Question

Your website, created using PowerSite123, will differ from any other business' website in many ways, including:

• “Look and feel”  – you can choose a PowerSite123 look & feel theme, or create one of your own; you can create almost any look & feel easily
• Style sheets – customize foreground and background colors, fonts, font sizes, styles, etc. - globally, throughout your site
• Menu structure – create your own
• Website pages - with whatever name and content you wish
• Text content – incorporate your own text
• Images – incorporate photos, graphics, animated images, audio, and video
• Attached files - include Word, Adobe Acrobat, Excel, PowerPoint, and other types of files for your users to view, print, or download
• Global vs. page-specific content – a good example of a global image is your logo which you can place in the upper left corner of every page

We don’t have the time or the money to devote to technological innovations.  We are too busy running our business, and putting out fires.

Using PowerSite123, you can set up your own website in as little as a few hours.  We estimate that most businesses will have their site up in a matter of days, where most of the time is spent thinking about and composing content, and only a few hours are needed to build your site using PowerSite123.  You'll find PowerSite123 surprisingly affordable.  Click here for pricing info.

We already have a nice website. Why should we change it?

If your website has extensive e-commerce functionality, is affordable, and easy to maintain, then you may not need PowerSite123. However, for most businesses that have no site or a brochure-ware site, PowerSite123 offers unparalleled functionality at a very affordable price, and can be easily maintained by non-technical staff members. This functionality can benefit your organization in numerous tangible and intangible ways.

We already have a Shop button that links to a 3rd party payment site.

Let’s talk about the pros and cons of these 3rd party shoping sites – like Pay Pal and others.  The advantage of these sites is that with a few lines of HTML code and a few minutes of effort, you can offer online shopping.  The typical disadvantages, however, are numerous (note: not all of these disadvantages pertain to all of the 3rd party sites):

1.   It is bad Internet practice to kick the user off of your site, especially when it is unnecessary.  A certain percentage of your users will notice that they've been kicked off of your site and will abandon their transaction as a result.  You will likely have no idea what percentage this is, but it's likely to be higher than you think.

2.   Once the user gets to the other site, it is no longer branded as your site.

3.   On the other site, the user can no longer navigate to other areas of your site – except if he hits the back button a few times.  There is typically no navigation bar or menu.

4.   There is no shopping cart or gift basket, so the user cannot pay for multiple transactions at a time.

5.   With most other sites, payments are simply processed by asking the donor for the amount they wish to donate, and their credit card number.  You cannot employ more sophisticated donation processing, like recurring payments, preset payment amounts, targeting the payment to a specific product or service, making the payment in someone else’s name, opting in to your e-mail list, or paying by e-check.

6.   What appears on the customer's credit card statement is not your name but the other site’s name.

7.   Because of this, there is a higher risk of chargebacks – where the customer may not recognize the charge on their credit card statement, since it doesn’t contain your business' name.  The customer may then dispute the charge with his credit card company.

8.   Related to that, the money doesn’t go straight into your bank account.  It goes to the other party, and they periodically disburse the funds to you.

9.   Because of that, the 3rd party gets the float.

10. Also because of that, there is a risk that you may never receive your money.  In case you think that’s a remote risk, consider the following story.  Perhaps the largest processor of online nonprofit donations was a company called Pipevine out of San Francisco.  They essentially had 2 bank accounts – an operating expenses account and a sort-of escrow account into which the online donations were placed and out of which these donations were periodically disbursed to the nonprofits.  Well, they started having financial difficulties.  They dipped into the second account.  Things went from bad to worse, and they went out of business.  $18 million of donor money never made it to the nonprofits it was intended for!  Civil lawsuits are pending, and people may even go to jail.

11. Most of these services charge fees, sometimes significant ones.  And sometimes hidden.

12. Some of these services, like Pay Pal, require your customer to sign up with them – an extra, unneeded step that may deter some customers.  In fact, recent studies show that each extra page you send your customers to results in a 50% abandonment rate -- even higher if the extra page is on a third party site.

13. The customer can often only pay for products, not event tickets, membership dues, etc.

14. You have no control over the privacy and security policies of the other site.  Because of this, your customers’ data may be sold, traded, etc.  We have spoken with business owners who can directly trace customers’ spam and even viruses to these 3rd party sites.

