“We just happened to land on the same sailboat,” says Tom. “In the process of skimming over Lake Pepin, we struck up a conversation about the needs in the IT area, the potential in our youth to fill those needs, and how we could work together make it happen.”

Their answer came in the form of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Non-traditional Occupations Focus grant. Since applying for and receiving the grant, JB Systems and the Black River Falls High School TechWorks program have partnered and worked together to teach students marketable IT skills, such as:

• Basic and intermediate database design skills
• Entity Relationship Diagram skills
• Basic database queries (MySQL)
• Basic HTML skills
• Basic PHP programming skills
• Basic Javascript skills

Additionally, students will be creating a documentary detailing their experience with the program, as well as talking about the importance of having STEM resources available in middle and high school. Another facet of the program will require students to help lead a 2-day Code Camp this June. The camp was organized and facilitated by the STEM grant students.

Students taking in a lesson at JB Systems

So far, the program has been a hit with the kids. “At each new meeting we’ve had, we’ve added participants,” says Tom. “Moreover, the students have been very engaged. They’re interested in the information, challenges and opportunities that Jerry, Tyler and Traci have presented to them.”

Given our history of diving into community projects, #TeamJB was eager educate the youth at Black River Falls High School, and to spread the word about the amazing opportunities that exist in IT and web development. We were also excited to show students that they don’t have to leave for Silicon Valley or large cities to find a tech job, but that these opportunities exist right here in the Chippewa Valley.

Two of JB Systems’ web developers, Traci and Tyler, spoke highly of the partnership. “I’m thrilled that we have the opportunity to work with these students,” says Tyler. “It’s great for them to gain real project management experience as well as get an idea of how the programming side would look.”

Traci shares a similar sentiment. “It’s wonderful to see kids getting relevant experience in an industry where text books will always be behind the curve of current technology trends,” she says.

Students working with Tyler at the chalkboard wall at JB Systems

The program especially encourages young women to explore coding as a career. According to GirlsWhoCode.com, 74 percent of girls are intrigued in STEM related fields, yet less than .5% of them pursue STEM related majors in college. This is a statistic JB Systems and Black River Falls High School are hoping to change.

With the JB Systems – Black River Falls partnership off to such a great start, Jerry and Tom are already making future plans. “I see this project as just a start to expanding our IT training for students and as an augmentation of our STEM projects to encourage more students, especially females, to explore and experience the many opportunities in STEM careers,” says Tom. “We plan to apply for the next round of funding to continue the project that we’ve started to simplify our parent reporting system for student information and hopefully expand the project to more avenues of coding and design.”

What started as a sailboat ride with Jerry and Tom, has continued with a successful STEM program, a handful of educators and professionals eager to teach, and a group of students excited to learn. We’re setting sail toward the horizon, toward a bright future of talented young programmers contributing to the Chippewa Valley’s blossoming technology community.

To learn more about this story, contact #TeamJB.

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At the end of January, Jerry Bauer, owner and founder of JB Systems, LLC, was selected as the Eau Claire Area Economic Development Corporation’s (EDC) newest board member. Jerry will work with the board to offer free resources to entrepreneurs and businesses in the Chippewa Valley. With these resources, the Eau Claire Area EDC hopes to “innovate, develop, expand, or locate the communities of Altoona, Augusta, Eau Claire, Fairchild, and Fall Creek,” by providing new career opportunities.

For Jerry, being selected as an Eau Claire Area EDC board member is an honor. “There are a lot of community-oriented professionals and business owners that make up this board and it’s pretty humbling to be invited,” he says. “The EDC has been a client of JB Systems for many years and I’m excited to be more involved in helping them carry out their mission.”

That mission is to continue growing the economy of the Chippewa Valley by creating business and job growth. Bauer and the EDC are positioned to do just that by contributing their own experiences as business owners and community leaders to help others form new businesses and careers across the valley.

