RCB's old website

Over the course of the last few months, we’ve pulled our collective brain power and skills together to bring River City customers an effortless and more inviting website, including:

News Portal/ Email Alerts

The major addition to their site was a news portal, appropriately titled Bank Notes, that River City Bank can now use to inform and update customers on the latest banking and financial information to glean tips and insights from River City Bank’s distinguished experts.  Since many customers are logging into their e-banking daily or weekly, a regularly updated news section is perfect to offer relevant information that changes over time.

Corresponding with the news portal, we retooled River City Bank’s email newsletter to highlight the articles available in Bank Notes. Along with the now quarterly email newsletter, customers can sign up for specific email news alerts including: Business Briefs, Economic Outlook, Financial Planning, Trust & Estate Planning, Saving Smartly, and Identity Theft Protection.

River City Ramblers

Another integral part of the website that has been developed more thoroughly is the River City Ramblers page. For those that don’t know, River City Bank has a senior world travel club that any River City Bank member over 50 can join. Along with an up-to-date calendar of yearly events and most recent newsletter, we developed a custom Google map detailing every stop the Ramblers have made along the way and where they are heading soon. We also couldn’t make a custom map without including a unique Rambler Flag map marker to make it extremely easy to see their travels.  This section will grow over time to include memoirs, photo galleries, and planning tools for members.

Homepage

The biggest change and developed area of the website is the homepage. Here are the best and most useful new features:

• Easy to find log-in for account holders and bank customers.
• A Calendar of Events that automatically pulls upcoming dates for bank holidays, future events, and River City Rambler travel days.
• Custom icons to bring attention to River City Ramblers, Switch to River City, and Join Our Mailing List
• “Did you know?” information box. River City Bank has so many amazing features (like refunded ATM fees and same day deposits, to start)  that it only seemed natural to help inform customers and visitors. So, every time you visit the homepage, you’ll learn something new about what makes River City Bank different.
• All the most recent articles from Bank Notes feed directly onto the  homepage under their respective categories.

Artwork

Another unique feature River City Bank offers is their impressive space and interesting ad campaigns which we couldn’t help but to incorporate into the site.

To help draw attention to River City Bank’s inspiring architecture, the talents of the lovely Sabrina Wilson of Blue Dawn Photography were employed.  She was able to integrate the visual impact of the physical location with their new online presence.

We also decided to pull inspiration from a SMART checking ad campaign and use customized piggy banks as a continuous theme throughout the site to celebrate all of the diverse ways to save, invest, and spend with River City Bank products.

________________________________________

So if you’re a River CIty Bank customer or not, we invite you to explore their site and look and all the unique features that we had a hand in enhancing. And who knows, River City Bank might just be the place for you (and we think it might!)

Blue Ridge Area Heath Education Center (AHEC) is a non-profit organization that serves a variety of functions and is run through federal and state grants as well as private contributions.  In order to continue growing their resources, they must constantly collect and report data on the people and organizations they serve.  We saw immediately a deep need for online forms and databases that would allow routine processes to be performed by their users and seamlessly integrated into the internal database saving time and preventing error.

A glimpse of their old website

The client estimated that developing this system saved them approximately 80 hours of labor each semester, or about 160 hours a year, and while we love building really cool things that look great, this fact filled us with more satisfaction than anything else.

The Blue Ridge AHEC site contained many database-driven elements including:

• multi-level access and data entry/maintenance roles,
• user communication and reporting tools
• real time database interaction by non-technical users
• multiple security and referential validation systems
• online forms importable to client local database
• file storage and retrieval
• online quizzes with performance review and results storage and sorting functions
• embedded multimedia included videos and slideshows manageable by non-technical staff
• search functions by keyword, category, and other fields as needed.

In 1984, Owens Sporting Goods became “The Team Specialist,” offering customized sports uniforms, apparel, footwear, and equipment for baseball, football, lacrosse, basketball, soccer, wrestling, volleyball, and softball teams. They have also become one of the Southeast’s Elite Nike Team Dealers. They also provide in-house designing, screen printing, and embroidery, proving that Owens Sporting Goods can truely outfit any team from head to toe!

The sight features a simple setup that will grow over time. For now, the site includes a exciting image viewer that helps capture the excitement of sporting events and games. It also features a dynamic calendar of events highlighting deadlines, holidays, and general information. There is also a blog area  that will feature a host of guest writing coaches to connect with other coaches all across the Southeast.

The New Brinson-Askew.com website

We are overjoyed to announce that the newly redesigned, Brinson-Askew.com has officially gone live.

The law firm of Brinson, Askew, Berry, Seigler, Richardson & Davis, LLP was founded in 1975 in Rome, GA. The Firm provides representation to regional and national business and individual clients based throughout North Georgia and the metropolitan Atlanta area, so it was important they they project a professional image and a site that can be found easily through search.

