Hi Guys,

This may be a long Post as Easybiz is quite a comprehensive solution, so my apologies in advance.

I have been working on and have finally (almost) finished a business directory which is predominantly for small business.

It is about 99% complete. I want to try and launch the site by the end of Jan.

I have been working on this project for about 4 years on and off. I have re-built it 3 times, but now I am happy with it and I think it is a great solution.

The payment stuff isn't hooked up yet and you can sign up for free with all the options so you have nothing to lose.

Here is the Test Credit Card Number:

4557 0130 0031 4262 = Approved


If you get the chance, I would appreciate any feedback on the over all application and also any features that I may have missed which you think it could use.

As I mentioned, there are still a few issues which we are still working out, and I just noticed that the mapping isn't working, so we will do stuff on our staging domain which is:

http://easybiz.soem.com.

You can still look at http://www.easybiz.com.au if you like.

It already has a heap of cool features such as:

The Templates

• Content managed - You can update the pages yourself
• 1 Completely free full featured page listing with up to 2500 characters (approx. 500 words)
• Template based advertisements
o 3 different template styles
o Up to 6 images per template
o Contact details specific to each page
o Up to 2500 Characters (approx. 500 words) per page
• Up to 5 pages – Your first page is completely free
• Content Based Search – where the content is matched in the template determines how the results are ranked.
• Search Word Highlighting - so you can find what you are looking for in the page quicker.
• Spelling Suggestions for misspelt words (eg soem > some)
• Search Engine Optimised code
• Full Featured product catalogue
• Web2SMS Business Cards can be sent to customers phones (Australian numbers only I believe)
• Page View Statistics
• Your own easybiz address (www.easybiz.com.au/yourBusiness)

Your Address
Each business gets to select their own easybiz address. One sample address is http://easybiz.soem.com/soem

This address makes it possible for businesses without a website to still have a relatively easy web address.

We are also working on allowing people to register a www.yourdomain.com.au and point it to their EasyBiz address.

We had a domain which was doing this, but we lost it when we cleared out the database for testing.

Our Search.

We use a powerful content based search rather than a category and key word association search which is used by some other business directories.

We search the contents of the page so if you are looking for an obscure word (brand, part name etc) and it is in your page somewhere, it will be found and returned.

We have designed our templates and search in tandem so we are able to get the most accurate results based on where the search term match is in the page.

Also you will notice that when you do a search on our site, the term you have done a search for is highlighted. This allows our users to find what they are looking for in the page quicker.

Prodct Catalogue

We have added Product Catalogue Functionality to EasyBiz because we have identified a need in a lot of our small business customers to display their products online.

Of course you can search for products, and you do this, simply by clicking on the "Search Products" radio button.

With products, you can create your own categories and sub categories. Unfortunately the saving of your own categories isn't working at the moment but it will be fixed tomorrow.

The product catalogue is fully searchable and includes the standard fields that most businesses require:

* Product name
* Product code
* Product key words
* Product short description
* Product long description (up to 5000 characters)
* Product price
* Product image(s) - up to 5 images! (currently 1 image but we are upgrading it to 5 images.


SMS Functionality

We have added some cool SMS functionality to businesses who want to allow their customers to receive their businesses details (up to 130 characters) directly to their customers mobile phone.

The SMSs cost the business 25c (which is standard) and they can be purchased in bundles of $25, $50, $100 and $200.

Now this is a cool feature because if you are out on the road and you are looking for something, you have only a couple of options. You can call a premium service (like Vodafone 123 or Telstra 1234) which cost about $5/min. You can also call someone at your office and ask them to do a search and then call you back with a list of businesses which you need to write down, or you could have the Yellow Pages in your car.

Now, if you have the Yellow Pages in your car, you can start calling businesses. I have done this before, and it can be quite frustrating at times if you are looking for something in particular (a specific brand etc).

If you don't have time to do that and you call someone, you tell that person what you are looking for and they do a search. Now when this person finds what they are looking for, all they have to do is enter your mobile number into the text field, confirm a code and the message is sent.

You can do this from the Soem business, but we don't have many test credits left. Our message is:

Soem
Contact: David
P: 1300007636
F: 1300117636
W: www.soem.com
E: info@soem.com
Soem are experienced Web Developers from Sydney.

Conclusion
Finally, I want to say that I designed EasyBiz as an alternative to building a website for Small Businesses who want to get online.

Easy enough you may say, but there are a lot of shoddy people calling themselves web developers out there.

I have been a web developer for almost 10 years and I have delt with many a small business. They always ask for the same things, they want to update their site themselves and in some cases want to display their products online.

EasyBiz is cheap, eliminates a lot of risk associated with developing a website, inparticular developing a website with a Content Management System and Product Catalogue.

Thanks and I hope you enjoy the site and please post any feedback, comments or bugs back here.

Thanks again.

David.

Oh, and I should mention that it has validation for australian addresses etc.

So if you want to use the following details whilst signing up

Skip the ABN / ACN

Select NSW for the state

Use 2000 for the post code

phone numbers, use 1300007636
fax number, use 1300117636

I like the concept of your site, where a business can use it as a listing in a directory and then use that as their own business webpage. I think the name of your site lends itself to that concept well, too.

One thing I noticed when I went to the homepage is that it is slightly confusing for the visitor, because it's hard to grasp the concept of the site when the homepage has links for vendors interspersed with links for directory browsers. It may be to your advantage to clearly discern (visually) the links for vendors versus directory browsers.