Digital Skyline

 

Getting Started

Whether this is your first web project or you're simply looking to upgrade your current service level, We're here to help! We can save you the Time and Money that is often lost due to mistakes made by inexperienced designers and their cheap hosting schemes.

Quality & Experience Matters

The truth is that it CAN be simple, sometimes TOO simple, to put up a page using Frontpage or some other outdated tool. To complicate matters, there's a wealth of "Open Source" scripts available to beginners for free, but are often charged for. These scripts, once deployed, are often neglected leaving you vulnerable to hackers, "Zero Day" exploits and more!

Many of these publicly maintained scripts release important security updates consistently, sometimes daily. Others are abandoned and left to fester with security holes and Source Code which is freely available to anyone who is looking to exploit it. All too often you are left to fend for yourself after your web project has launched, leaving you with no recourse and even potential liabilities when something goes wrong. The last thing you want is to wake up to a web site defaced with "Hacked By Chinese", or worse yet, having your customers confidential information stolen, you being none the wiser.

Why "Membership"?

The Digital Skyline Membership program is unique to this industry. Our platform is safe and secured by state-of-now, proactive security measures. We implement an extensive library of cryptography modules coupled with proprietary data exchange systems to ensure data storage integrity. Our Raiden Platform is constantly upgraded and maintained, and because we provide everything from the Server Platform to the User Interface there not are going to be thousands of hackers fishing our Platform Code for exploits. In this case, security by obscurity, has its merits, but our system is also inherently secured by design, from the ground up.

When it comes to YOUR business and YOUR reputation, you absolutely must consider the expertise and qualifications of the people you entrust your project to. With us, you're contractually guaranteed to receive consistent, professional service and by becoming a Digital Skyline Member your web project will receive updates to both code and content as needed. We have many years of experience and you can trust your web project to our professional hands.

The Myth: "isn't any web presence better then no web presence?"

How many times have you visited a website and wondered, "How can I trust these people when their website looks this horrible!?!?" It's far too easy these days to click on the next search engine listing. It may very well be that your business has the best products and services in its class, but by having a bad web site you are turning away many potential clients!

Trust Is Everything!

Your website directly represents you and your business to online visitors. These people are your prospective customers, current clients, vendors, and business partners! You want to make the absolute best impression possible. This is why a custom, professionally designed web-site is not only an option to consider, it's the Only Option. If you hope to have any chance at succeeding online you absolutely need a professionally developed web-site.

Budget Budget Budget

As with most business decisions, you need a realistic budget to have any chance at success. Does this mean you need to hire a large team and allocate $100K+ for your website? Probably not. Unless you have an established business and plan on doing a large percentage of your business online, this is almost always going to be overkill for your needs.

And remember, not all web-sites are aimed at selling products, some very successful sites consist mainly of providing support and product information for customers. The amount of time and money that you can save by simply providing online help to your customers can be very substantial. Do not underestimate the power that information delivery brings!

Dynamic vs. Static

Our sites are created to expand as your needs grow, and because they are Fully Dynamic and designed to integrate with the Raiden Platform from the ground up, you will be able to change any aspect of your site at a fraction of what it would normally cost.

Lets say you want to add pages to your site over time using the Raiden Control Center and the dsEdit Application, eventually you might end up with hundreds or even thousands of content pages. With a static website, managing and redesigning a site with more then a few pages can be a logistics nightmare.

Not so with the Raiden Platform, because we automatically separate your content files from the presentation logic! When it's time to update your design, we can integrate a new template for a fraction of the cost and replace the old one in a matter of minutes! Why pay thousands of dollars to have a similar system built from scratch to be used on a single web-site, or trust your site to an unsecure "Open Source" script when you can use our integrated Raiden Platform to manage all of your web projects, with no built-in restrictions and for a fraction of the cost?

Service Scalability

Our closest competitors' Hosted Content Management Systems have been fully researched and have been found to start at $1,000/mo. + $10,000 in set up fees! These guys don't even include management services at this rate! At our corporate service level, you'll get as many as 40 man hours per month for only $1,999.99 - This is our ultimate offering which allows you to virtually lease our Michigan-based development team for less then what it would cost you for a part time employee or even development work outsourced to India.

Now obviously the corporate package is only suitable for the most serious e-tailers and that is why our basic memberships start at only $29.95/mo. which include unlimited* hosting, and a 30 support credits to better serve those in the small business and professional services communities.

Keys to Success

    • Planning
      Do you want to sell products online? There are many tools available but very few right ways to do commerce online. Costs can easily spiral out of control when you add up everything it takes to do online commerce right. You'll need to decide if you want to do live transactions or use a 3rd party payment system such as PayPal. We will help you make the right decisions for your needs.
       
    • Visual Appeal
      You want your site to look good, period. Using elements such as Flash, video, or audio can enhance a website if used appropriately. However, many developers will try and sell you on these as "must have items" just because they think it will look good in their portfolio... not because it will best serve you or your customers. The #1 factor in determining whether or not to use multimedia is deciding what purpose each page element serves. If it provides no additional functionality chances are all it is doing is slowing download times and frustrating your visitor. We will help you decide on a design that not only looks clean and professional, but is also usable and well suited for your target audience.
       
    • Functionality
      Whether you are allowing visitors to purchase products, or simply informing them of your company's latest offerings, your website should always offer something of value to its visitors. If all your website provides is your contact information and a pretty 3D logo, you really aren't making the best use of the technology. For example, an insurance company might give free online estimates or electronic claim submissions. We are experts at providing custom applications, from help desks to shopping carts, we can develop or expand upon an existing application to suite your needs.
       
    • Marketing
      Online marketing is key to the success of your web project. If you plan on selling anything online you'll want to budget in advertising costs. You can start with as little as $20/Month for a pay-per-click advertising program such as Google AdWords, but of course, if you have a serious budget, and you need to maximize your launch potential, the sky is the limit! At any budget, you don't want to gamble with your marketing dollars. Having a professional manage your online marketing is really the only way to go if you are to have any chance of converting your marketing dollars in to customers.

      In addition there are many other "grassroots" viral marketing techniques we can assist you with. For example, you should always include your website URL on your business cards and also mention your website in networking engagements. All of this will help get the word out. Also, starting a  newsletter by collecting email addresses is one of the best ways to communicate online and keeps your customers coming back. Many systems are available to run an newsletter campaign at various pricing levels. But luckily for our members, we have already developed an application called dsBlaster, which can automatically manage your subscribers and your newsletters at no additional cost beyond the initial setup!

These are just some of the things to take in to consideration when developing your project.

We operate on a first-come, first-serve basis... don't get put on the waiting list!
If you are ready and want to discuss plans for your website, don't hesitate :

Contact Us Today!