The Firm’s nineteen attorneys practice in all levels of State and Federal Court, with experience before the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia located in Rome and both personal and firm accomplishments that went overlooked on their old website due to navigation issues.

This three-month journey resulted in a website transformation featuring an updated look and feel that is highly navigable and user-friendly. This multi-user, scalable, content management system highlights Attorney and Firm accomplishments, works with an extended web presence to reach greater traffic and increases findability through the use of optimized content and appropriate metadata.  We coordinated new and contemporary photos for the professional staff with the help of the lovely Sabrina Wilson of Blue Dawn Photography.

The old Brinson-Askew website

The site now features a highly functional news area that any of the attorneys can update with ease. We connected the news article categories with the Practice Area pages, so that when visitors are searching through the practice area portion, they can also find relevant news from the firm’s work in that area. This allows the newsworthy information to be found in many useful ways on their site.

With our extended connections, we were able to locate a writer with legal experience to update fifteen practice area pages that had lived without content for many years, saving our client time and optimizing content for search friendliness.

We built a custom blog area for the Worker’s Compensation Employee practice area. This is consumer-driven area of law, and the firm now has a more direct way to reach out to those who need information, education, and a trusted attorney to represent them well.

We consulted with interested attorneys on LinkedIn profile optimization so that each attorney is able to can be more easily found through search engines. We also built a contact form that can ensure we convert that increased web traffic into viable leads.

So visit their site, take a look around, and who knows… you might just find the lawyer you need today.

JSI has been around since the seventies, founded by Samuel Dewey Jowers, Jr. The company as it is known today came together in 2003 when Marc Sklar (Dewey Jowers’ son-in-law) became part owner. Though their name has changed over the years, they are still located in the same location since its inception, 706 E 2nd Avenue, and still brag on high levels of customer service.

The site has many exciting features, including online quote requests, claims, and download-friendly applications,  but there’s one in particular that we’d like to highlight. We pride ourselves on not just building great websites, but building them in way that the client can continue to build it long after we finish.

Though there is already a large list of the types of insurance offered on the site, JSI has the ability to add additional products and pages with ease.  We even created some custom code to make it even easier. On every page, customers can click to know more about that particular type of insurance by clicking on an info tab on the side of the page. These change automatically from page to page depending on what product is being discussed, but we have gone a step further.  This area is also designed to automatically change when a new type of insurance page is created.  This “meta-programming” ensures that the site stays consistent, but allows our clients to grow and expand without having to worry about the finer details.

The area highlighted in green is the area that will always change, even when the business owners update the site themselves.

]]> http://www.steele-agency.com/2009/12/jowers-sklar-insurance-website-goes-live/feed/ 0 http://www.steele-agency.com/2009/11/cornerstone-concrete-dynamic-web/ http://www.steele-agency.com/2009/11/cornerstone-concrete-dynamic-web/#comments Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:33:13 +0000 admin http://www.steele-agency.com/?p=918 Cornerstone Concrete Development LLC debuts their dynamic, new web presence where interested clients can view a full gallery of design work ranging from indoor acid staining to outdoor stamp overlay to commercial customization and everything in between.

Cornerstone is known for transforming the ordinary, and in addition to the new website, visitors can also find Cornerstone Concrete on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flikr for project videos, updates, pictures, and more.  Every page of the new website is capable of client updates and changes on the fly and visitor comments are automatically cycled to the home page as they are accepted.

Visit CornerCrete.Com today to see if they can meet your decorative concrete needs!

Contact us at Steele Agency if we can help you with a dynamic web presence.

The reception begins at 5:30pm with the show opening at 7pm.

All proceeds will be shared between the Rome Little Theatre Foundation, the Historic DeSoto Theatre Foundation, and the Magnolia Foundation, a newly created organization focused on underserved women diagnosed with cancer. It’s a night of relaxation, fun, and entertainment that supports three worthy causes and a celebration of women.

To download the poster in PDF format, click the image to the right. To become an event sponsor or buy tickets, contact the Box Office at 706.295.7171. Check out more information by visiting the Rome Little Theatre website.

We encourage all Rome ladies to consider attending, and local businesses to become event sponsors!

Find Thrive! on Facebook by clicking here:

Rome Boulevard is making the most of this phenomenon.  Check out 3-D animated drawings of Phase One: The Boardwalk on the Boulevard YouTube Channel.

To capitalize on the democratizing effect of Twitter and the accessibility of executives big and small, Rome Boulevard is now tweeting. By building a community of friends, media outlets, potential tenants, and similar projects, developers have access to an even more conversational medium,  a way to create buzz and generate potential leads, and a forum to receive information about the industry that may be helpful in decision making or sales pursuits.

