Online selling goes to a whole new level with Smilds

I was fortunate enough to be one of the fifty bloggers invited to the Smilds Connect event last January 19, 2010 at Hotel Intercontinental.

I was surprised as I was handed a Smilds passport and boarding pass upon my arrival. My seat and table number were indicated there.

I was impressed by the props, really. We were advised to have dinner first while waiting for the rest of the guests and I engaged in some chit-chat with my table mates.

The program started around 8pm. Up to that point, I didn't really have a clear idea of what Smilds was. The Smilds management briefed us for the next couple of hours and as it turns out, Smilds is a complete online store solution for internet sellers.

To put it plainly, let's say you get the Smilds Lite Pack worth P25,000. You get the following:

• a Smilds web store
• Payment Gateway (you can accept Mastercard, Visa, G-cash, Smart Money, etc)
• Logistics System (Smilds is currently tied up with LBC and DHL for deliveries)
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system
• Upsell / Bundle Sell / Cross Sell features (you can sell items of other Smilds merchants)
• Training Courses
• Free System Upgrades for 6 months
• Product Listing (you can list and sell 25 products with the Lite Pack)

After a lengthy presentation and system demonstration, Smilds announced that they were giving all the bloggers in the room a Smilds Lite Pack for free. Above is a screencap of my Smilds store at http://animetric.smilds.com. It's still empty but I do plan to give it a test run with some products in the coming days. While P25,000 may seem a bit steep, it's actually a whole lot cheaper than going out there and building a retail outlet. There are no monthly fees to boot, just a 5.5% transaction fee on every sale you make and your store is open 24/7 for business.

Aside from the Smilds Lite Pack, there are higher level packages which carry more features and are able to accomodate listings of up to 10,000 different products. I'll post about my actual Smilds online store experience soon. :)

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