Luke Hanson, Executive Director of the EDC, thinks Bauer will be an asset to the Eau Claire EDC. “Jerry’s enthusiasm and avocation of the Eau Claire area community made him an obvious choice for the EDC Board. His experience as a local entrepreneur is valued by both our organization as we continue to strengthen our local entrepreneurs and startups, as well as the individuals he has worked with through EDC initiatives like the Idea Challenge and Startup Weekend,” says Hanson. “His consistent support of our local entrepreneurship and business in the Eau Claire area helps our community advance our economy by providing resources and experience to further their businesses.”

Jerry attended his first board meeting at the end of January. He is excited to get to work, and he has already identified goals he’d like to help the Eau Claire Area EDC reach. “I hope to work with the board and a couple of prominent members to tackle major issues, such as healthcare costs in the Chippewa Valley and the skills gap with employee talent,” Jerry says. “Both are issues that seem to affect all industries, and it seems like a good area to focus some of our efforts.”

We believe in maintaining a strong, supportive internal culture, and we believe in sharing that same culture with the greater Eau Claire community. We can’t wait to see what this partnership between JB Systems and the Eau Claire Area EDC brings!

For more information about Jerry’s board appointment, please contact Erin Stevens at 920.931.5976 or erins@jbsystemsllc.com.

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This drive to always improve leads us to being very goal-oriented. While we all have individual goals, JB Systems always has goals that we work toward as a team. Although we work hard day in and day out, we also take time to celebrate when we reach these goals as a team.

This is exactly what we did back in June, when we closed the office for the day and took to Lake Pepin for a day of sailing. The JB Systems team broke out into two smaller groups and learned how to sail. We also learned that teamwork and solid communication are crucial in order to have a successful sailing expedition.

“It was a good lesson in understanding the different ways people communicate,” says Graham Barnes, our Project Manager. “It was great for everyone to shift roles within the team and discover new perspectives about the people they work with.”

Owner and President Jerry Bauer notes the similarities between sailing and business, and how crucial it is to have solid teamwork and fluid communication in both sailing and business. “Successful businesses are flexible and adaptive to the needs of their clients,” Jerry says. Much like the weather conditions can change when sailing, the website industry is also constantly changing, and so it’s up to us as a team to stay on our toes and communicate with each other.

Taking time to appreciate a job well done is important for our team to stay fresh. Initiatives like our sailing day will result in one of the most cohesive, innovative and trustworthy teams that can be built, and it will lead us to create some of the greatest projects we can for our clients.

With the open water, beautiful sunshine, and great company, we all had a fantastic time! Now we’re all hard at work, and we look forward to showing you what the JB Systems team creates next!

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We are beyond excited to accept these awards. It reassures us that we are meeting our goal of providing the best services possible to our clients, and it encourages us to stay creative and innovative in our website designs.

Our designers understand that you have just three seconds to wow any visitor who comes to your website. That’s why it’s crucial to have a design that’s functional and beautiful, in order to keep them from closing their browser on your site. With JB Systems, you can get a custom website that is functional and beautifully designed so that visitors will browse your website and learn more about your company. In fact, we’ll design a website that will keep those visitors coming back, as well as bringing more visitors with them.

Winning these GDUSA awards proves that we understand the value of those three seconds. Through extensive hours researching current trends and learning which designs enhance user experience, to the desire and drive of our designers to out do their past designs, we are able to continue building award-winning, custom designed websites year after year.

More importantly, winning GDUSA awards reflects JB Systems’ ability to work as a team. Designers collaborate with web developers on how designs can enhance user experience and visitor engagement. Without this team effort and collaboration, we would not have been able to win 21 GDUSA awards over the past four years. Our ability to build and deliver creative, custom websites always depends on our ability to work together.

There are six different categories that GDUSA’s American Web Design Awards accepts submissions for: Websites, Microsites, Social Media & Networking, Desktop, Mobile, and Tablets & Handheld Devices.

JB Systems was recognized with 5 awards in the following 4 categories:

The infographic we designed for the Confluence Project in Eau Claire, WI.

Website Design
Client: Elite Realty

Mobile/Responsive Design
Clients: Rands Trucking and Earthbound Environmental 

Microsite Design
Client: Lil Dudes N’ Divas

Desktop/Infographic Design
Client: Community Confluence Project

Check out the sites above and see what JB Systems is capable of creating. We would love nothing more than to design a stunning and unique, custom website for you and your company. Let’s move your company forward together– contact us today!

