Tag Archives: Rachael King

About 4647 days ago E-Commerce

Joe’s Dot-Com Garage

Resources Losing customers to slow downloading and broken links? A variety of free and low-cost online repair shops will help you maintain a smooth-running site When Jackie Monticup first launched her Magictricks.com Web site, in 1997, she did it herself — just as many small-business owners do. Monticup and her husband had been searching for a way to expand the reach of their small Charlottesville, Va., magic shop, and the Web seemed to be a perfect fit. So Jackie Monticup stayed up nights learning how to code HTML. But Monticup recently learned an important fact of online life: creating the site is only the first step in running a successful Web business. Though more than 90% of her store’s revenues were coming from the Web, potential sales still were slipping away. Many of the visitors to her site simply never ordered anything. Of those who reached the order page, at least a quarter would jump off before buying. And some would call her toll-free number asking questions about ordering that she thought the site had clearly explained. As many small-business owners are discovering, online shoppers are a tough bunch. The slightest inconvenience or glitch will send them scurrying to another site before they even think about entering their credit-card numbers. During last year’s holiday-shopping season, for example, online shopping carts were abandoned 88% of the time, according to Edd Johns, director of intelligence at technology-marketing firm Resource Marketing Inc., based in Columbus, Ohio. “A lot of companies have opted to build E-commerce themselves, and there’s nothing wrong with building it themselves. But they need to make sure the experience is foolproof — and failproof,” he says. Unfortunately for such do-it-yourselfers, it is rarely either. There are myriad ways in which Web sites can frustrate a visitor, and dealing with those problems can be a daunting task for the neophyte. Slow downloading, broken links, browser incompatibility, navigation problems, and site downtime — all those glitches can mean lost revenues. One answer is to hire an expert — either in-house or as a consultant — to maintain a site. But with even part-time consultants charging $75 to $150 an hour, that strategy can far exceed the resources of small businesses with homegrown sites. A far simpler and cheaper solution can be found right on the Web: “you fix it” sites that offer low-cost Web-site-maintenance services, ideal for the small-business owner moonlighting as a Web designer. Monticup, for example, was able to diagnose one problem that plagued her magic-shop site using a free Web tool called SuperStats, provided by MyComputer.com. With SuperStats, she tracked the path of visitors and discovered that they were being drawn into and diverted by her “Magic Library,” shown on the site’s front page. Surfers would access the library, browse its information about magic, and then follow links to the last page of the site without ever seeing the ordering information. Once Monticup redesigned her home page to highlight magic products, visitors began to go right where she led them — and the subsequent boost in sales contributed to her best second quarter ever. Typically, says Monticup, her company’s sales drop 20% between the first and second quarters. This year her sales were down less than 5%. If Web pages take more than eight seconds to load, sites lose about a third of their visitors, says NetMechanic CEO Jeff Morgan. In addition to MyComputer.com, companies that operate Web-maintenance sites include NetMechanic, Microsoft’s SiteOwner, Netscape’s Web Site Garage, and LinkAlarm. Each offers a range of services with which you can manage and maintain Web sites; some are free and others you must pay for. For instance, for 1¢ per page, LinkAlarm lets business owners check Web links to make sure they’re working. Three sites — Web Site Garage, NetMechanic, and SiteOwner — promise to register your site with a limited number of search engines at no charge. What do you get for nothing? SiteOwner will submit your site to 6 search engines, and NetMechanic and Web Site Garage will submit it to 12. (For a full range of services and prices, see “Comparing the Mechanics,” below.) In addition, Web-maintenance sites can help solve the following types of problems: HTML glitches. Sites built by business owners who are new to HTML coding are especially at risk for performance problems. If the coding doesn’t work properly, visitors may have trouble navigating or viewing portions of the site. To avoid such difficulties, Avram Berman, owner of a small telemarketing company based in Rochester, N.Y., relies on a tool from NetMechanic called HTML Toolbox. When Berman launched his site, a few years ago, he built it himself using Microsoft FrontPage. It seemed easy enough, but when he tried to access the site using America Online, it locked up. No visitor using AOL could see it. Using HTML Toolbox, he discovered that coding mistakes were causing the trouble. Though HTML Toolbox can automatically correct such errors, Berman — the hands-on type — opted to make the repairs himself. Today he routinely uses the service to check his coding. Browser incompatibility. Obviously, all sites need to work with the various browsers that potential customers and