Digital Natives. Small Business Focused. Minnesota-Based.
Blue Ox Websites & Marketing is based in Minnesota, with remote employees across Central Minnesota and the Twin Cities. We love helping small businesses, startups, and nonprofits get found online so they can spend less time worrying about their website or marketing and more time serving customers.
We’re dedicated to strengthening our local economies and communities, which calls for resilient businesses. Most of our team members stay with us for 8 years or more, not just because we build great websites, but also because we value learning, teamwork, remote work, and family.
What Drives Blue Ox
Mission
We build innovative websites and honest marketing strategies to help small businesses and nonprofits grow—and make a bigger impact in communities.
Vision
We’re here to grow alongside local small businesses and nonprofits, building lasting partnerships that help communities thrive.
Guiding Values
Creativity: Custom solutions, not cookie-cutter.
Reliability: We show up and follow through.
Approachability: No jargon, no gatekeeping.
Community: We grow with the businesses and nonprofits we support.
Remote First
At Blue Ox, we prioritize flexibility and choice while focusing on making meaningful connections with our coworkers and clients. While we’re primarily virtual and WFH, our teams meet in person a few times per year to celebrate accomplishments and brainstorm big, new ideas.
Benefits & Perks
Flexible PTO & Company Holidays
Prioritized work-life balance, with flexible PTO and 23-25 observed days off.
Family Planning
Paid family and medical leave, including for adoption.
Employer-Matching 401K
50-100% retirement matching.
Perks & Stipends
Monthly internet and equipment allowances to support remote work.
Learning & Development
Mentorship from senior team members, conferences, certifications, and online learning opportunities.
And More!
Meet the Blue Ox Team
Meet the team! We’re a small, local crew of real people who care about helping businesses succeed online.
Employees
Logan Gruber
ReFounder / Marketing Director
Base: Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Tenure: 2016
Katie Carlson
Designer / Developer
Base: St. Cloud, Minnesota
Tenure: 2015
Kelsey Meyer
Designer / Developer
Base: St. Joseph, Minnesota
Tenure: 2017
Jonathan Gamble
Writer / SEO
Base: Cottage Grove, Minnesota
Tenure: 2024
Zeineb Kadhkadhi
Social Media / Designer
Base: St. Cloud State University
Tenure: 2018
Jen Gruber
Social Media / Designer
Base: Sauk Centre, Minnesota
Tenure: 2024
Careers At Blue Ox
Application
100 Best Email Marketing Campaigns You Should Borrow
/in Email Marketing, SEO4 Reasons To Choose Trustdyx For Website Design
/in Trustdyx, Web Design, Web Hosting, Web Maintenance, Web SecurityWebsite design is a complex process, and there are many more factors to take into account. As a small business, it can be hard to keep track of it all.
Your small business’ website design isn’t something you want to trust to just any web developer. A firm like ours – with the help of the Trustdyx platform – can help you build a responsive, secure website, so contact us for more information!
4 Reasons To Choose Trustdyx For Website Design
1. Responsive Web Design
When browsing the internet on your phone, you’ve likely searched for a product, clicked on a search result and been taken to a hard to navigate website. It might even take you to the home page instead of the product you were looking for!
These problems arise when a website isn’t designed to be responsive. A Trustdyx website design will make one website which will react to whichever kind of device it is being viewed on rather than build a mobile and a desktop site.
2. SEO Native
A Trustdyx website design is also natively search engine optimized (SEO). Speed is a huge ranking factor in Google searches, as is the organization of your site and how well organized the pages are.
It’s important to be search engine optimized, because the higher you rank in Google searches the more likely people are to flock to your website naturally.
3. Security
All website design firms worth their salt should make sure the sites they build support SSL to encrypt information. This is true not only for credit card and other payment information but also personal information like addresses, phone numbers, emails, etc.
4. Speed
Statistics show that 40% of users will abandon a website which takes more than 3 seconds to load. This is especially true for mobile users.
In order to keep those potential clients on your site you’ll want to optimize it to run as quickly as possible by using the Trustdyx platform. This is not only on the ‘back-end’, but also in the way information, pages and menus are organized and displayed. Trustdyx websites are faster than 94% of websites on the internet.
Be sure to contact us if you’d like more information about fast, secure, natively SEOd Trustdyx websites, or are ready to create or reimagine yours!
4 Excellent Website Security Tips For Businesses
/in Web Design, Web Maintenance, Web SecurityWhile you may not think your website is of value to hackers or vandals, it can be compromised at anytime through certain vulnerabilities. Most of the time, website are hacked not to damage the owner, but to use as a staging point for attacks and email relays for spamming others. Proper website security can help protect you and others online from predatory behaviors.
If you’re a client of Cohlab and have one of our websites, be sure you’re on our maintenance program so we can protect your website. If not, our new Trustdyx websites offer sleek designs without plugins or major security holes, making your business website safer than ever.
Get in touch today to learn more.
1. Updates
Website Security by geralt
Whatever server or CMS you use, keeping software and plugins up to date is extremely important. It might seem easy, but modern websites have many moving parts which interact together. When one piece is updated, it may not work perfectly – or at all – with the other pieces.
While there can be downsides to updating, having a professional take care of it can ensure it’s done correctly and everything continues to work smoothly.
The risk to not updating is that hackers exploit those who don’t update, since so many websites use the same or similar products to get the job done.
2. Passwords
You know you should use a variety of complex passwords . . . but, do you? It’s crucial to protect your hosting and website administration area with strong passwords.
Hackers have many ways of stealing or breaking through passwords, from simply stealing and guessing to sophisticated cracking tools and network analyzers.
When considering your password, be sure to use best practices like:
Alternatively, with a Trustdyx website, no password is actually needed. Changes can only be made through a proprietary program, making it even harder to hack.
3. HTTPS
HTTPS is a protocol used to provide security over the internet. If you look at the top right of many websites, before the “www” will be “https://”. This means no one can intercept or change the content being transmitted between the website server and your browser. Credit card and login pages should all be HTTPS, but soon every page of a website will need to be as well.
Without HTTPS, an attacker could create a visually similar website and redirect your visitors there, and they would be none the wiser if they didn’t investigate further. The attacker could then steal any information they enter into the fake website.
That’s why our Trustdyx websites offer HTTPS standards as part of their website security package, to protect you and your visitors.
4. Backups
Once you think you’ve taken all the website security precautions you have, the best thing you can do is have a good plan in place for recovery. With regular backups, if something were to go horribly wrong at least you can recover your website to a point earlier in the day or week.
With Trustdyx, every time a change is made to the website, it’s backed up. That means if something were to go wrong, we could restore your site to the exact point before an attacker altered it.
Once you think you have done all you can then it’s time to test your website security. The most effective way of doing this is via the use of some website security tools, often referred to as penetration testing or pen testing for short.
The results from automated tests can be daunting, as they present a wealth of potential issues. The important thing is to focus on the critical issues first. Each issue reported normally comes with a good explanation of the potential vulnerability. You will probably find that some of the medium/low issues aren’t a concern for your site.