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Childrens Parties Web Site Enquiry Form: email to Fax / email to SMS
I have long been interested in bridging the gap between the virtual and the real - bringing the advantages of the internet to people who otherwise wouldn't be bothering... e.g. we offer the option of orders or enquiries being forwarded to mobile or fax - e.g. a flower shop would have no need for a computer, but may well have a fax machine in their shop. If they have one of our web sites, they can elect to have the online enquiry form going straight to their fax machine (10p per fax).... Likewise, a self-employed electrician or plumber may be on the road most of the time, so would usually have no wish to have a web site - but we create one where the web enquiry form sends an SMS direct to his (or her) mobile, giving client name and telephone number...
Taking it a step further, we developed some epos software that works hand in hand with a web site - (see EasyEpos.com) - stock levels are kept up to date 'real time' between the on line web shop, and the high street store. When someone buys online, the shop gets the message to take the item off the shelf ready for posting, and likewise when an item is scanned through the ePos terminal, the stock level is automatically updated on the web site. The system can be administered remotely, stock levels and prices changed, and sales activity reports viewed over the internet via secure login. So the owner of a small chain of shops could log in and see up to the minute sales in any of his shops from anywhere in the world! Similar packages go for tens of thousands of pounds - ours is £695 - and that includes the web site! - Due for launch this month, we have our first customer (Andy Notton, www.towbar.biz).
On speaking to a friend about Easy Epos, he said there was a gap in the market for something similar for Hair Salons. There are plenty of computerised booking systems available for salons, and plenty of epos systems, but you will find the majority of salons using the epos, but sticking with the manual appointment book for the bookings. This is because you can't take a booking and pay for something at the same time - so it causes a bottle neck at reception in a busy salon. Salon Simplicity uses a 'split screen' technique - epos on the left, diary on the right, and the stylists are along the top of the screen - Stylists can log in and out at will - their till transaction is saved along with any bookings, so it is easy for someone to stop halfway through for someone else to do something, then jump back in again.
We next added the SMS reminder function, reminding clients of their appointments so cutting 'no shows' - also SMS / Emails sent automatically on clients birthdays, so increasing customer loyalty.
Finally, if the user has more than one salon, they can view the diary for all salons on the screen - so if someone wants an appointment for 3pm and nothing is available, they can quickly check the other salon down the road, and 'pencil' them in there.
Salon owners are typically busy all week in the salon, and have little time in the working day to update stock and prices etc - SalonSimplicity allows them to update stock prices and treatment details from home at the weekend - when the epos unit is booted up in the morning, the latest details are automatically downloaded. This system sells for around the £3000 mark including hardware. Will be ready to launch by the end of July, and we already have our first firm order for 8 units (the award winning "House of Colour" - Ireland - which will be an excellent reference site). We also have agents lined up who will be selling for us, and are looking to sell into Europe at the beginning of next year.
An on-line recruitment management solution. Unlike the swathe of other simliar products on the market, we took a whole new approach with this application - and it utilises some innovative techniques when matching employees / contractors with clients - apart from being able to do skill match and post code distance search (find all contractors with relevant skill in a 10 mile radius of NW1, or find all companies looking to recruit in a 5 mile radius of B3 etc etc) - it also has drop down lists for last 20 viewed of job, client and candidate - so the consultant doesn't need to scribble stuff down on a pad to remember - the last few viewed are always there. Also option to add any items as favourites, and a unique addition of private and public virtual desktops - where people can drag and drop word documents (or other files) from their desktop at work, and have them available for download at home - either viewable by all the company, or just them. Likewise the diary has facility for public and private entries, and each entry can be automatically duplicated in MS Outlook. Email and SMS reminders and daily to-do lists are supported. The mailmerge function dynamically generates multi-page PDF's, if necessary including the company logo thus saving on letterheads. Finally, company news, and an automatic 'Quote of the Day' is displayed on the screen. Latest add on is a web extension that displays available jobs in an iframe on clients web sites, along with search functinality, plus a tie-in with Conkers whereby they automatically upload bulk vacancies to the main dream recruit database which in turn feeds the client installations if required. Have a look at the demo - www.dreamrecruit.com - username demo, password demo. We are selling this for £50 per month per user, and have our first few clients. As of next month we will have a full time recruitment specialist selling the package for us.
Offering very cost effective professionally designed and fully featured web sites to non-league clubs at budget price (£7.50 per month). We have perfected the production process enabling us to produce the web sites very quickly and utilise a version of the content management system so that they can keep their own sites up to date. Also has facility for producing PDF 's on the fly for 'man of the match' certificates with the club emblem and fancy fonts etc - which have also proved very popular. Example: www.brewoodjfc.co.uk
Others
We are launching a simliar thing to WebFC for Golf Clubs (example www.stourbridge-golf-club.co.uk) and Estate Agents (ready shortly).
We offer personalised screen savers as alternative corporate gifts. Clients can choose from a host of different themes, then we create the screensavers with their logo in the corner of each image.
eGreeting Cards
We also create bepoke e-greeting cards - the christmas one being a good example (http://www.midweb.net/card/card.php). Instead of the Midweb logo, you can have your own company logo.
(you already know about these)
Email Target Marketing System
This piece of software harvests email addresses from targetted sources via a google search - e.g. if you wanted to email all the estate agents in the Midlands, you could type 'estate agents midlands' into google and get the details. This system does it for you, and stores the email address and web site in a database ready for the email shot. It is much more effective than normal 'spam' as 1. it is targetted, and 2. the email can refer to the web site from where the email was harvested giving the email a human touch - e.g. "I was looking at the web site www.thegardengate.biz (which is where I got your email). We are a company that produces widgets and thought it might be something you would be interested in..." etc.
Whilst I do not advocate unsolicited email, the system is targetted, used strictly for b2b purposes and helps generate business for legitimate companies (i.e. not shady online pharaceuticals). To avoid misuse, I do not offer the software for sale, but rather offer the service - so if a company approaches me with details of the type of companies they wish to mailshot, I gather the emails and send the email out on their behalf - provided it fits with our guideline for targetted mail. If you are interested, we offer this for £250 per mail shot at present.
These are the 'off the shelf' products that I have created. I have a small team of people that maintain the software packages (under my guidance), and have marketing partners in the UK to sell the stuff.
The other side of our business is bespoke software, back end web programming and design. |