other visitors use. Nonetheless, says Jeff Morgan, CEO of NetMechanic, “many small- business owners buy a copy of Microsoft’s FrontPage, build a Web site, and never look at it with a Netscape browser or with WebTV. They go to show it to someone on their own PC, and they pull it up with a different browser, and sure enough, the site doesn’t look the same or doesn’t work.” With one operation, HTML Toolbox allows owners to find out whether all their HTML coding tags are supported by all versions of the major browsers. Broken links. Few things frustrate users more than clicking on a link that takes them nowhere. Yet discovering and fixing those links may be difficult. When Federica Canada-Bouton launched the Web site for her New York City showroom, Fede Antiques, Vintage & Collectibles, in December 1999, she knew that she wanted to manage it herself. But like Berman, she had only just learned HTML coding and needed a little extra help. Since she had used Microsoft’s bCentral site for small businesses to get her Web site up and running, she turned to bCentral’s SiteOwner, which contains a handful of maintenance tools. Using SiteOwner’s free link checker, Canada-Bouton discovered that some of the links at her site, www.fedeantiquevintage.com, were broken. “I couldn’t tell from where I was, because what I understood about hyperlinks obviously wasn’t enough,” she says. The tool was easy to use: she just entered her site address and the link checker looked at all the links and meta tags. However, unlike HTML Toolbox, the link checker could fix only some of the errors that it pointed out. Even Web experts find such maintenance tools useful. When Preferred Brands International, a $4-million company that sells Indian and Thai ready-to-eat entrées, launched an E-commerce site, in 1998, Webmaster Akila Iyer had no trouble keeping track of all her pages and making sure the links worked. As www.tastybite.com grew, however, Iyer found it more difficult to keep up with maintenance of the site, on which the company sells its Indian food. “Because it’s a specialty market, we do need to make sure anything we have up there is user-friendly,” she says. When some customers complained about broken links for sending E-mail, Iyer signed up with NetMechanic’s HTML Toolbox service, which automatically checks links. Slow-as-molasses downloading. Long downloading times drive customers off sites, period. “We feel that if a page is taking more than 30 seconds to load, there’s a high chance of abandonment,” says Johns of Resource Marketing. Others think that the time window is even smaller. If Web pages take more than 8 seconds to load, sites lose about a third of their visitors, says NetMechanic’s Morgan. To combat slow downloading, NetMechanic offers GIFBot, an image-optimization tool. GIFBot works by reducing the size of GIF and JPEG images on a Web page. Berman, the telemarketing-company owner, uses it to compress his graphics so that his site, www.ajba.com, will load more quickly. “It’s a nice, quick interface that will show you several images and the compression levels, so you can select the one you want,” he says. What site? Finally, not only may visitors have problems when they reach a site, but they may not be able to see the site at all. “Just because it’s up for you doesn’t mean that anyone else can see it,” says Brett Error, chief technology officer at MyComputer.com. There are many on-ramps to the Internet, and some may become blocked and cut customers off from viewing your site. To deal with that situation, both MyComputer.com and NetMechanic offer tools that help business owners determine whether their sites are widely accessible. For instance, MyComputer’s WatchDog monitors Web sites round the clock, checking them as frequently as every two minutes. It also has five locations around the globe from which it can verify that a site is available. With that information in hand, site owners can demand better service from their hosting companies and, in turn, give better service to their customers. Maintaining a Web site poses many challenges for the small-business owner playing Webmaster. But these simple, low-cost tools can fix performance problems, making it easier for customers to get their shopping carts down those virtual checkout aisles. Rachael King is a freelance writer based in Glen Ridge, N.J. Comparing the Mechanics Need minimal help? You may not have to pay a dime. Need more? A regular plan, at low cost, can help you keep your site free of trouble Web site Services offered Price LinkAlarm Checks links 1¢ per page ($10 minimum purchase allows 1,000 pages to be checked) Microsoft’s SiteOwner Checks links, meta tags, and spelling Free Submits site to 6 search engines Free Manages customer E-mail lists Free Determines search-engine ranking Free Submits site to 400 search engines, provides banner advertising, sends targeted E-mail to customers $19.99 a month to $499 a year, depending on plan MyComputer.com Checks links $59 a year and up Analyzes site traffic Free to $19.95 a month or $200 a year, depending on plan Monitors site downtime $19.95 to $99.95 a month, depending on plan, plus $19.95 onetime setup fee Submits site to search engines $59 a year and up NetMechanic Checks links, repairs HTML, checks page loading time $35 to $200 a year, depending on plan Monitors site downtime Free to $9.99 a month, depending on plan Speeds up image loading time by compressing graphics Free Submits site to search engines Free for 12 search engines; $9.99 for 100 Netscape’s Web Site Garage Checks links, HTML Free Speeds up image loading time by compressing graphics Free Monitors site traffic Free Submits site to 12 search engines Free Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4739 days ago Telecom and Wireless

