Mr. Sausages Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 maybe it has something to do with the alleged backhanders a few people have received for awarding the contract to V. Please expand on this. What allegations have been made, and who has made them? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manshimajin Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 BTW, apart from thanking Declan for putting this up - what is the public promotion for this site (scary I know as it will probably cost another (£300,000). Technical issues aside a shopping portal ain't much good unless you know about it. I don't mean a big back slapping self congratulatory bit of DTI narcissism. Something that tells and continues to remind ordinary Joe's that the site is there Mind you is it worth it? Is on-line on-island shopping likely to have a big marketing/purchasing appeal as it has no appeal off island? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chunkylover Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 I'm no technie but I like shopping and this looks fine to me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunnyNorth Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 They should have used shop.im - but its registered to some guy in china, so much for the "Manx" domain names https://www.nic.im/public/whois.mth?domainname=shop.im I read somewhere recently that there are some unscrupulous people/sites that once you check to see if a domain name is free, they register it to themselves so that it has to be bought from them for a inflated price. Was someone in Govt really silly to look up shop.im and not register it immediatly? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Sausages Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 Mind you is it worth it? Is on-line on-island shopping likely to have a big marketing/purchasing appeal as it has no appeal off island? I don't really see the point of it. What are the advantages of locals using this over Amazon? Cheaper prices? Doubt it. Quicker delivery? Doubt that too. If it's just intended as a central place for local businesses to advertise, it could be done a hell of a lot cheaper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempus Fugit Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 re publicity, I understood there was supposed to be a big publicity thing today on Mandate, with participating traders getting their advertising slot on 30sec commercials a couple of times a week, but nothing seems to have come of it yet, the balloons they had blown up last week have gone a bit flat Apart from a little local publicity I think the main market is the general worldwide surfing / googling shopper looking for particular stuff, I can't see garden centres selling bedding plants etc by mail order. a quick look at a few links reveals some have only a dozen or so products for sale, so maybe they were somewhat rushed to get on-line for the launch date. There also seems to be some classified in strange categories, like a kitchen shop in the jewellery section Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
integer Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 I'm seriously hoping there's more than this for the £300k, template-puke like this can be knocked out in hours. There's got to be more to it, surely? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Voice of Reason Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 Does seem rather half-arsed. Say for some bizarre reason I wished to purchase Madonna's latest CD (CD's not being an uncommon item) I may go to the audio / CD section to see who is offering it at what price. Answer - nobody, so I take myself off to HMV, possibly Tesco's and buy it, in person or possibly from their own respective websites. What's with the picture of the girl praying? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Tatlock Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 What's with the picture of the girl praying? The picture says 'shopping heaven' so she's obviously dead...probably died waiting for an xmas hamper or a food parcel to arrive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moghrey Mie Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 Shop IOM livetoday. It doesn't look very Manx What a strange assortment of food and drink-roses, whisky, kippers,more whisky, beauty products and cheese.The Manx diet? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Declan Posted September 1, 2009 Author Share Posted September 1, 2009 The front page is poor, lacking in coherence and any Manx identity. Most of the links seem to be to pre-existing websites and mainly for mail-order companies. However, the sites that seem new, and use Vanda, are functional if a little old-school. They're not that bad, really, but I'm sure there are off the shelf vending sites that could have done the same job. If they'd ask me to make this site, it'd have ended up looking like this. But I have very minimal skills in this area. It's hard, if I'm honest, to see where the money was spent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Risso Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 The site looks like it was knocked up by a teenager starting their first year of GCSE IT. Some of the shopping categories are a bit strange. Included in 'health & beauty' is a link to the Sky Sports DVD shop. Click on 'jewellery' and there's Butler's Choice, the kitchen shop. What a complete and utter waste of money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Twitch Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 It's very average, like most other local websites. No way this cost £300k. Looking at the DTI site I think this figure includes the subsidies for the retailers and support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Tatlock Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 What a complete and utter waste of money. ...plus don't forget too add quite a few grand to the bill for this - for some of the web technologists that are currently on the dole, and which Joe Public is also supplementing at the moment. I know two of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slinkydevil Posted September 1, 2009 Share Posted September 1, 2009 It's very average, like most other local websites. No way this cost £300k. Looking at the DTI site I think this figure includes the subsidies for the retailers and support. I mentioned it earlier but the portal is just part of the venture and did not cost that much. The £300,000 apparently went into licensing the Venda system for the IOM and any retailer that wants to use the alloted sites available gets heavily subsidised. I think this runs for a year and then there is a monthly ongoing cost, but don't quote me on that. The system available from Venda to the IOM is not the full version that you see the likes of De Beers, Arsenal FC, BBC, Superdrug, British Museum etc using, it is a scaled down version for small businesses - http://shop.venda.com/engine/shop/index.html That currently retails at £49/month to buy off the shelf - however I think Venda have done a deal on so many shops available for the Isle of Man through a scheme setup with the government. I wish they'd break down the costs so we could see if there is any real value in what they bought, but what has got local developers backs up is - "we spent £300,000 and didn't ask you first if you can offer the same service." I'm not knocking Venda, they know their stuff and obviously have a good sales pitch. The basic software is probably whats suitable for the majority of local retailers selling tea towels and porcelain manx cats, though it is limited. Again my gripe is the Portal. The shop window for this scheme - it should be fantastic, but in my opinion this looks like it is being run by people with little if any knowledge of design, ecommerce or effective online marketing. (BTW - ecommerce sites probably amount to about 1% of our business, it's not our core area, I just hate to see vast sums of public money go to waste on ill-thought and under performed schemes with no sort of accountable end result.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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