I am preparing to launch a small [200 page] commercial website. The
site will be a information portal targeted to a specific business
topic. Target customers are business users who work for banks,
insurance companies, and other financial services companies as well as
professionals in the regulatory and vendor communities that serve this
market. In general, I expect the users will be only moderately
internet savvy.
I want to have certain features available on the site but, to reduce
cost and complexity, I want to buy these features as services via the
internet. I am not a technical person so I need to pay people each
time I want to make changes to the site. Also, I would like to
minimize complexity by hiring as few external suppliers as possible. I
need:
1) a search capability for the site, 2) a “forum” or “board” for
members to post messages and interact; 3) a statistics package to
track usage, 4) an on-line survey capability; 5) search engine audit
and submittal assistance; and 6) mailing list services.
www.mycomputer.com, offers most of these services.
Question: Identify five to seven other suppliers who can deliver at
least three of these services and contrast and compare their offerings
to those of www.mycomputer.com |
Request for Question Clarification by
jbf777-ga
on
16 Apr 2003 10:33 PDT
Hi -
Are you looking for these sites to actually install and/or program
these features into your site? Or are you looking for just these raw
software "modules" that you can have another programmer add to your
site? Also, what kind of comparison/contrast are you looking for?
How extensive? What kind of information?
Thanks,
jbf777-ga
GA Researcher
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Clarification of Question by
joe1979-ga
on
16 Apr 2003 10:52 PDT
Neither software nor software engineering - I am looking for a
web-services firm that can provide the service functionality, via the
internet, in real-time. Please check-out www.mycomputer.com for an
example.
I would pay them a fee and then (I or my developer) builds linkages
within my site. When a site user calls on that function, say a
"search", they are actually sending a request to the service
provider's website. The service provider's website then "serves" the
answers back to my site. From the user's perspective, they can't
really tell that "function" was delivered by the third-party service
provider. My people call these functions "back-end services".
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Request for Question Clarification by
jbf777-ga
on
16 Apr 2003 12:22 PDT
Hi -
From my searching, it seems that the trend is more in specialization
than in multi-application offerings. I.e., I have located many
companies
that home in on one particular service. Would you be interested in
seeing a list of companies that specialize in each area you've listed?
I find it is always best to go with companies that have dedicated
their resources to honing a specific application, versus going with a
jack-of-all-trades company.
jbf777-ga
GA Researcher
|
Clarification of Question by
joe1979-ga
on
16 Apr 2003 12:52 PDT
Hi jbf777 -
The crux of my question is 1) identification of other multi-line
web-services suppliers and 2) a critical contrasting and comparison of
those offerings with those of the specified supplier
(www.mycomputer.com).
In the context of this question, I am not interested in a simple
listing for each segment. For example, in the case of the website
stats, there are over two-dozen suppliers. No, a listing of vendors
for each service will most certainly fail to meet fulfill my
requirements.
My original question stands. I am interested in 1) identification of
five to seven multi-line web-services suppliers for small businesses;
and 2) a critical analysis of those offerings.
If I fail to get an answer to this question, I will likely parse it
out into mulitple questions for each individual service and reduce the
offered price.
Rgds - Joe1979
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