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Responsive Design – A Summary
The rise of smartphones and tablets has had a huge impact on the design and user experience of a site. Before mobile devices, brands only needed ensure that their site would work across different browsers. Smartphones and tablets, however, offer a completely different experience from a standard desktop. Not only is the screen smaller the mobile devices themselves generally are less powerful, have different resolutions, rely on touch control and generally do not support Flash. More importantly 75 percent of consumers expect brands to have mobile-friendly sites and have no problem navigating away if they cannot find what they are looking for quickly. With mobile Internet usage growing 73 percent from the previous year, it’s no exaggeration to say that mobile is the most important avenue for marketers. While there are several options to making your site mobile-friendly, the preferred method is to implement a responsive design.

What Is Responsive Web Design?
Simply put, responsive web design (RWD) means all content, images and structure of a site will adjust to fit every screen size. Unlike a mobile specific site, an RWD site is built on one domain and a single HTML codebase which is fluidly resized by CSS to adjust to any screen size. Since it is all built on one domain you don’t need to maintain different versions of the site, saving you time and, in the long run, money. There are plenty of other reasons you should implement RWD for your brand’s site sooner rather than later.

Google Recommends It
Google accounts for 67 percent of desktop search engine market shares and 83 percent mobile shares, making it the most popular search engine in the world. So it’s a good idea to listen when they recommend RWD. While Google has stated that dynamic serving and mobile-specific sites are acceptable when done properly, responsive still comes in first. After all, its web-crawling bots can index a single set of HTML code much more efficiently than the codes of multiple versions of the same site. Being mobile-friendly will give you a boost in SEO as Google has officially announced they are using mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal for mobile searches.

Better User Experience
Without an RWD, visitors often have to mess around with zooming in, horizontal scrolling or shrinking text and images on screen to simply read a post. With RWD, content is automatically adjusted to perfectly fit the screen of the device making for a hassle-free experience. The less tweaking visitors need to do to navigate a site, the more likely they will be to revisit. In fact, visitors that have a positive experience with a mobile site are 67 percent more likely to make a purchase. A negative experience can lead to a loss of brand loyalty as 50 percent of consumers reported they would use a site less often even if they like the brand. Ultimately, this means fewer visits and sales.

Device Agnostic
RWD works across all devices and operating systems and ensures that users get the best and consistent experience whether they’re on iOS, Android, Windows or even on a SmartTV. This allows you to reach the widest possible audience on every possible platform.

Increase Conversion Rates
The less work steps a user needs to take to make a purchase, the better your chances of converting them into customers. Mobile commerce is quickly growing and by 2018 it is estimated mobile revenue will reach $626 billion. If you don’t have a mobile-friendly site, you’re potentially losing out on a lot of business. RWD gives you full control of all the conversion elements displayed on smartphones and tablets for a smooth experience. Since you can control these elements, you can also use RWD in conjunction with software like Clicktale to create high end heat mapping and A/B tests. This information can show you exactly how visitors are interacting with your site and if your tactics are effective or not. You can make strategic changes armed with this information to improve your conversion rates.

Moving Forward
Responsive design might not be the answer for everyone, but for most brands it will be the best way to optimize for mobile. There are still many sites that are not mobile-friendly so making the switch now can potentially give you a leg up over your competitors.

— Ivan Surrano

Ivan Serrano

Ivan Serrano is an enthusiastic writer who enjoys learning whatever he can about international communications, and hopes to manage his own global business someday. He also enjoys sharing his knowledge of technology and how it can improve business communications on an international level.

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Design. That’s how.

It’s one thing to have a website that’s capable of doing a lot, but it’s another to get your web visitors to take advantage of it. Since our Graphic Design department recently took home three (!) web design awards from GDUSA, and three (!) graphic design awards from GDUSA (still so new it’s not on their website yet), we thought we should give a little more attention to the work they do.

So – how does design contribute to the success of your website? Here are a just a few ways:

You have 3 seconds to get their attention.

