Author: Jeremy Harrison

Ashland University Women’s Basketball Team Defies the Odds

As an Ashland-area business, we couldn't be more proud of the Ashland University Women's Basketball team. The Eagles faced and defeated a tough Bentley squad 77-62 to advance to the Championship game.

12 days left in office construction project!

Just updated the office construction album with some new photos. Drywall is up, and walls are primed.

QR Code Marketing: Avoiding Common Mistakes when Using QR Codes in Advertising

February 27, 2012
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

How you should use QR Code Marketing. We're seeing that people aren't sure how to use QR code advertising effectively. Make the most of your efforts and avoid making these common mistakes. Quick blog tutorial.

Construction begins on Spire’s new office

February 20, 2012
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

In April, Spire will be moving to a new, larger office here in Ashland. The construction is underway and we couldn't be more excited. We'll track the progress in this new construction photo album.

Our latest web design projects are now on display!

February 12, 2012
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

We couldn't be more excited to add these 7 new projects to our web design portfolio. These projects represent work that go beyond a website. Each project involved our entire team...

7 costly mistakes that paralyze small business websites

February 8, 2012
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

Is your website built for results? We found sevent costly mistakes small businesses make with their websites, and according to our study, the average local business is making 6 out of the 7 mistakes.

8 more web design projects added to our portoflio

December 14, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

Over the past 2 months we've been busier than ever, launching many new websites. Here are 8 new website designs that have gone live and are featured in our portoflio.

SEO Cheat Sheet Video Now Available

November 4, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

Here's a video designed to walk you through our popular SEO Cheat Sheet. The free SEO cheat sheet and the video will help you learn about many on-page factors that affect

4 Steps Savvy Marketers Use To Double Sales

October 26, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

Part 2 of 2 Step Three: Strengthen Credibility & Relationships Over Time This step is where the most important shift has taken place over the past few years. It's a

Don’t blame the economy. Good old days of marketing are over.

October 17, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

There's been a fundamental shift in the way people buy products and services. It affects small businesses and mega-brands alike. Sadly, just about everyone is missing it.

3 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs

October 6, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

Steve Jobs was a revolutionary. Many won't understand the degree to which he impacted our culture until future generations look back and see it more clearly. The person

6 new web design projects that raise the bar

September 28, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

People sometimes ask what web design project is our best work of all time. I always tell them that whatever website design we're doing TODAY is our best work! These 6 new designs launched over the past month raise the bar and we're happy to share them with you.

Email Marketing Video: Avoiding the E-FAIL

September 20, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

This latest installment to the Spire Marketing Vault shows 3 email marketing examples and explains why each are ineffective. You'll learn 4 things that make an email effective and see live examples of what to avoid.

How to Double Your Results with a Marketing Funnel

August 25, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

This week's internet marketing training video explains the concept of a marketing funnel. You'll learn: how to determine if your site is a good fit for a funnel,the 5 components of a marketing funnel, and how to use a funnel to double your results.

Free Breakfast Seminar for Spire Customers

August 24, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

At this free breakfast seminar for Spire customers, Jeremy Harrison will provide and explain a list of the most high-impact work you should be doing on your website to grow your business and maximize your results online.

Please welcome Andrew Eades to our team!

August 18, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

We're excited to introduce you to our newest team member. Andrew Eades just started with us as a full-time Internet Marketing Specialist.

4 Under-Utilized Marketing Features of SpireCMS

Today's teaching video is created for Spire customers who already have a website powered by SpireCMS. But for those of you who don't it may be helpful to watch and see what's possible. Enjoy!

How to add the +1 button to your website for Google+

Tonight you'll find a new button at the top of most pages on the Spire website. The Google +1 button will allow people to +1 your pages, which will get shared through th

Warrior Pizza launches an innovative online pizza ordering system

Warrior Drive-In and Pizza -- a local restaurant in Ontario, Ohio is now taking online orders with an ordering system that rivals the major corporate pizza chains. With "

SEO Video: Google Panda Update tries to reward the “good guys.”

In March, Google released the "Panda Update" which made significant changes to their search engine algorithm. Changes to Google are always scary. We, and many of our clients get a lot of traffic through organic searches, so you never know what impact changes like these will bring.

How to Go Viral With Your Blog

Just received an email from a customer. He builds decks, and he wrote: I am trying to get my friends to like and share my website.

Spire gets a web design face lift

Spire has a new website design. Please check out the new site, and let us know what you think!

A simple tip for mobile web marketing

Here's an extremely simple example of a pretzel stand using mobile marketing. Every customer who visits their stand has a mobile phone in their pocket.

Are you using Facebook or is it using you?