One-Stop Dialing

CEO’s Start-Up Toolkit: CLECs A new kind of telephone company wants your business and will go to great lengths to get it When Don Holcomb came on as vice-president of operations at Amfinity Business Solutions, in 1998, he discovered the employee-leasing company didn’t have E-mail. The 15 employees in the St. Petersburg, Fla., headquarters relied solely on the telephone, the fax, and snail mail to communicate with the company’s thousands of leased workers nationwide. “We had no E-mail functions, and we had no ability to tie other locations to us,” Holcomb says. That would have been fine except that Amfinity’s client base had grown so rapidly since the company was founded in 1996 that staffers were having problems processing the voluminous payrolls, tax statements, and medical and retirement forms in a timely manner. Holcomb knew he could use the Internet to make the company more efficient, but he found that most existing service offerings were geared for larger businesses and were too expensive for his company. Then he discovered 2nd Century Communications, a relatively new provider known as a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC). The folks at 2nd Century said they could offer Holcomb’s company what more established providers would not: an affordable Internet package that included high-speed Internet access, E-mail, and a hosted Web site. The company also gave Holcomb local and long-distance telephone service and desktop support — all on one bill, all at a savings of 10% per month compared with the company’s previous bills. By bundling a wide variety of phone and Web services, CLECs can give discounts of 30% or more. Start-up 2nd Century is just one of more than 200 CLECs that have blossomed since the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which broke up the local monopolies held by the Bell companies. In 1999, CLECs pulled in more than $26 billion in revenues collectively and served almost 400,000 office buildings nationwide. By bundling their various communications services, these providers can give discounts of 30% or more. Besides cost advantages, the new providers bring other benefits. For instance, Holcomb found that by replacing the handful of service providers he had previously used with just one, he eliminated some hassle. Now he manages only one vendor relationship instead of seven, so when a problem crops up, he knows exactly whom to call. That has eliminated the previous finger-pointing among providers that he knew only too well. In addition, industry observers claim that small companies typically get better service from CLECs. “As opposed to the incumbents, the CLEC sales reps are Johnny-on-the-spot,” says Craig Clausen, senior vice-president at New Paradigm Resources Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm. “They’ll go out of their way to give you all the information so that you can compare apples to apples and then give you the opportunity to ask some questions.” Don Holcomb found that by switching to just one service provider, he eliminated some hassle. Companies may find some CLECs willing to do things that other providers won’t, like troubleshooting the network, helping to upgrade equipment, and providing desktop support. George Fajta, chief technology officer at Kadem Capital, found CLEC Winstar willing to undertake some complex technology challenges in order to win his business. Kadem, a two-year-old U.S. equity trading fund with 22 employees, needed a backup connection to the Internet in case its primary one failed. To deliver that, Winstar worked with Kadem’s current provider, Eze Castle, to set up a special kind of routing between the two providers. Although there are many good reasons to sign up with a CLEC, customers may run into a few hitches along the way, especially if they’re currently receiving service from a Bell company. In order for a business to keep the same telephone number while switching telephone companies, the providers must follow a complicated procedure to make the transfer. Both the old and the new providers must make changes to their databases at the same time; otherwise the customer could be left temporarily without phone service. Vince DiBiase, senior vice-president of ICG Communications, a CLEC based in Englewood, Colo., acknowledges that it can be a challenge for companies like his to get new customers up and running. “This is a disadvantage that every CLEC will have unless the particular customer is located in a building that either my company or another CLEC actually has wiring into,” he says. If a CLEC doesn’t own the wires into a particular building, then it must go through the often lengthy process of ordering and reselling service from a Bell company to serve customers at that site. If a small business calls a Bell company like US West directly, it will likely get service within a couple of weeks, but at ICG it could take as long as a month to 45 