<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Just wanted to share my experience of starting a business (first business I ever started), an online games shop and using BVSoftware for it.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">My shop is an Australian shop named BestGames ([color=#800080>www.bestgames.com.au</FONT>).]</b> this ... right? Our backgrounds are Literature &amp; IT so no real connections to retailing, customer management, marketing or anything close to that.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">The day we decided to build this shop we came up with the name: “BestGames” and the discovery that the domain was free increased our confidence that we can make the dream real. Next day we contacted an accountant, created the company (Pty Ltd) and bought the domain. This was the easy part. <o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Now the fun begins: We started two parallel tasks: build a product base with the products we would like to sell (my partner), find the right shop engine we want to use (me).<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">My partner researched more than 400 games reading descriptions, reviews, contacting manufactures and vendors, reading about our competition and preparing the description, images and prices for each of the products. <o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">I tested 7 different shop engines. My requirements were quite clear: .Net (I need to be able to change it as I like), easy to customize (I’m not a master of HTML or CSS), fully functional (run out of the box and just need customization and no custom development), easy to use (my partner has to use it as well), have good support (I write lots of comments, requests and whinge a lot).<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">I never found out about BVSoftware from searches. For some reason it never appeared in any of my searches and on my lists. I almost decided to go with a different engine when, while at a user group discussing with one guy, he told me about this engine and that I should check it out because it might be better than the one I was about to buy.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Got home, checked the website, read about it, read all the questions on the forums and visited all the sites mentioned in the questions and started to like the product. I liked it that much that I paid for it before a beta was available for download. I also liked the idea that it’s ASP.Net 2.0.

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">The day the BV5 was released I installed it and started working on the design and customization. I had questions and requests and support and the forum had all the answers. Day by day until I got it up online. <o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">As far as I can remember we had the very first live BV5 shop online (except BV’s own shop).

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Now, considering VB is not my language of choice at all and ASP is also not one of my strong points it was quite a challenge for me to customize the engine. However the engine is so nicely designed that unless you want very custom design you can use it out of the box with the provided themes. Is good to have some CSS knowledge to help you tweak the layout, colours, and alignments so on but nothing out of the ordinary.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">What I like about BV5 and why I choose it:<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">My partner can use it to administer it and do everything from product management to order management with ease. <o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">It’s ASP.Net 2.0<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Exceptional product management support (descriptions, images, inventory, cross sells<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Easy to use category modelling and category templating.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Definition of Product Types and Type Properties makes it easy to provide properties to products in a very organized way.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Lots of payment gateways (however not the one I was looking for: eway.com.au)<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Out of the box management for Marketing related tasks especially Discounts, sales and free deliveries.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Cool concepts of columns that contain editable content blocks make it easy to update and add new content on the fly.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Emails &amp; print templates plugged with the editable workflows make it easy to customize and create your own processes. For example we deliver tax invoices by mail after the order was shipped.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Closed page is cool as I can “close” the site to external users while I apply patches or updates.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Order manager rocks. It’s only missing an “Ship items” in the “Batch Update Checked Orders” section.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">We use batch printing of invoices every day. Simple and efficient functionality.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">I like the Keyword searches reports. It helped me add new products to the website as I’ve seen people looking for them and also update the search keywords of some other products to include “common knows spelling mistakes” so when people search a product with approximately the same as the ones that I have the correct products appear.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><SPAN style="mso-list: Ignore">-<SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> <SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">We opened the site mid October. We had the first sale on the first of November and now, 7 weeks later we processed more orders than we imagined we could process. We appear in top places for searches for game names in Yahoo and MSN and have quite a good position in Google (It looks like Google does not like the word “best” in ads or titles).<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><o:p> </o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">If you plan to start a new business or change from your existing shopping cart BV5 might be the way to go. It’s easy to use, administer and run your shop.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">If you are an Australian shop and you plan to open a new business reading this guide might help you with saving some money on the payment gateway: <FONT color=#0000ff>http://www.ssw.com.au/ssw/Standards/Rules/RulesToBetterWebsitesOnlineTransactions.aspx#OnlineCreditCard[/color] <o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><o:p> </o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">All the best with your shop.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU"><o:p> </o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Corneliu.<o:p></o:p>

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">BestGames.Com.Au

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">

<SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Verdana','sans-serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-AU">Best Games. Best Fun. Best Prices.<o:p></o:p>

Hi Corneliu,

Glad to see BVSoftware worked for you, and you got the site up and running.

BTW - I was the guy at the user group meeting :-)

Richard

Richard,
Thanks again for recommending BV to me. Maybe we meet at the next UG to catch up.

Louis,
BV5 was released first week of September. We had the site up and running second week of October. We had the first order 1st of November.
We still did changes and updates and fixes until mid December.
I only worked part time on the website. I have a full time day job so I was only allocating evenings (up to 6h a day) and weekends.

Corneliu.