Ramblings from an OG

[lesliekirk]

I feel like I'm the last bastion of people working with small mom & pop (or in many cases just pop) businesses. I was approached today to create a website identical to another business similar to it. The two business owners are friends and sell the same stuff - memorabilia. The first owner doesn't sell online; he's "old school," call or email him. He also takes his wares to shows in his region. Update information comes to me via email or CDs mailed via USPS. There is so much I'd love to change about his process. For years, I wanted to get him onto the Miva platform, even if he never sold from it. It just would have made my life easier. You probably would have thought I'd move him to WordPress, but his site is just plain 'ol HTML (well, it's Bootstrap). The site has hundreds of pages and lots of categories with items that I manually flag as sold and change out when he mails the updates.

Now I have his friend. He wants a website just like it. It got me missing the very old days when Miva Merchant came as part of the hosting plan. But don't get me wrong, if I didn't love the application and the people of Miva as much as I do, I don't think I would have made it to the 30-year mark with the platform.

[Kent Multer]

I do have some clients who run "very small" businesses: 1 person, a couple, or a family. Some of them are actually pretty big, if you measure by their their budget or customer base.

Wow, 30 years! I'm not quite there yet; I wrote my first module in 2002. At the time, the dot-com recession had hit me pretty hard; I had been living paycheck-to-paycheck for a while. Then I got a call from someone who had read my Miva Script book. While writing his module, I made a lot of contacts in the Miva user and developer community, and it basically restarted my career. The forums and the in-house devs were a big help, and I've tried to "pay it forward" by answering questions in the forums for the next generation. Thanks, everybody!

[jsdva]

It got me missing the very old days when Miva Merchant came as part of the hosting plan. But don't get me wrong, if I didn't love the application and the people of Miva as much as I do, I don't think I would have made it to the 30-year mark with the platform.

Yep. I agree.

[lesliekirk]

There is a sidebar to this. I have a potential new client that I would love to be able to drop into Miva, but it's way above their budget. For me, it would make the updates so easy, and it would keep the site owners' costs down. There is such a simplicity to Miva that might not be noticeable at first glance, but for someone who has been looking at it for "a while" now, it's right there.

But instead, I will be researching something that might be able to let me upload new items to a database, update when they are sold, but doesn't need the ability to sell online (unless the potential new client might want to explore that idea).

[Rick Wilson]

I appreciate the sentimentality here, but the OG Miva business model, was one of the worst business models I've ever seen in my entire life. $50 on average wholesale for a one time license with no recurring revenue. That Miva died 20 years ago or so.

I've thought a lot about lower cost offerings, but you end up in a situations where you can't afford to support it at a low price point (which is not in our DNA to not help customers) or the entry level customers bury you.

There's a reason Shopify made most of its support AI or in the Philippines if you want to talk to a human. You get what you pay for.

[lesliekirk]

I appreciate the sentimentality here, but the OG Miva business model, was one of the worst business models I've ever seen in my entire life. $50 on average wholesale for a one time license with no recurring revenue. That Miva died 20 years ago or so.

I've thought a lot about lower cost offerings, but you end up in a situations where you can't afford to support it at a low price point (which is not in our DNA to not help customers) or the entry level customers bury you.

There's a reason Shopify made most of its support AI or in the Philippines if you want to talk to a human. You get what you pay for.

I understand and appreciate all of this. Miva has me so spoiled because I know my way around the admin. I think for what I want to do, I'm going to use a combination of WordPress and WooCommerce since the site is not going to be taking live orders. This company has a call or email to order model because the items are one each and could already have been sold. Updates are not provided on a daily basis. I just want an easier way to build the layout and quickly update the content. Using the old HTML page layout is so tedious and slow. (Like I said, I've gotten spoiled by Miva).

ps...we saw the Camp Miva 2027 Early-Bird special and have started looking into flights, ect. LOL, this time no need to stop off at In-N-Out as we now have one just "up the road" from us.

[Rick Wilson]

Well I hope you make it

[GDesigns]

Hope I will make it as well to Camp Miva so Leslie and I can celebrate our 30-year 'reunion', lol. Rick Wilson have you juggled numbers based on an entry level, self-serve model for Miva, no support or paid support package add-on? It's difficult to get a starter business onto Miva at the current price point and once they are on (mostly) Shopify they usually don't replatform once sales grow.

[Rick Wilson]

We have and talk about that a lot internally. The trick would be having the top of funnel to feed that model, cause I agree it's hard to switch mid course.

If we had a partnership (imagine if Costco promoted Miva through its business services offerings) then we'd certainly do that.

Our current cost to acquire leads makes that model not work.

If you have someone who wants to send us 5,000 new small clients a year, we'll work out pricing that would function