days to order that service resale from US West, says DiBiase. Getting personal service: “If I needed to, I knew I could go pound my fist on their door,” says Holcomb. For CEOs like Kathleen Bagley, the ultimate benefits of doing business with a CLEC typically outweigh the initial wait. About a year and a half ago Bagley relocated her company, Prime Source Lending, to another location in San Antonio. It took three months for ICG to switch her company’s service from Southwestern Bell to its own. But Bagley says she switched because Southwestern Bell had told her that because of the move she’d have to get a new phone number for her company and pay a monthly fee to have calls forwarded from the old number. That arrangement would have been renewable on a year-to-year basis, and if Southwestern Bell had needed that number at any time in the future, the company would have taken it back, she says. ICG, on the other hand, let Bagley keep her old number and didn’t charge any monthly fees. In fact, Bagley has been so pleased with the relationship that she’s also switched her long-distance service from AT&T to ICG. Initially, even Don Holcomb felt that it was risky to give his business to a new provider. Still, he found comfort in the fact that 2nd Century was located close to his company. “If I needed to, I knew I could go pound my fist on their door,” he says. And so far that personalized service has paid off for his company. Recently, several employees complained to Holcomb about slow Internet connections. Before Holcomb could pick up the phone to call 2nd Century, he had already received a call from the company. “They said, ‘We’ve noticed that you’ve been having problems with your connections today. We’re working on it now to take care of the problem, and it should be resolved in 10 minutes,’ ” he says. “That just floored me.” Rachael King is a freelance writer based in Hoboken, N.J. Looking for a CLEC near you? A good first step would be to check out www.clec.com, where you can search for providers by city and state. You can also check with your state public-utility commission, which keeps a list of all new providers licensed to operate in your state. For more on the gear you really need to start and grow your small business, see our CEO’s Start-Up Toolkit. Please e-mail your comments to editors@inc.com.

About 4831 days ago Telecom and Wireless

Cheap Talk

Money What your phone company won’t tell you: these new Web sites promise to shrink your long-distance and wireless bills Dr. JoAnne Duffy knows how to scout out a bargain. She finds 10-foot Christmas trees for $35, bargain-basement prices on designer suits, and two-for-one airfare deals to Ireland. This Baltimore-based clinical psychologist honed her shopping skills in the 1980s when she was a cash-strapped graduate student. But today, when it comes to buying cell-phone service, she’s mystified. Duffy, who racks up monthly phone bills of about $150, says she’d like to investigate which cellular plan is best but that as a private practitioner she’s pressed for time. Case in point: she recently spent 40 minutes on the phone with Bell Atlantic Mobile — almost as much time as she spends with a client — regarding a $25 charge on her bill that she didn’t recognize. Needless to say, Duffy can’t afford many more 40-minute bill problems. “My Ph.D. didn’t cover cellular science,” says Duffy. When she shops for other items, Duffy knows what she’s looking for and can determine if she’s getting a good deal. With cell-phone service, though, she’s not sure if she should be comparing monthly rates or price per minute. It shouldn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out a telephone bill. Yet Duffy and countless business owners find themselves lost in a maze of roaming charges, peak and off-peak rates, and activation fees. Long-distance plans are no better. The recent onslaught of long-distance price wars has left most people confused about whether to choose Sprint Nickel Nights or AT&T’s One Rate 7¢ Plan — or service from a less well known long-distance reseller. A new breed of Web sites wants to help small-business owners ascertain how to get the best deals on everything from wireless to long distance to calling cards. Point.com, Decide.com, eSpoke.com, LetsTalk.com, Telezoo.com, Telstreet.com, Simplexity.com, and others that are popping up as fast as you can say “venture capital” provide free search engines into which customers enter information about their monthly calling habits. The sites then recommend wireless or long-distance plans that should suit a customer’s specific needs. Customers can order many of the recommended plans right on the sites. And they may well want to do so to cut down on one of the biggest expenses small businesses incur. The Yankee Group reports that businesses employing from 2 to 99 people spend an average of $220 a month for phone service; businesses with 100 to 499 employees spend about $2,800. Larger companies can spend less per employee, since they can negotiate better deals directly with carriers. Smaller businesses don’t have that luxury. “By just being on the wrong plan, you could end up leaving literally hundreds of dollars on the table,” says Roy Prasad, president and CEO of Decide.com. When Carol Newton visited eSpoke.com, she discovered she was leaving more than $500 on the table every