posted on July 25, 2006 12:01:52 AM
Found this thread started in the ebay stores forum on ebay.
It was started by a seller on ebay that does web design and sell's ebay store design packages. She posted a link to their website and tips on web design. I might drop them a note about doing a website store design for me and see how much they would charge.
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
posted on July 25, 2006 12:28:39 AM
I just shot them a email and described our situation with ebay stores (I think they already knew however) and what we are interested in. A basic store design for our own websites. I asked about pricing for a basic store design for websites with checkout and that I would be happy to post their reply here. I will probably give them a phone call tomorrow also about this.
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
posted on July 25, 2006 11:14:11 PM
I did not get a chance to give them a call today. They did send me a response to my email I sent them last night. Here's a copy of it. If I get time I will try to call them tomorrow.
Dear Mike,
Thank you for your very kind inquiry. Yes, we certainly know how hard this business
with eBay is hitting the sellers. We have been answering a lot of questions this
week from concerned sellers who are realizing that being solely dependent on eBay is
going to continue to cause them problems, every time eBay changes their policies.
This is the trouble with using a third-party service - they have the upper hand.
What eBay has going for them is the amount of traffic they get, and what is going to
be the main challenge for the folks who are going to open an e-commerce site is that
it will take time to build up a decent amount of traffic to their new website.
Traffic=profit, and in order to get the traffic, you have to get your site ranking
well in the 3 major search engines. This is one of the things the guide we've posted
tonight on eBay covers, and maybe this guide would be something you could post a
link to on Vendio to help the sellers there best understand their options:
http://www.solaswebdesign.net/seoguideoutline.shtml
We like that you are looking for a basic website - no frills. Though we do
occasionally build 'fancy' sites, we know that it is the simplest websites which
make the most money. Think about Amazon.com. That is one PLAIN website, when you
take a look at it. But, it's easy for customers to navigate and is full of great
content. It's a good model for any web business to build their own site on. Our
clients are currently ranking in Google's top 10 for thousands of their products
because of our design/Search Engine Optimization skills, and we are proud to be
working with them because they offer great products and services. We are a small,
limited firm (just my husband and myself) and offer eight years of web experience.
Our fees are based on product count. We will be happy to provide a quote to anyone
who would like one, but we will need to know the product count they intend to begin
vending on their site with, as this tells us how big the project is. Additional
information that will help us to think about the project with be the focus of the
business, what they sell, and what their goals are. Something important for those
coming from an eBay background to understand is that most e-commerce sites do not
begin with more than 1000 products. Many begin with far less. It is not going to be
time-efficient or cost-effective to launch a site with much more than this, and this
is something we are having to explain repeatedly to eBay sellers who have 5000
products in their stores. E-commerce is a different mindset. Though a good hosting
plan will let you create as many product pages as you like, you need to narrow down
what is going to be most important for you to focus the web site on to start out
with, rather than selling thousands of different things.
A couple of costs I can give to you and the folks at vendio are as follows.
Registering your domain - Don't pay more than $15.00 to do this, anywhere. We
recommend registeradomainname.org. They have very good customer support and we've
been happy with them. Their cost is $14.95 for a .com for 1 year.
Hosting - Don't pay more than $7.00 a month for this. Again, we like
registeradomainname.org for this. We've worked with them for years. Their servers
are completely reliable, their basic hosting plan, at $6.95/month, offers you a HUGE
amount of space - more than you'll ever need, and they have good tech. support.
Godaddy is another good company for hosting.
Shopping Cart - The cart we recommend and work with most frequently is SNS Cart.
It's a good professional cart (not a freebie) and it allows you to do pretty much
whatever you want with it. Their cost is $229/yr. See their website here:
http://www.securenetshop.com/bizrescenter.htm
These are all good prices for the services they offer, and I hope this information
will be of help to you and the folks at Vendio. Please, do let us know your product
count, Mike, and tell us what your business is about so that we can provide you with
a quote. Thank you for your kind consideration of our services, and for posting this
reply to the Vendio board.
Kind Regards,
Miriam & Liam Ellis-Loraditch
Solas Web Design
www.solaswebdesign.net
(707) 833-2610
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
posted on July 26, 2006 05:43:21 PM
I have been so darn busy I have still not had a chance to give them a call during the day. Hopefully I will get some time to call them later this week. They did respond with another email to me today in reference to the post Vintage made about their ebay history and store.
Dear Mike,
We thought we'd do a follow-up email, having taken a look at the Vendio board. It
looks like an interesting place and, perhaps, a nice alternative to eBay? We are
very concerned about a post that showed up in the thread you so kindly posted at
Vendio. The person, Vintage Postcards, seems to have taken it upon themselves to
attack us at every turn. We have no idea why. We've never spoken to this person.
Their main gripe seems to be that we have a feedback on eBay of 14. This is quite
true, and plain for all to see. We opened our eBay store 2 months ago. Most new
sellers have a low feedback, so this certainly isn't strange. It's something one
builds up over time. Additionally, we have been the first to let everyone know that
we are very new to eBay...but that we have 8 years of web design and SEO experience.
One need only look at our portfolio and at how our clients rank to see that we are a
professional company with above-average SEO skills considering the fact that our
clients are ranking in Google's top 10 for thousands of their products. Why Vintage
Postcards is equating our eBay experience with our web experience, we simply don't
know. We are talking about 2 very different worlds. You are welcome to contact any of our clients to hear how they
like working with us. And, you are welcome to publish any part of this email you
might see fit on the Vendio board, if you feel that Vintage Postcards is confusing
or alarming people. One thing that really speaks poorly of them are their quotes for
design work and SEO. How they can offer figures like those without knowing the size
of a project, we simply don't understand. Frankly, they seem a bit unbalanced.
Thanks for taking the time to contact us, Mike.
We'll look forward to speaking to you at your convenience.
Cordially,
Miriam & Liam Ellis-Loraditch
Solas Web Design
www.solaswebdesign.net
(707) 833-2610
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS
posted on July 26, 2006 06:09:57 PM
::Frankly, they seem a bit unbalanced.::
Well that was completely uncalled for and perhaps one of the most unprofessional statements I have seen made in business letter in a long time.
In fact, that statement alone, one that questions the mental condition of someone that had the nerve to make a derogatory comment about them (not to mention that rather dramatic exaggeration of "attack at every turn" ), would disqualify them from any consideration of further dealings in my mind.
Working with a designer to come up with the base skeleton, colors, etc can be an arduous process. Having one that resorts to derogatory statements the first time their abilities are questioned does not instill a great deal of faith in the possibility of a smooth relationship.
After looking at their website I would have to say straight off the bat that I think they missed the "less is more" chapter of basic design. Way too much information, poorly organized and duplicated. Some of their sites are nice (although I can see their love of redundancy footprint all over the ones I looked at) but their own site is a bit of an overwhelming busy mess...and the curves of their top and side banners are visually disturbing (also, I have no idea what the wood cut Christmas tree has to do with web design or the name of the company so I assume it's just an attempt at cutesy for the sake of being cutesy with an end result of annoying, but that's just me).
Oh yeah - I thought Vintages main gripe was that an design company was not able to properly size their pages. Did I miss where our newfound expert addressed that issue?
~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~
People put their hand on the bible, and swear to uphold the constitution. They do not put their hand on the constitution, and swear to uphold the bible
[ edited by fenix03 on Jul 26, 2006 06:15 PM ]
1 out of 4 people are mentally unbalanced. Take a look at your 3 closest friends. If they seem alright, you're the one! - Kyle Stubbins, CMS