The OpenRain Online Business Platform

Affordable web development integrating custom web design, content management, social media, marketing, and consulting.
Learn more at the dedicated Online Business Platform site.

The Online Business Platform: integrating custom web design, content management and social media.

The OpenRain Online Business Platform is a complete online marketing, content management and social media solution for businesses needing a sophisticated web presence on a budget.

The setup process for each new account includes a 100% custom designed look and feel to fit your exact branding and business needs. Every site is a fully self-maintainable, and supports up to 5 administrator login accounts for you to update copy, add and remove pages at your discretion. “Static” sites offered by most companies require developer interaction to change content. With OpenRain products, however, you, your staff, PR department, marketing and sales teams--anyone you want--can have the power to update your website with point-and-click simplicity within their web browser 24/7/365. The Online Business Platform is not just a slick custom website to impress your customers; it’s the center of your business online.

Each page of content on your site can have Content Management System (CMS) functionality built in, allowing you to update, add or delete content on each page at your convenience via your web browser. This ability is the single biggest differentiating factor between the Online Business Platform and ordinary static web designs, and underscores the tremendous value of signing up for a platform website. We’ve designed the system intelligently enough to support your needs without our involvement, removing the need for frequent costly developer consulting fees to make simple copy updates.

How soon can my site go live?

We will schedule to start the platform buildout process in approximately two weeks after signup. The look-and-feel mock-up process will take approximately 1 week followed by 3 weeks of development. Custom features requests generally require additional time. We will stay in close contact (no less than weekly) throughout the process to demo progress. Page copy and pictures must be provided to us before development begins as scheduled.

What are the costs and terms?

Development of platform look-and-feel and the feature set as outlined above will be quoted to you at a ﬁxed cost, and generally requires a one-year service agreement. Additional custom features will be developed at a fixed hourly rate. The monthly service charge is required to cover the costs of hosting, bandwidth, monitoring and routine maintenance, and is locked in for the duration of your contract.

What does a website contribute to my business?

Your website is often your first impression on prospective clients. Providing common information and additional value such as news, coupons, maps etc. via a website frees your time from call handling and creates a highly scalable marketing tool capable of reaching hundreds of thousands of users at negligible cost per customer.

Does the Online Business Platform support e-commerce?

The base platform does not include online sales features, however, shopping cart services and integration with popular payment services such as PayPal, Google Checkout, Braintree Payment Solutions and Authorize.net can be added per your needs. Differences and complications do occur between payment gateways, however, so please ask us about the best solution for your business.

Can I add features later?

Absolutely! Our service agreement gives you the ability to request additional custom features at any time. Customer logins and sales support are great candidates for a follow-up deployment.

Can I cancel service?

If you would like to take down the site for any reason after your service agreement expires, we will be sad to see you go, but are happy to work with you to take down your site or pass it on to a new home. We're reasonable people!

Service Level Comparison

Feature	Basic	Business	Enterprise
Competitive pricing:	Yes	Yes	Yes	Free quote! All packages are developed at a fixed cost (with the exception of additional requested features that must be customized into the product specifically for your needs).
High-impact graphic design:	Yes	Yes	Yes	All OpenRain websites have slick, unique designs specifically tailored to your business. We incorporate your company logo, color scheme and other branding decisions into the site design to give your customers a cohesive, consistent experience regardless of whether they’re interacting with you in person, or online. In many cases, copy and images from existing marketing materials can be reused.
Platform feature updates:	Yes	Yes	Yes	Great new features will become available on your site as they are added to the platform over time. These upgrades are included in your monthly service plan at no additional charge.
Contact form:	Yes	Yes	Yes	A clear "call to action" is critical to maximizing your sites value as a marketing tool. Obvious, inviting ways of putting the visitor in contact with you via easy-to-use email, phone numbers etc. is your first step in converting the visitor to a paying customer.
Newsletter Signup:	Yes	Yes	Yes	Newsletters allow you to stay in regular contact with an audience interested in your messages. Information from newsletter signup forms can be input into email marketing campaigns of many popular vendors.
High Scalability:	Yes	Yes	Yes	The basic service package provides enough hosting resources to serve tens of thousands of hits per day. Higher-level packages can be hosted in such a way as to withstand much higher traffic loads. This may become necessary, for example, when a successful PR campaign temporarily generates a spike in traffic via a front-page news article.
Monitoring:	Yes	Yes	Yes	All sites are monitored for 24/7/365 availability using 3rd-party systems in separate data centers. Downtime and other critical system events are received automatically by our engineering team for resolution.
Search engine optimization:	Yes	Yes	Yes	Every publicly visible page of your site can have "meta" tags tuned at your discretion. If page-specific tags are not provided, a site-wide default is used.
Deployment:	Yes	Yes	Yes	Your completed site will be pushed "live" by the OpenRain engineering team.
On-demand visitor statistics:	Yes	Yes	Yes	Your new site will include a configuration option to integrate with
Content management:		Yes	Yes	The vast majority of sites developed by mere web design companies are static in nature: meaning you have to contact the developer and go through a time-consuming process to get even the simplest of changes made, such as typos and changing time-sensitive information. Your site, however, will allow you to change, add or delete most of the sites content yourself, without incurring any additional fees or frustration. And best of all, you can make changes when you want, direct in your web browser, and your changes will go live immediately.
Nearly unlimited content pages. (Products, Services, About, News etc.):		Yes	Yes	Since your site is built on top of the powerful content management features of the Online Business Platform, you have a virtually limitless capability to add new content to the system.
Interactive map:		Yes	Yes	If you have a physical store or office location that needs to be accessible by clients, a fully interactive map can be added to the site to aid visitors in finding directions.
Priority support:		Yes	Yes	Business tier (and higher) clients come first. Period.
Slideshow:		Yes	Yes	A dynamic, customizable slideshow using images of your choice.
Blog setup:		Yes	Yes	If you do not have an existing blog, one will be created and set up for you.
Blog/RSS feed integration:		Yes	Yes	Your site can integrate with award-winning blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger, allowing you to keep a constantly updated stream of news links on your site without complicated setup. Existing blogs can be integrated as long as a public RSS feed URL is available.
Twitter feed integration:		Yes	Yes	Your Twitter micro-blogging account can be integrated to show your most recent "tweets". Twitter is a free service used worldwide to distribute brief messages direct to an audience of followers.
Administration section:		Yes	Yes	Many global site options can be changed in a private administration area accessible by username/password.
Custom integrations:			Yes	If you need to integrate with existing 3rd-party systems, please call us to discuss how this may be best accomplished..
Custom features:			Yes	The sky's the limit when it comes to custom features. Please call to elaborate and we'll provide an estimate free of charge. Note that in many cases features can be added later, allowing you to spread custom development costs out over time.
Bundled advisement/training hours per month:		1	4	Additional service hours are billed hourly.
Bundled copywriting/media/PR hours per month:			4	Additional service hours are billed hourly.
Engineering team access:			Yes	Custom service requests can be issued directly to the engineering team for consideration of inclusion into upcoming system updates.