If you’d like to watch this case study unfold, subscribe to the videos and you’ll be notified when there are updates,sign up for a twitter account (takes about a minute) and follow the Boulevard.

What is your business? Can it benefit from going social? What are you hesitant about?

Market potential. High scalability. Deal flow. Due diligence. Committed funds. Co-investments.

When representatives from the Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce escort a handful of curious investors to Athens on Feb. 5, they will be joining several communities across the state talking the language of “angel investment networking.”

Sponsored and run by the Kauffman Foundation out of Kansas City, “The Power of Angel Investing” will unite leaders and potential investors from Savannah, Augusta, Gainesville, Athens and Rome.

“An angel investment group fits into the Rome/Floyd 20/20 Strategic Plan Part II,” says Lowell Pratt, the chamber’s Small Business Coordinator, “by building ‘capacity’ or the ability to raise business from the ground up from within our community.”

The chamber hosted the first public discussion on angel investing at the Symposium on Technology in November and emphasized preliminary work at last week’s annual meeting. CEO Al Hodge says the chamber will serve as the facilitator of resources as investors direct and build the program as they see fit.

Don Betts, a speaker at the symposium, is Director of e2e Works, a state-funded organization based out ofGeorgia Tech commissioned to work with all communities to identify, connect and energize potential angel investors throughout the state. The program is the first of its kind in the country, growing out of The Georgia Entrepreneur and Small Business Coordinating Network created by Gov. Sonny Perdue in 2004.

“They exist everywhere but they usually don’t call themselves ‘angels’,” Betts said in an interview this week. “It’s happening organically and independently.” By building awareness, gathering investors and promoting an area’s network or fund, the opportunities increase both for the investors and for the community in which they live and operate, he says.

Angels are accredited investors according to Securities and Exchange Commission standards with high asset holdings who are looking not just to invest money but to bring their successful experience to bear on a new operation. They enjoy building opportunity for jobs and wealth in their communities, learning from each other and investing with like-minded individuals. They know the risk associated with the kinds of ventures they are investing in but also pursue every available best practice and measuring instrument to choose projects that are worth the risk.
A different kind of capitalist

Rather than “hunting” for opportunity outside of a community, the angel investment approach has been frequently compared to “economic gardening” – growing and nourishing business from within.

Further, angel investing is different from venture capitalism in that it works on a “lower rung of the ladder” of business building, says Betts. It functions more as “seed money” for start-ups or businesses with high operating costs who typically cannot secure bank investment given the nature of the industry they are pursuing.

While venture capitalists work in investments of “5 to 10 million usually,” angels may offer “anywhere from $10,000 to $1 million in operating capital” depending on the need and potential return and typically become equity partners with the entrepreneur, says Betts. While they are involved in counseling or advising business operations, they “don’t invest in lifestyle business, “ Betts says, but rather look for ventures that have exit strategies such as potential buyout.

Angel networks have different structures and truly are “organic” in the sense that they are shaped by the people who are doing the investing – background, capital willing to invest, and particular interests. While the type of businesses that will be funded depends on the expertise and interest of the angels involved, Betts says that generally companies working in biotechnology, medical devices, IT and software are perfect fits for angel investment.

Examples of angel-grown businesses in the state include:

-Carbon Motors, a law enforcement vehicle company in Savannah.

-Atlanta-based Asankya, developing novel technology to optimize the network traffic over wide area networks (WANs).

-Garrison Enterprises, the largest provider of Environmental Health Data Management Systems in the country.

Calling All Angels
The seminar in Athens is the second of its kind already this year, the first being held in Atlanta on Jan. 19. Should the Rome group continue its preliminary work, a seminar is likely to be held here. If the local interests works fast, they may be assembled in time to join the 2009 Angel Capital Association’s Annual Summit to be held April 15-17 in Atlanta.

“Sometimes all it takes is one person,” Betts says. “In Savannah, things took off after one investment banker got involved and motivated the group. They are now many years and many projects into it.”

While Betts warns that angel investing is “not a panacea to solve every entrepreneur’s capital needs,” it is a way for a community to build jobs, create wealth and cultivate a environment rich for business mentoring and accountability.

GEORGIA ANGEL NETWORKS:
Savannah: http://www.savannahangelpartners.com/
>With detailed entrepreneur application process:http://www.savannahangelpartners.com/eArticles.php

Atlanta:
Atlanta Technology Angels: http://www.angelatlanta.com/
>With director’s blog, which includes tons of links to articles and resources:http://angelatlanta.wordpress.com/

SeraphGroup in Atlanta and Palo Alto, Calif.: http://www.seraphgroup.net/

RECOMMENDED ARTICLES:
-Economic Gardening, particular attention to Georgia’s success: Click

-Inc. magazine, January 2009, article: Click

ORGANIZATIONS:
-Angel Capital Association
-Southeast Regional Network of Angel Investment Groups
-MIT Enterprise Forum
-Kauffman Foundation
-Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech

(Published on Hometown Headlines 1.28.09)

Wright Ledbetter and Derek Bell stand under center arch as work gets underway.

