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 Stores Online (September 26 2007)
Tonight I attended a Stores Online presentation in Charlottetown. I had heard so much about these presentations over last year, I decided to attend one, to see what it was about.
The presentation had a lot of good points. It talked about the internet and how people are going online more for their shopping needs. A good question and example of this was when the presentor asked the crowd how many people bought something online five years ago. Two of the 32 people put their hand up (I didn't). Then she asked how many people purchased or planned on purchasing online in the next couple months. Sixteen people raised their hands.
So, credit to them, they did include facts that were legit and real, however other facts they mentioned were completely out of whack.
According to StoresOnline, if you are looking to have a website built you must do the following:
- Pay someone to design your site.
- Pay a programmer to program your designed site.
- Pay a database programmer to integrate a database with your site.
- Pay for hosting fees.
- Pay for a shopping card.
- Pay for search engine optimization.
- Pay for reporting tools.
- Pay for someone to secure your website.
In the past decade of developing websites, I have never heard of someone having to go through these steps. Perhaps in Utah (where StoresOnline's headquarters is), this is normal.
There are two steps required in creating your website:
- Research and pay for someone to design/program/setup your database/shopping card (if needed)/Optimize your site/offer reporting tools, also known develop your site, most commonly referred to as a web developer.
- Research and pay for hosting fees.
Thankfully, at dotServing we handle it all.
The cost to develop a Storeonlines website was $2700. The hosting fees/support/general assistance with your website was an additional $2600 per year! More to come.
Responses to "Stores Online"
Skyler (September 28, 2007)
Ok, I live in utah, and these guys are infact idiots.
Even in utah, this is not how its done.
What morons are they?
//sky
David S A Bawden (November 6, 2007)
Wow, I thought you gave a very fair critique, far nicer than I would have given. My wife I attended one of these so called seminars/promotions in London ON, Monday 4th November 2007 and were less than impressed with the lack of candor on the part of the presenters. The information they gave was to a neophyte in the ecommerce business, misleading to say the very least. According to them you now need 6 websites and a shopping cart in order to be successful on the web. One website for each item you are selling and if you don't have anything to sell, then don't worry, just use a piece of their software to find a popular item and go from there. I would love to see someone go to the bank with that sort of business plan and get anything more than a cup of coffee and their butt kicked out the door for their effort. Overall evaluation. Misleading to the point of fraud. I just hope not many people parted with the $2700 to $5,000 plus they wanted. We left half way through because the longer I listened to the misinformation, the angrier I got. If you want to go into business on the internet and don't know how, this is definitely not the way to go. I could go into pages of bad advice they give, all geared to part the "mooch" from his/her money. My free advice. Avoid storesonline like the plaque.
David S A Bawden
Mike (November 8, 2007)
I just attended an all day storesonline event at Blue Mountain Resort on November 8th. WE learned alot about marketing a product on the internet and how to be noticed on search engines. The information I learned I learned today was great.
Unfortunately my mother and I purchased the $5700 platinum package with the 6 websites and when we got home to research the company we found out that we could have purchased a single website for as little as $199 from www.storesonlineexpress.com
We are now canceling the funds with the credit card company and have notified an acquaintance we met there about the rip off.
I wish I could have gotten more names so that I can notify more people. What is even worse is that one sales rep mentioned that they will be in Toronto tomorrow and the next day doing seminars and I can't find out where they will be holding it.
John Morris (November 9, 2007)
I've had some time to write down a update to this blog entry. Its worth a read!
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