15. There is no audit trail.  In other words, if 50 customers make purchases, you have no way of knowing this, other than to trust that the third party will forward the money to you.

16. There are few if any reports for you – on both the transactions that have taken place on these third party sites, and on the people who performed those transactions.

17. In some cases, the customer does not receive an online thank you/receipt – either on screen or via e-mail.

18. No ability for the business to download data 24/7.

19. There is a special problem with Pay Pal:  it has a negative reputation for some people.  Like the beautiful new home with a giant, pink, plastic flamingo in front, some people will not care, others will think “how tacky”, but no one will say “wow, this is great!”.

We don’t have the e-mail addresses of our prospects, customers, or other constituents.

PowerSite123 can recommend numerous strategies for collecting e-mail addresses, including:

• Incorporate easy, prominent, e-mail list signup on your site
• Add “e-mail address” as a field to all forms and data collection vehicles
• Send a postcard or other mailing to all constituents which promotes the new website (even before it is live), and asks for e-mail addresses – either with a SASE, or a URL to enter it themselves online
• Use a site like the following to match e-mail addresses to the your existing database:
• www.econtacts.com
• www.concentric.net
• http://people.yahoo.com/
• www.ussearch.com

We can’t maintain a website.

With PowerSite123, it is very straightforward to set up or maintain your website.  The site “administrator” does not need to know HTML, Java, DreamWeaver, or indeed any programming – they must simply be able to navigate around a standard website, and of course, must have access to all needed information about your business.

We can’t stay on top of the latest technological innovations that might be useful to us, no less implement them.

PowerSite123 aims to be the eyeglasses that provide technological vision to its clients.  PowerSite123 investigates new technological developments, evaluates which are potentially useful for small- to medium-sized businesses, and implements those that are both beneficial and cost-justified.  Of course, PowerSite123 keeps its clients apprised of technological developments, including new features available to clients, and related costs if any.  The implementation of these features will typically be easy and quick.

How can we collect and track demographic information on our prospects or customers?

PowerSite123 enables you to ask anyone who performs a transaction on your site for key demographic information, like age, sex, marital status, etc.  Of course, all such information is optional.  You can then sort and filter by this information.  For example, you could send an e-newsletter targeted to seniors by selecting only those users with age > 65.

I don’t want my business' sensitive information shared with anyone.

PowerSite123 (and all of our clients) adheres to a strict privacy and security policy.  In brief, business-specific information is only accessible by that business, and will never be sold or shared.

I don’t want prospects' or customers’ information shared with anyone.

We insist that all of our clients adhere to the same privacy and security policy as PowerSite123 does. In brief, you may not sell or share personal information on your prospects or customers.

Internet-enabling our organization requires more than just a working website.  What changes do we need to make in our business processes, goals, organization, and other information systems.

Indeed, there is a significant change management component involved in maximizing a business' use of the Internet.  PowerSite123 offers a set of short workshops, customized to your requirements, to help you develop an Internet strategy, implement your site, understand the impact on your organization, develop specific action plans, and even assess impacts on product development and marketing efforts.  Of course, there is a fee for these workshops.

Our organization is not ready for the Internet.

PowerSite123 has workshops and consulting services that are specifically designed to help your business adapt to the Internet.  Of course, there is a fee for these workshops.  Even small organizations with no technical expertise can have a world-class Internet presence quickly, easily, and affordably.

We don’t want to commit to a particular implementation of e-commerce just yet, because many more advances are sure to be made.

PowerSite123 will help you get an early start, and seamlessly implement these advances as they emerge.

Even if we have a great website, how can we draw people to it

PowerSite123 can recommend many strategies, tailored to your situation, to drive traffic to your site.  Here are just a few to consider:

• Place your URL on everything – letterhead, business cards, all marketing literature, all e-mails, etc.
• Use your mailing lists to send out news of your new site
• Create e-mail lists
• Use mailing lists and e-mail lists to periodically publicize new features of your site
• Advertise your website in offline and online publications that cater to your target market
• Periodically update or add features to your site to encourage repeat visitors; keep your site, especially your home page, dynamic
• Offer something of value free on your site – for example, e-cards, a report, study results, book, screen saver, etc.
• Conduct regular surveys or public opinion polls and post the results
• Host online events of interest to the community you serve – such as an online chat with a celebrity or issue expert
• Conduct give-aways/drawings for prizes such as membership fees, event tickets (to your business' events), t-shirts and other promotional items with your business name, etc.

