some webmasters, anything beyond reading basic statistics from Google Analytics causes an adverse physical reaction, so the title may just be appropriate. Never fear, setting goals in Google Analytics need not cause any gagging; in fact, it is one of the most useful features of Analytics, and can be an invaluable part of your analysis.
What is Semalt?
Semalt.com – an annoying disturbance or a legitimate traffic builder?
The Basics of Site Moves
Google created an in-depth guide on how to handle site moves in a Googlebot-friendly way. So what, exactly, is a site move and how do you go about moving a site correctly?
DuckDuckGo
As privacy concerns grow, users turn to DuckDuckGo. If Google has an Achilles heel, it is privacy.
10 SEO Myths Reviewed
- I need to rank #1
- My Title tag will save me
- Social is all I need
- Marking up my content will help it rank
- ... Read More
Google’s Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that they have released version 4.0 of the Google Panda algorithm.
The last confirmed update was on Jan. 22, 2013
7th Annual Ryan's Race
M Street is proud to launch a website for Ryan's Race 5K and Fun Run. This race raises scholarship money for Lampeter Strasburg graduates. Register Today!
Recommended Reading from Search Engine Watch
The Ancora Group Launches New Website
The Ancora Group offers consulting, coaching and training opportunities to successfully develop strong leaders.
Many SEO agencies thrive on clueless business owners
This is a great article on the current state of affairs in the web development and SEO business. Too many agencies depend on Smoke, FX and Mirrors.
M Street will educate you on what you need.
M Street has launched 3 websites so far in February and we are not done yet...
Matt Cutts: “Stick A Fork In It, Guest Blogging Is Done”
Google is cracking down hard on spammy SEO techniques. If you are guest blogging, make sure your content is relevant. Only link if it makes sense for your visitors.
Essentials for Museum Websites
Progressive-Sounds has relaunched on the SpotContent CMS
This is the site where it all started. In its prime, Progressive-Sounds brought in 6,000 uniques a day, however The site has been left in disrepair for many years. Shortly before the new year, it has been given new life.
Game Changer for Newsletters!
This is huge. Just today, I was consulting with a client about how to design a newsletter without images first and I explained that the reporting on how many opens their newsletters received was grossly under counting newsletters that were scanned.
Google has announced that with their email client GMail, they will no longer ask permission to display newsletter images. Their logic is actually quite sound.
If other email clients follow suit, will we once again be able to design newsletters with rich imagery? Will we get 100% reporting of opens?
Metermasters Launches a Website!
Learn the benefits of sub-metering
Water conservation is smart for everyone. Metermasters helps you manage your water consumption by reporting your usage. They have proven to eliminate wasteful use of water.
Google's Page Rank Update December 6th?
It appears a page rank update has been rolled out on December 6th. The last update was in February. How did your website fare?
UPDATED: Across 70 of our hosted websites, we saw an increase in 49 page rank points with a total score of 224 (average score of 3.2 per site). Each of the sites who are receiving our seo services have a home page rank of 4 and above.
Google makes it easier to do fairer comparisons...
Before this upgrade, it was easy to get confused by measuring the wrong thing in Google Trends.
Now when you start typing into the search box you'll see new topic predictions.
Go Greater Reading! Greater Reading Convention and Visitors Bureau
M Street is proud to announce the launch of the Greater Reading Convention and Visitor Bureau's new website.
Remember this site the next time you are in Reading looking for a place to eat or somewhere to stay
Congratulations to the team for an exceptional website.
Website Design for Libraries
Google Analytics | Universal Analytics
upgrade today
Universal Analytics is a new set of features changing the way data is collected and organized in your Google Analytics account.
With it, you can get a better understanding of how visitors interact with your online content.
M Street is proud to support Ayden Murray
Ayden has recently been diagnosed with Stage 4 Neuroblastoma cancer. If you are looking for a good cause this holiday season, Ayden could use your support.
SEO Isn't Dead, Long Live SEO
"When Google released their “Hummingbird” update it changed the game as Google started to favor page construction much more heavily than links. This means sites with better built pages now receives a higher quality score."
Coming Soon
This is a sample of a new calendar of events concept we are building. Stay Tuned.
Title Size Matters
Get better conversions
"headlines with 60-100 characters earn the highest click-through rates and these rates decline as headlines decrease below 60 characters or increase beyond 100 characters."
Read more about the importance of website page title size
Check out the animated gif we just created for a new printing client
Full Website COMING SOON!
Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence
M Street is proud to announce a new website launch for PCADV. We hope this website helps their efforts to stop domestic violence in PA.
Wesley United Methodist
M Street is proud to have designed a new website for Wesley United Methodist church in Strasburg Pennsylvania.
Katie´s Amish Kitchen
M Street´s favorite local spot for Amish cuisine.
M Street gave Katie's website design a fresh responsive rebuild.
Alternative Energy | Solar Generators | Live off the grid!
We are proud to announce the launch of a new website for Alternative Energy.Alternative Energy sells Solar Generators and compatible energy efficient DC appliances.Congratulations to the entire M Street team.
Levi Road
M Street is proud to launch a website for Levi Road.
They are an exceptional group of boys, three brothers and a friend, who have a fresh new take on the country sound.
B.I.R.D. Ministries
M Street is proud to launch a new website for BIRD Ministries.
This is an outstanding organization that provides a new start for women who have been in prison.
Metals Your Way
Providing a wide range of metal products and services. They service every metal aspect of the construction and manufacturing industries.
M Street´s Online Traffic Safety is Expanding into Seven States
Two new traffic safety grants have kicked off bringing M Street's Statix software into seven states.
The software is used to collect data on seat belt usage, aggressive driving behaviors, DUI incidents and work zones construction safety.
Propane Delivery and Welding Supplies just got a lot easier with the relaunch of Scully Welding and Propane´s new website.
M Street is proud to announce the relaunch of Scully's website showcasing their propane supplies and delivery services as well as serving welding supplies to industries all across Pennsylvania.
Learn more about propane delivery in Exton, West Chester, Downingtown and other areas throughout PA.
Just Drive Pa Website Launch
Pennsylvania's safe driving resource relaunched with new branding.
Evolution Products Website Launch
Based in Lancaster, evolution offers a revolutionary product, the Reduction Reel.
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