Are you using Facebook? There's a 65% chance that you -- and your future customer -- would say yes. This thing has been like an avalanche -- slowly, steadily steamrolling

Why the Ashland City Schools bond issue makes sense

As a local business owner, and a homeowner in the city of Ashland, I plan to vote "YES" for the bond issue for Ashland City Schools. My wife and I don't have children, but nonetheless I see this as a critically important issue.

We’re hiring! Web Designer (Part-Time or Paid Internship)

Here's your chance to build a stunning design portfolio and get invaluable work experience with one of Ohio's top-ranked web design firms. Spire is searching for another all-star designer to help serve our growing client base.

Spire is Celebrating 5 Years of Results!

As we head into another busy month, we pause for a moment to celebrate. Spire just turned 5!

12 new website design projects added to our portfolio

We've added twelve new designs to our portfolio, a sample of some of the many sites we launched the first 10 weeks of 2011. Check them out by visiting our web design portfolio

Our Pizza Website Design & Online Ordering was a hit in Las Vegas!

Bryan Lefelhoc & I just got back from Las Vegas. Our mission? To share our new online pizza ordering system at The International Pizza Expo.

The Luxury Car Imported from Detroit

February 6, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

My favorite commercial from Superbowl XLV - hands down. I don't think much of Chrysler, but their agency did a masterful job repositioning what's a negative opinion of Detroit into an emotionally charged commercial that will sell cars.

Why we’re dumping iStockPhoto for our stock photography

January 18, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

I've been buying stock photos from iStockPhoto.com for more than 8 years. However, I recently decided to switch to Dreamstime.com as our organization's primary stock photo service. Here are a few reasons I'm dumping iStockPhoto.

New web designs added to our portfolio, a dozen more on their way

January 7, 2011
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

We just found a moment to update the portfolio with several more websites that went live in December. The newest entries include: Ohio Dreams Action Sports Camp,WVMC-FM,Adv

Our web design portfolio has 8 new entries

November 8, 2010
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

We've been very busy this fall. Every week multiple new websites are going live. We added 8 new sites to our portfolio today, and added a dozen others to the site last month.

NOW HIRING: Web design employees

September 14, 2010
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

Here's your chance to build a stunning design portfolio, learn on the job, and get valuable real-world experience with one of Ohio's top-ranked web design firms.

Customer Relationships Are Like a Good Marriage

August 19, 2010
Jeremy Harrison
Uncategorized

Customer service has some similarities to a marriage. If neglected, the relationship will break down, and communication is critically important. Neither type of relationship is ever easy or perfect. But here is a message I sent to my staff today, pointing out how a good customer service relationship should be similar to a healthy marriage...

Our new research reveals 3 costly mistakes 99.6% of small businesses are making with their websites

We just completed a research study and the results were a little frightening. We looked at the websites for hundreds of small businesses in our local area, and checked them on 9 costly mistakes that we tend to see people make on their websites. When looking at 3 of the most costly mistakes, we found that 99.6% of local businesses were making at least 1 of these 3 mistakes.

A strong recommendation from another Ohio web design company

We received an extremely gracious recommendation from Frank Beier, Jr.. He is the President of Dynamic Webs, LLC, a Findlay Ohio web design company.

Got an invention? Attend this MAGNET Workshop in Ashland, Ohio

If you have an invention, or are working on developing an innovative idea, this seminar may be of interest to you. "Magnet: Innovation, Product Design & Development

How to get rid of that boring text on your website

Jason Fried recently had an article in Inc Magazine titled "Why is Business Writing So Awful." A great read that I strongly recommend. We design a lot of business websites each month, and too often, the writing provided by the client can be an afterthought... stuff used to fill an empty space on a page.

Bryan Lefelhoc Leaves Clear Channel to Join Spire Advertising

After 18 years with Clear Channel Communications as a sales and marketing executive, Bryan Lefelhoc announced today that he is stepping down. The Ashland resident accepted a marketing consultant position with Spire Advertising, a 4-year-old website design and internet marketing firm in Ashland, Ohio.

Ohio Bankers League learns about search engine marketing

Last week I had the chance to present at a marketing seminar sponsored by the Ohio Bankers League in Columbus. The topic was "How to Transform Google Searchers into Customers."

Organizing your website content

One of the most important steps of a website design process is determining how you will organize your content. Your goal should be to consolidate your content into no more than 7 top-level navigation sections. Each of these top level sections can have sub-pages... even sub-sub-pages... but even with tens of thousands of pages, you should be able to organize your content into 7 sections or less.

SEO: Why Links Matter

Whenever we design a website for a client, we do a lot of search engine optimization work - to help ensure that Google and the other search engines can find the content. However, the structure of the site is only half the battle. Once your site is structured the right way, it's extremely important to get inbound links that point people back to your website.

Spire is hiring another web designer

Spire is hiring. To keep up with growing demand, we want to hire another exceptional web designer.

Author: Jeremy Harrison

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