Land of Zoho Creator

As we press ahead toward Web 3.0 it’s becoming more evident to me that there are vast segments of the population that are not riding the technology wave. They are still Web 1.0 or even Web No Point O. BuggyRocket will be the bridge to allow the offline seller to present their major asset, eg. Real Estate, Vehicle, Collectible, to the online world without having to be online themselves.

I’ve used Zoho Creator for form creation before and in reading the documentation a few months ago, it occurred to me that there’s something very powerful here! However, I don’t have the time, or really much interest in learning Deluge scripting to take advantage of it. My wish list is pretty big and there are some application tools that I would like to integrate into BuggyRocket that I hope can be accomplished with Zoho Creator and the Zoho Suite of applications. After contacting Zoho to see if they could recommend a “guru”, Raffic suggested I contact Pete Thomas. Thankfully I did because I’ve discovered that Zoho Creator can do everything and more that I imagined. Plus, Pete has already demonstrated his expertise with ZC for me on a contract basis.

Since my target market is primarily offline, I don’t want to invest a lot of time and money into a state of the art DB and flash-based, ajaxy kind of site. My audience, if they have a computer, is often on dial-up. These prospects are serviced through traditional mail, fax and phone, not email. But my telephone CSR’s need to be online to simplify the process. And, I need a strong site for prospective customers who are online. Folks who aren’t fearful of technology and want Web 2.0 functionality. So, I need to be able to consummate the transaction online from start to finish. ZC should allow me to accomplish this, I think.

Needing to serve the customer from all ends of the technology spectrum is the biggest hurdle. I personally am an early adopter, but my customers are late adopters - at best, or orphans (if you use the adoption analogy). The way that obstacle is addressed, is by providing human beings to answer the phone - the good old fashioned way. Humans cost money and having a lot of CSR’s could really cut into our profit margins, but my hope is that I could create a backend consisting of a series of detailed ZC forms that would be utilized to allow a CSR to efficiently input the data, build the database, and process payment. Then ultimately, convert the data into an XML feed or other script to greatly simplify my listing and design process.

That’s a simplified vision of how I’d like Pete, Alan and Doug show me, as an entrepreneur, how to get the most out of Zoho Creator. I’m eagerly looking forward to seeing what really can be done with this powerful application and appreciate the opportunity to be here in the Land of Zoho Creator!