When Wright Ledbetter and Derek Bell submitted their “Porto Futurus” design to the citywide competition to bring large-scale art to the city, it had already come a long way from the paper towel drawings they had sketched over beer while hanging out one summer night in 2007.  And now, after ten years of friendship and nearly a year since that fateful night, the concept is fast becoming reality with the second of three concrete segments poured last week and stonework underway.

Standing near the structure, it becomes obvious how under-imagined its scale has been from initial reports.  While standing in the center, the structure looms twenty-seven feet overhead and spreads approximately seventy feet by fifty feet around.  At this point in the building process, the nine tons of steel undergirding the structure, eight trucks worth of cement, and 70,000 pounds of ashalar-cut Tennesee Field stone are all taking shape at once.

One goal of the design and a foundational principle of the concept itself is fortitude and staying power.  While discussing material off-hand with Structural Designer and Contrator, Mike Niwicki, he asks “now, will that last 200 years?” to which Mike reples, “yes, definitely. That’s what it’s made for.”  He turns to give the official statement of his intention for the piece to “last for centuries,” but it is already obvious this goal has defined most every decision on the project from the structural design to the materials chosen to method of construction.

However, hardly anyone will stand near the Porto Futurus. They will whiz by while entering and exiting Rome, and the rod widths and material makeup will only be distant technical decisions underlying the project’s aesthetic power and existence as a piece of art. It is, in the end, three intersecting aqueducts spread across the center grass between Highways 411, 101, and US 27.  Wanting to use recognizable architectural forms that were also symbolic, Bell notes that aqueducts “are historically the lifeblood to the community.”  The three intersecting series of arches sit next to three intersecting highways in a town of three intersecting rivers, and as Ledbetter points out, “it is a symbol of the Ledbetter Exchange, the city itself, and past civilizations.”  The three sections cause him to reflect on the “past and present efforts of the community to convey itself towards the future – and aqueducts are a form of conveyance, just like highways and rivers.”

While funds are still being raised by Ledbetter for the lighting package and electricity, there will be yet another dimension for the viewer at night. “The lights will be at very heroic angles, lighting the columns from the base. It will be spectacular to behold.” Look out for a sponsor of this project to step forward soon.

The project was an initiative of the Rome Area Council for the Arts and the City of Rome and its budget of $150,000 is being met with a National Endowment for the Arts grant secured by former RACA director, Alan Bell, state funding through the Department of Community Affairs, secured by Senator Preston Smith, and over $35,000 in local contributions.

After a minor delay in groundbreaking due to DOT concerns, the project got underway in July and is now set to be complete by the end of September or very early October.

###

James McDaniel – a face you’d know from NYPD Blue, Malcolm X, Law and Order: SVU, L.A. Law, and countless movies, television shows, and plays – was a warm and reflective distinguished guest.  If one facet of the festival is about mentoring and relationship building, James made for a great story.  After majoring in large animal veterinary medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and deciding he was “just more of a city boy,” James walked into an audition in New York City and landed the lead role in A Soldier’s Play in 1981 at the age of 22. He didn’t offer deep secrets to break into the business, but instead the quiet confidence of a man who’s found the thing he both loves and does well, “it’s really just the only thing I’ve ever made a dime on.” He mused on the rarity of a person attaining success and satisfaction from the same venture and looked forward to the vacation with his family immediately following his trip to Rome.  From the looks of his current projects, it’s a vacation well-earned.

Experienced organizers and volunteers all indicated the way the festival has raised the bar from last year, and cited Harry and Laura Musselwhite’s energy and finesse as the reason RIFF is attracting higher quality films and award winning filmmakers and actors. It’s obvious the Rome is “on the map” nationally and globally in the film community.

Rome’s Own Siskel and Ebert
It’s more like Barr, Minor, and Mejia. After viewing every film and making award nominations, these three adjudicators and film buffs are willing to put their money on two films each you shouldn’t miss: Without hesitation, Mike Mejia recommended “The Wrecking Crew” and India-filmed, “Vanaja”.  Brian Barr was more than enthusiastic about “Franklin 13 vs The World’, the story of the paper-rock-scissors championship and a soundtrack every kid of the 80’s will love. He also joined in a vote for the short “Because There are Things You Never Forget” noting the one great punchline that makes the movie worth each of the thirteen minutes. Frank Minor suggested “Chickamauga” and “Things We Do For Love.”  Full schedule and descriptions are available at: http://rome.bside.com/2008/films

###