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About AOI AOI Computer Services has been in business over 15 years. Established in 1989 as an Apple Macintosh Consulting Firm, AOI has grown and changed with the times. In 1994 we partnered with another company and began hosting our own web sites. By 1999 it had become apparent we had to make a choice. It had become too difficult to stop our production schedule each time a consulting customer had an emergency, and lets face it, anytime a customer has a computer problem, it is an emergency. A tough decision... Do we continue as a Mac consulting firm or do we dedicate the company to a core focus of web hosting and development? Owner, Art Wheat says the thing that affected his decision the most was how customers would be affected. To continue doing things the way we were was not fair to our consulting customers who needed us at a moment's notice, nor was it fair for our web customers who expect us to turn work around in a reasonable amount of time. We also had to look at what was best for the company (a company can't help people if they are not profitable). We had to chose the web development and hosting and we have never looked back. As we grew in the mid 90's we learned quite a few practical applications that have in turn benefited so many of our customers. For example, while we don't like telling folks we got burned with our own first merchant account (used to accept credit cards), that experienced helped us and eventually our customers. After we lost over $3000 with a shady rep, we researched over 64 companies to work with. We interviewed the top 11. (Why 11? It just worked out that way). In the end we felt we had one of the top vendors in the biz working with us. Later when we began helping others setup merchant accounts for their ecommerce sites, we had that experience to draw on. We still work with that vendor today and they have been a reliable part of our success. Just one of many examples. Since then we have developed SiteSteward™. A huge project that allows our customers to view everything about the site with just a few clicks of the mouse. When does the domain renew? How much is hosting? What is the site's IP address? People want to know these things and our whole philosophy is about empowerment. If we can help our customers help themselves that frees us up to do other more complicated things for them. They seem to agree. In the late 90's we began working with other developers. That's right, we started working with our competition. Once again we looked at things with a different light. Instead of looking to gobble up as much pie as we could we saw was there was plenty out there for everyone. There was enough work to go around for anyone ambitious enough to go after it. What some developers lacked was a polished approach, reliable hosting, and someone who could give them answers not the run around. We provided them with System Administration, technical expertise and business experience in running their own web development company. We gave them discounts depending on the number of sites they hosted with us (they like that one a lot :-) and we empower them with tools like SiteSteward™ and SiteSteward™ DIY Capability (see below). Projects that were huge for us that they can benefit from by using us as their hosting partner. You see we are always looking for WIN / WIN relationships. After SiteSteward™ was developed we began to hear loud and clear that our customers wanted to greater control of their web sites. They didn't want the burdon of developing a complete web site, the marketing plan, and all the graphics and code but they did want to change the content on their site, and format it the way they wanted. They wanted to be able to add a link to other sites that were important to them or companies they networked with. For some it was simply the ability to add photos of people, places, events, and their products. They were not asking for a lot, but giving it to them was a major project. First it had to be easy enough for a non-technical person to do make the changes. We wanted folks to use it, not be afraid of it. It also had to be powerful and fast enough to handle a huge demand and flexible enough to meet very specific, customized needs of individual customer. We looked at off the shelf software packages, and a variety of online systems. None met our needs or were prohibitive cost wise for our clients. So we developed our own system and rolled it into SiteSteward™. Why? Because our customers asked for it and we listened. At AOI we are not perfect but we are always looking to exceed our customer's expectations. AOI has been a resource for practical solutions for very diverse customer base for years. We are big enough to handle your complex needs yet small enough that you get that personalized attention you deserve. We look forward to serving you.
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