The Global Gen World

I began my internet marketing career at a company that sold diamonds over the internet (yes, people do buy diamonds online…). As part of my position I was in charge of marketing for the site as well as foreseeing the development of our admin program and shopping cart software. As pioneers in our field, we spent a fortune on development of various in-house tools and made many modifications along the way as we gained experience. It is difficult to calculate what we spend on our programs but a rough estimate would put our investment in the hundreds of thousands of dollars on in-house software solutions alone.

While this investment was more than justifiable according to our business model, it’s hard not to laugh at what we spent on development compared to the cost of comparable programs readily available by third party vendors today. Take the shopping cart software solution provided by ashopcommerce.com for example. Out of curiosity I tried out their demo version which is available online (you don’t have to download or install anything – they simply give you access to a demo account so you can see how it works). I must say I was more than impressed. They offer one of the most complete ecommerce software solutions I have ever seen for a mere fraction of the price of what we paid in developing our own system. Ashop Commerce goes way beyond a typical shopping cart program and provides full CRM capabilities, website statistics and analysis features and complete inventory control and management. I guess when you’re dealing with the online economy you shouldn’t be surprised when things evolve at lightning speed…