That’s right. 3 seconds. Having an engaging home page that relates to what the customer is looking for is key to retain each visitor. This can mean rotating promotional banners with special offers, recent news and updates, or the newest images from your photo gallery. Somehow, the look has to catch their attention and let them know that there’s a lot of good information beyond that home page.

Your customers don’t care about you.

When your potential customers come to your website, they’re looking for something – a solution to their problems, or information they need. They usually aren’t coming to see how great you are, or how many people you’ve worked for. They just want to know how you can help them with their problem. User-centered design keeps the focus on your customers, and a great designer will help you build your website from the customer’s perspective.

Brand Matters.

It’s important that your website is consistent with the look of your flyers, brochures, vehicles, signage, advertising, and any other materials that portray your brand. Maintaining consistency between all areas of your marketing helps to strengthen your brand. And that means you become more memorable and recognizable. The design of your website has to communicate that brand – through graphic elements, color, photography, fonts/typeface, and even language. The success of your branding is in paying attention to all of the little details.

Trends Matter.

If your website was designed over 3 years ago, chances are it may look a little bit outdated. Not only does technology change quickly, but so does design. There are new techniques, trends, and methods that are used and changing daily. Plus, customers’ expectations of websites are increasingly demanding – they expect that they’ll be frequently updated, clean and simple, and super easy to navigate. And they’re being conditioned to use only  the sites that get them what they need the quickest. Refreshing your design and keeping it up-to-date with new design trends that fit your business is part of telling your customers that your business is also up-to-date.

Graphic Design at JB Systems

JB Systems offers full graphic design services – a great way to extend your marketing both online and offline. Of course, website design is our first love, but our designers also love doing print design such as:

• direct mail
• newsletters
• advertisements
• flyers and brochures
• folders for proposals or sales presentations
• business cards
• and more.

Printers, Sign Makers, Promotional Companies – Oh My!

We work with vendors of all types, working to find the best service, quality, and pricing that’s out there, while taking the pressure off of you to get the final product done exactly the way you want it.

Logo Design, Corporate Identity, & Branding Packages

JB Systems also provides identity design (logo design) services. A great time to update your logo (if you are looking for this) would be as you’re introducing a new website – a great way to launch your new look to the world!

Take that First Step…

No matter where you’re starting from, we’re confident we can help get you to where you want to be. Check out the links below to explore our services, or to meet with our designers about your project!

Check out our web design portfolio.

Contact us to talk about your graphic design and/or branding needs.

Already a Client of JB Systems? Thinking of a redesign? Talk to us about updating your website look!

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JB Systems won a 2011 American Graphic Design Award for Mogie’s Pub

Last week, JB Systems was chosen as a winner for the 2011 American Web Design Awards for our design of the Mogie’s Pub website! (See the winning design here: www.mogiespub.com) Mogie’s Pub was one of only 100 winners that were chosen out of 1,000+ entries from across the country. Meghan Bauer, JB Systems’ Art Director, was the lead designer on the project. Way to go team!

About the Mogie’s Pub Design:

Inspiration for the Mogie’s Pub design came directly from their local establishment and the character of the building. The client wanted the website to feel like you were really at Mogie’s Pub, and wanted to portray its fun atmosphere. The brick textures and colors we brought in are actually taken from the building itself. We shot the majority of the photography on the site and used it to showcase their delicious food and ice cold regional brews. A lot of research was done to find some creative ideas in the design of restaurant websites. We also used some pretty cool technology to make the site functional and easy to use.

The Mogie’s Pub website has also been showcased in prominent CSS galleries online (CSSMania.com, TheBestDesigns.com), highlighting the various textures and bright colors used to create their one-of-a-kind look.

See more of our work in our online Portfolio!

About the Contest:

For nearly five decades, Graphic Design USA has sponsored design competitions that spotlight areas of excellence and opportunity for creative professionals. Their online competition – American Web Design Awards – is a celebration of the power of well-designed websites and online communications to attract audiences, disseminate ideas and information, generate response, and promote products, services and ideas.

Since 1963 Graphic Design USA has been the news magazine for graphic designers and other creative professionals.

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