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It's all about web presence, with the DownRiver Group.
Add value to your web presence for your prospects, clients or employees with the deployment of streaming media!
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what would an informational video be worth? Communicate total context in tutorials, organizational communiques and other crucial communications, via the internet, your intranet or extranet, with embedded and streaming media services from the DownRiver group.
Web Presence In Sound And Vision!
What do the banners above have to do with your Web Presence?
They may not be familiar names but they are all software platforms on which some of the biggest names in business have built their web presence!
These platforms are also part of the tool set used by the DownRiver Group to create your web presence.
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Our job, at the DownRiver Group, is to create and manage websites that properly represent and enhance a clients business, making the client more money(and justifying our reason for being in business in the first place). We build & manage web presence and make it pay off for you. And we’re good at it.
Having been at this for better than 10 years, I can give you a knowledgeable appraisal of what causes your web presence to suffer, and what makes that web presence produce.
Common Web Presence Ills & Cures
The Ill ~ Using Cheap, DIY Services
I’m not averse to clients taking their sites “in house”, or using web-based services, provided they have an educated reason & the proper personnel for doing so. A real quick way to poison your web presence, though, is to try and take on a job without the right tools & qualified personnel.
Some people, who shouldn’t, try to change their own oil.
Some people try to do their own home self-surgery.
Proper web development fits somewhere between those 2 tasks and getting it wrong can cause a mess or a world of pain and aggravation. And then it usually costs even more to rectify, nevermind the fact that, from what I’ve seen, those “cheap DIY” services offered by most are grossly overpriced.
The Cure ~ Make sure you have qualified help. You’re friends’ cousin who plays video games and always wins? That’s not really a strong qualification. Nor does knowing how to “cut and paste” from the web make someone a web designer.
The Ill ~ Refuse to update the site.
Ever been in a waiting area where they never change the magazines? Would you like reading the same magazine, everyday, week after week after week?
Sites can become stale, easily, losing you visitors, search engine ranking and money.
The Cure: Freshen up your site. Build/hosting clients of the DownRiver Group get minor weekly updates, free of charge. A couple of paragraphs of text, some new pics every week or 2 works wonders.
The Ill ~ Insist on “bells and whistles”(especially the wrong ones).
Too many people fall into this trap. Yes, you want something to engage and interest your visitor; a little (of the right thing) is good but a LOT can kill your site deader than Mrs. O’Learys’ cow.
Case in point: Flash/Splash pages.
 Lots of people ask me about them and in 99% of the cases they are the worst thing a client can do. Very fun, when they work right, very bad when they don’t or are cheaply constructive. Either way, they’re expensive(and, yes, we CAN do them but let’s talk, first).
They may be appropriate for what you’re offering and you have the budget but in terms of getting found on the search engines, they end up costing you more in that regard also.
The Cure: Employ the K.I.S.S. method(keep it simple, silly). Well, keep it simpler.
The Ill ~ Mistaking the Medium
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; having a web site does not necessarily mean having a positive web presence.
Your web site isn’t a business card, it’s not a magazine, it’s not an electronic flyer or poster. It’s all of these and much, much more.
Making this mistake and not utilizing this medium properly will, at best, waste time and money. Worse, it can damage your reputation and even cause you legal problems.
The Cure: Think through what you want to achieve with your web presence. Find qualified advisors and take that advice, just as you would a mechanic, a doctor or a lawyer.
Of course there are any number aspects that can effect your web presence, for better or worse. This is just the short list of most egregious ills that we see, along with the web presence cures we apply to our clients’ sites.
Proper web presence nets profits. Contact us when you’re ready to make money with your web site.
1st off, let me thank everyone responsible for a great 2009!
The Support Team; Without you guys we would never have been able to complete the sites & the projects which made continuing possible. We wouldn’t be here without you. And we wouldn’t be able to hope for even more growth in this new decade. We’re looking forward to working you even harder(and adding some more help to assist you) in the upcoming year!
Thanks again to all of you, the server support teams, programmers, designers and others that have made this endeavor possible.
Friends & Family of the DownRiver Group: It’s a difficult task starting up a business, especially in the economy we’ve been dealing with over the last year and a half or so, and without the intellectual, moral & spiritual support of our friends and family it would have been even more difficult. Though the DownRiver Group has been around for many years(we started in internet services over a decade ago, in site development of our own in-house projects), the decision to offer our skills & abilities was made just before the recent upheaval. Even in the face of those economic changes, you saw the value of our intentions, believed in our abilities & offered resources more precious than money at crucial times. We will continue return dividends on those investments.
You, The DownRiver Clients: Last but not least, our clients; without you there is no reason to continue this aspect of the business, is there? Along with offering our thanks, we promise to continue scouring not only the internet but all venues for the information, the tools and the resources to improve your web presence and make your endeavors successful. It’s our reason for being and your success is our success.
Thank you all & we look forward to serving you all for the years to come in this new decade!
New Features For Web Presence & Web Success
With the new year we’re adding a number of new features designed to enhance your web presence.
AJAX Applications: One of these features to improve your site usability is the use of AJAX applications. These are specialized & powerful scripts that provide a wealth of interaction on your site.
Looking for a Change?
Watch this space…
Here’s a simple example of an application in action.
Media Applications: We now offer a new form of video application that allows you to embed your own videos on your site. This video app allows you to brand your own content & removes the unsightly banners usually included with the embeds from the popular video site embeds. Custom controls & skinning(the look of the player itself) are also part of this application giving you incredible control over the operation, look and feel of your site media.
Web Advertising: This is an exciting aspect of the business! We are now offering not just the design & creation of visual ads for use on websites but also a network for distributing those ads across numerous sites with significant traffic.
 While newspapers & other periodicals are experiencing waning circulation, the eyes on the internet continue to grow & we have finished our beta testing on networks such as Facebook, with very encouraging success. We’ll create an ad for you, place it in effective venues & track and report on the traffic generated to your site with metrics that guarantee results!
You can also use the ads created for your newspaper, flyer & magazine needs(and we can help you with media in the proper publications, if you need).
We created the ad shown to the left, in house, and you can feel free to call Withum Sailmakers to inquire as to how their decision to entrust the Withum web presence to the DownRiver Group has worked out for them!
I’ll be back soon to discuss some important security as well as some news about new policies & rates. Before I go, let me point out our new payment gateway, a feature that you may well want to incorporate into your own website.
Once again, Happy New Year & the best of web presence!
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