Hi Shane,

Sorry to hear u were all alone, I wish i could be there to make u smile, and take your pictures, I can see in the pictures, your eyes of disapointment and took a lot of courage, just to post your pic here, XOXOXOXo

But I'm the lady who husband was mugged and dealing all alone with the bill's and taken care of my partner taking to  doctors  etc..

He is recovering slowly he eye sight is getting better, but will not be ale to see perfect ever again.

What a shame not one took the opportunity to share this experience with U is something that I really personally will have enjoy, specially the company of  fantastic person like you are shane.

i'm working with Anuj, Kevin, and myself now with two websites in my spare time wich is not much.

www.BioAgeUSa.com, www.cosmoceutical-usa.com, and still struggle with the optimization of the www.exelskincare.com, of couse I won't give up...

Love Marcela

Shane,

I was there but not for the convention but for my club volleyball tournament in the North building of the McCormick place.  I definitely will attend next year before my volleyball tournament.  It looked like a good conference maybe you can tell us about the trip some time.

Tracy Hruska

www.articatz.com

www.volleyballproshop.com

I was at that conference! I was their in spirit with Shane :)

I am very interested in what you learned. :)

Shane,

I would have loved to attend.  I wish I would have know about it earlier so I could make arrangements.

Tell us all about what you learned!

I really want to learn to make our site just as nice and professional as the G and L boys site, www.gandlclothing.com

What I learned?  Well it's interesting.

Remember I was looking for selfish reasons -- to see what we at Website Forge offered compared to what vendors called "new technology". 

On one hand I was excited.  I would go to these booths and overall there wasn't anything I saw that we don't do in one way shape or form (that fit into our business model).  If there was something new it was a complete add-on service that was nice but not necessarily a must have.

On the other hand I was disappointed because I really wanted to walk away with a list of "to dos" for our upgrade list.  I have a few -- but not as many as I expected.

To explain -- I You would see this colorful booth with excellent marketing for something Website Forge offers that we don't market at all.  We just do it -- and for free.

Or you would see content management solutions which is one of our strong points.  Dozens of different types of e-commerce solutions -- nothing that had more overall features (some similar) than we already offer.

You must think about this... We have a large segment of customers doing business online.  By talking to our customers and watching whats going on we are able to stay on top of what we need to do. 

So it seems we have a good pulse on the overall industry.  I just want to make sure we stay on top.

For example -- there were dozens of Search Engine technology booths.  If you take the time to understand what they were "selling" .. It was just a nicely packaged version of what our Website Forge engine offers -- already.  They just do a great job of "selling" the feature.

The biggest things that I saw that was valuable to me personally -- was the new ways to combat fraud and to reduce your credit card fees.  This is something I think is becoming more and more important.

Then again we are already addressing that with the guys at Fifty One www.fiftyone.com by integrating their international processing and shipping service with Website Forge.

The few other things that I saw are things that are at least on our "long tem" list.  Things like customer surveys (after the sale) and rating systems.  These are features you can't just "throw up".  They must be done well or they won't benefit you as a online retailer.

One last point.  I was talking to Justin at G&L Clothing www.gandlclothing.com and he told me that there was a feeling that they were "too small" to be asking questiions when talking to some of the vendors.  G&L is not a small company.  They do millions in sales and online sales.  Yet they were treated as "not big enough".

One of the cornerstones of Website Forge is to make e-commerce solutions affordable to small and medium sizes businesses. 

We have tiny one man customers.  We have huge $100M customers.  We work with anyone that wants an online business!

What would normally sell for $50,000.00 we make available for less than $4000.00.  So the arrogant "you are too small" concept is hurting these other solution providers.

We plan to keep offering high end features to any sized business.  Big or small.

Shane Merem

Web design and E-commerce

www.websiteforge.com