OakTree.com develops websites, business applications and eLearning tools edit this microsummary

edit OakTree Digital : Creative Website Development and Web Applications

OakTree Digital has been designing creative websites and innovative Internet applications since 1992.

Its deep roots in Internet technology and the Silicon Forest have won the full-service interactive agency such noteworthy clients as Intel Corp. and Oregon Health & Science University.

These and many other clients turn to OakTree for innovative Internet solutions that align with their business strategies.

OakTree's industry professionals have deep experience in search engine optimization, information architecture, project management, graphic design and copywriting.

OakTree's services include:

• Website design
• Custom Internet-based application development (ASP.NET and Drupal)
• Search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM)
• E-commerce solutions
• E-learning applications
• Web marketing programs

Its comprehensive range of skills and services makes OakTree versatile and nimble, able to take on any challenge a client might face.

"Our clients are looking for someone they can trust," says president and co-founder John Schmitt. "Their career is paper-clipped to the corner of the project they hand us. They want to know it will be done on time, and that it does what it's supposed to do."

While many of OakTree's projects are customer-facing, the firm also creates Internet solutions for businesses that save clients money and boost productivity.

Many of OakTree's clients are already well-versed in Internet technologies and web marketing, says Schmitt.

These sophisticated clients turn to OakTree because the firm can take Internet strategy one step further.

"We'll bring up something like widgets that they haven't thought about before," says Schmitt. "We'll tie in with Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and other social media to bring them attention, sometimes even before the client's site is launched."

edit The Creative Touch in Digital Design

OakTree's creative approach to digital design has won the firm the Brandon Hall Award for Excellence in Learning, given for an online course OakTree designed for the Oregon Restaurant Education Foundation.

The course teaches restaurant workers how to obey Oregon's alcohol laws while providing good customer service. OakTree made extensive use of Flash technology and associated each subject of the course with a different scenic location in Oregon.

edit OakTree's Community Spirit

While OakTree's business acumen is key to its ongoing success, Schmitt is just as proud of his firm's contributions to its home state and city.

OakTree created an alternate format ballot for Oregon that allows blind citizens to vote in private, the same as sighted voters. The alternate format ballot relies on a voice reading back the voter's selection to him or her, which the voter can hear through headphones.

The innovation is revolutionary for blind voters. "The AFB has given me the ability to do something I've never been able to do in my 18 years of being a registered voter--it has provided me the opportunity to mark my ballot privately and independently,” says Angel Hale, a Salem business owner who has been completely unsighted since 1986.

Sighted voters can also use the alternate ballot to cast their votes in private. During the general election of 2008, election officers traveled with laptops to nursing homes in rural Oregon counties, where voters with physical limitations used the same technology to cast their secret ballots.

OakTree's signature pro-bono project is the annual Give!Guide the firm creates and manages for Portland alternative newspaper Willamette Week. Donations from individuals to community nonprofits have soared since OakTree made the online Give!Guide easier to use. In 2005, the year before OakTree got involved, people donated $75,000. In 2008, Willamette Week raised $826,000.

"We tied the Give!Guide to Facebook," says Schmitt. "Every time you donated, you could write it on your wall." That innovation was intended to encourage more young people to donate, says Schmitt, and it worked.

edit Staying Ahead of the Digital Curve

While OakTree's staff has plenty of expertise in established technologies and business practices, there's always something different coming down the pike.

That's why the firm stays abreast of recent developments, and integrates them as soon as it's clear companies and organizations need a new solution.

Open source content management, for example, is now part of OakTree's extensive skills.

"More and more public organizations are saying they need to look at open source," says Schmitt. "We're here to help them."

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• Alexa: OakTree.com