I put off posting in this area because I had a lot of trouble trying to decide which BV5 features I liked best. There are only a very few that I'm not totally geeked about.
We are a small service company in a highly specialized market. We provide the Best Skating Instruction for Hockey Players you will find anywhere in the world. (Of course we don't tell our customers that, we let them tell each other.) We started by copying our contemporaries web site laurastamm.com (East Cost), then started to modify it, improve the image and functionally. We came quite a ways but we still wanted a shopping cart system to help lessen the workload. The gods were shinning on us the day we found BV4.
It was like opening the door for the first time into a world you could only look at and dream about. We didn't have the resources to even ask how much it would cost do something like BV4 did. If you want to get an overall view of how we feel about this software and the opportunities it offers us, read the Best Games post in this section.
The list:
1. The thing that still truly amazes me is the cost: If you stop to think about what we are actually getting with BV4 or BV5 the software is essentially free. You cannot buy a custom site design for $1,000 that will give you anywhere near what you get from BV5. If I was an expert web programmer and designer, I still don't think I could build a site like ours for that price. I really feel guilty for not sending Marcus and Co. a bonus check. When our business starts to return more earnings I think I probably will send him that bonus. In the mean time Marcus, if you or any of your staff have kids playing hockey of any age, let me know.
2. Technical Knowledge Requirement: When you drive down the street in your home town, you will come to a strip mall. In that mall you will find some people working inside a store preparing it for their Grand Opening. If you stop in and talk to them you will find they have just added to the mortgage on their house so they could start their own little Mom and Pop Shop. They don't have much start up capital so you will see them in this shop on weekends with hammers and nails making their own counter tops, display cases, hanging Dry Wall and painting and decorating. They are in there on weekends because they (or one of them) is working full time so can afford their chance at fulfilling the American Dream (substitute your country if outside the US).
My hammer and nails are the little bit if html I have picked up. Our store is the BV4 and now BV5 software we have purchased. Our paint and decorations are the content, the pictures and images, the minor css changes we have made. The overall layout (theme) of our web site was provided free to us by Cliff. (I need to send him a check too.) Our cash register? Well! You all know where that is. And you also know we don't have to sit at the darn thing all day long.
The rent we pay is the mere pittance we send to Noah at Resposio to host our site. We couldn't even afford to drive to a strip mall store everyday for what we pay him in rent.
3. Support: In your Mom and Pop Shop, you suddenly discover a leak in your plumbing. Or perhaps your Widget Quits working. If you can't fix it yourself, who are you going to call? Your going to start by calling your brother-inlaw, or the neighbor in the strip mall next door. If you have to you may be forced to look for a professional.
Here we have a no cost forum that usually provides us answers to most of our questions for free. One good turn deserves another so we try to help others through the learning process when able. If you find you really have to hire a plumber, all you have to do is look for the people answering most of the questions.
4. The Gadgets and Do Hickies: Every time my customer drives by my store, it looks different then the last they drove by. If they see something in the store they would like to tell a friend about, we will email a copy of it for them at the touch of a button. They don't even need to see a clerk. If they are looking for something specific, and know what they want, we have an easy to use map to help them find it quickly. If they would like to sit down and page through a book to learn more about the products we sell, we have short articles, pictures, short film clips, detailed analysis on how to do a particular skating technique and many other things to amuse them. We also provide links to other sites in an easy to use navigation menu.
We pretty much give them all the information they need to make up their mind - if they want to purchase our service or do it on their own. Basically, we give them the option to attempt to fix their own plumbing, or hire us to teach them how to do it correctly. We do take phone calls pretty much 24/7 but BV5 gives us the ability to answer most of our customers questions with out calling us. Number one question asked? Do you still have room?
I love this software. It is a real self esteem builder for those of us none developers. Although I know my limitations (I think) it make me feel like a real web guru. I would recommend it to anyone that has a need or use for an internet web site of any size or complexity.
Bob Noble
Our BV5 site has been live since 12-7-06. We are still tweaking it and adding decorations. But we have come a long way from where we started.
http://www.laurastamm.net/default.aspx