Through our workshops, we can devise a plan, tailored for you, on how to maximize traffic to your site.

We have no money to spend on our website.

PowerSite123 understands that funds may be difficult to come by.  However, this makes the need for increasing revenue and lowering costs even more acute.  PowerSite123’s ability to let you quickly create an e-commerce site has never been more timely or in need.  Indeed, we recommend that you set a goal of having your website pay for itself - potentially many times over.  This won't happen immediately, but with patience and a good strategy, many of our clients acheive this goal.

We must have our website in multiple languages, to serve our constituencies.  Can we do that and what's involved?

PowerSite123 can generate your site in Spanish or other languages (additional fee applies).  We recommend that your business' content (e.g., mission statement) be translated by hand, though.

If we wanted a feature that we don’t see here, are there any other options?

You have 3 options:

1. Often PowerSite123 can recommend a way to use our existing functionality to implement new features you need.
2. PowerSite123 will quote you a fixed price to develop any enhancement; because of our low cost structure, we are typically able to implement enhancements quickly and affordably
3. Develop the enhancement yourself, and link your PowerSite123 site to it; this approach will not be as integrated with the rest of your website as approach #1 or 2

Tell us about customer support – what's included and what can we expect?

You may use the following PowerSite123 customer support options:

• Online help (available 24x7)
• Tutorials -- which walk you through virtualy anything you'l want to do in PowerSite123, step-by-step
• Clients-only intranet site
• Live, online assistance (just click for help) (usually available 24/7)
• "Call me now" button (usually available 24/7) 
• Phone support (usually available 24/7)

Can we share data with Excel or other applications?

Sure.  You can import and export data between your website and most applications.  This is done with an ASCII or XML file.  You control the users to be included in the file, as well as the data included for each user.

We've been looking at other sites that claim to offer website-building tools for businesses. How does PowerSite123 compare?

It is not our style to say negative things about our competitors.  Nevertheless, we are gratified by the response we have received to PowerSite123 by specific businesses as well as consultants and e-commerce experts.  Many of these people have pointed out that other tools suffer from one or more of the following:

·        Expensive (i.e., often 3 to 30 times as much as PowerSite123)

·        Require months to implement (vs. hours using PowerSite123)

·        Require technical skills/training to implement (vs. none)

·        Produce a brochure-ware site, not an e-commerce site

We have our own domain name (e.g., www.ourbusiness.com) or are about to register one. Can we use it?

Definitely – we encourage you to use you own domain name. Simply follow our instructions to point your domain name(s) to your new PowerSite123 site - which takes about 5 minutes - and your user will be able to type in or link to your domain name. They will be transparently sent to your PowerSite123 website.  Your address appears in the user's address bar, not PowerSite123's.

What does the PowerSite123 fee include?

1. Ongoing access to PowerSite123
2. Unlimited website maintenance privileges
3. Free hosting
4. Secure transaction processing – PowerSite123 processes all purchases, ticket sales, and many other financial and non-financial transactions
5. Electronic funds transfer, with complete, end-to-end security
6. Free access to upgrades, enhancements, fixes, etc.
7. Powerful administrative features – including online customer list management, reports, etc.
8. Import/export interface with other applications
9. 24/7 client support
10. Automatic backup service
11. Automatic confirmation e-mails sent to you and your users after each transaction
12. Frequent enhancements
13. And much more

We’re considering having someone create a site for us.  Why should we consider PowerSite123?

Among the many issues, consider that a custom-developed site is likely to:

• Be brochure-ware (not e-commerce)
• Take weeks or months (not hours) to create
• Require that you use the developer to make most or all changes (vs. doing all changes yourself, easily)
• Have little to no reporting (vs. extensive reporting)