month. The CEO of Priority Search Partners, a $2-million Redondo Beach, Calif., company that matches IS professionals with contract and permanent work, Newton was spending about $700 a month on long-distance calls. For only $165 she could get the same service from UniDial, a carrier that eSpoke.com identified. Newton had never heard of UniDial, but the eSpoke site informed her that the service provider, which has 230,000 customers and $215 million in revenues, resells service from MCI, Sprint, and others. “We figured, they’re solid; they’re not going to be disappearing tomorrow,” Newton says. She estimates that by switching carriers, Priority Search Partners will save from $5,000 to $6,000 yearly. She’ll use some of the savings to get a toll-free number. We chose to test the best of the dozen-plus sites that purport to help customers make informed telecom choices. With assistance from Michael Lauricella, an analyst at the Yankee Group, we first compiled an extensive list of sites. We narrowed the list by choosing only those sites that were already up and running and through which customers can purchase some services. We eliminated all sites backed by telecom companies, because those sites typically sell plans from only one or two carriers. Finally, we eliminated any site through which we could not contact a human being, figuring that if the site didn’t return our E-mail messages or phone calls, it probably wouldn’t return yours either. To test the sites, we ran the phone bills from a variety of growing businesses through the sites’ search engines and came up with recommendations for economical calling plans. The wireless sites that made the cut are Point.com, Decide.com, LetsTalk.com, Simplexity.com, Telstreet.com, and Telezoo.com. Similarly, Decide.com, Simplexity.com, eSpoke.com, and Telezoo.com made the cut for long-distance service. Some of the sites also compare Internet services and calling cards. (See “The Players,” below.) To provide services free to Internet surfers, the sites charge some or all of the carriers listed in their search engines. When a customer signs up with a carrier at a particular site, the carrier pays the site a one-time referral fee or 5% to 20% of the customer’s monthly bill. Execs running these sites are quick to point out that even though the sites make money from service providers, they remain unbiased. (The execs make that claim despite the fact that some carriers pay higher commissions than others, making it tempting for a site to recommend one carrier’s offerings over those of its competitors.) And some sites, in an effort to be completely neutral, list a huge gamut of offerings, regardless of whether the carriers are paying clients or not. ESpoke.com, Simplexity.com, Telezoo.com, LetsTalk.com, and Telstreet.com carry only service providers with whom they’ve negotiated agreements. Decide.com and Point.com, on the other hand, carry plans from a wide range of service providers, whether or not they take commissions from them. “We have the largest database of all the available plans, whether we have a business relationship or not,” says Decide.com’s Prasad. (Decide.com’s claims of neutrality were true: in our tests, both Decide.com and Point.com recommended some providers that don’t pay any commissions to their sites.) Another variation among the sites is ease of use. All the wireless sites examine how many minutes a customer requires and how much he or she wants to spend. Telstreet.com and Simplexity.com pull up plans based on those two factors and the customer’s location, but it’s up to customers to discern which plan best fits their needs. In addition to using minutes and price as criteria, Point.com also asks customers to choose between analog or digital service and to select features such as prepaid plans, no cancellation fees, or a one-year service contract. At LetsTalk.com, customers can sort by features such as voice mail, caller ID, text messaging, and E-mail services. Decide.com was the easiest site to use. It poses a series of questions including what percentage of calls are long-distance and what percentage of calls the customer places outside the home-service area. Then it recommends up to 10 plans, listing its top recommendation first. Decide.com and eSpoke.com allow for quick comparisons or detailed comparisons of individual calls on long-distance bills. The easiest and most accurate way to evaluate long-distance bills is to plug in the number of interstate, intrastate, off-peak, and peak minutes from a recent phone bill. Plugging in individual phone calls at both sites is time-consuming, however, and in our trials turned out to be a less accurate method of evaluating total cost. ESpoke.com seems to understand that this process can be cumbersome. To make the process easier, it offers a service through which customers can fax or mail in their most recent long-distance bill; eSpoke.com will analyze the bill within an hour of receiving it and send its results out by E-mail. While most of the sites let customers figure out how much they can save on wireless or long-distance phone bills immediately, Telezoo.com and Simplexity.com offer “request a quote” services. To use those programs, submit your phone bill or your calling requirements to the site and request bids from a variety of carriers. Such a service can be ideal for companies with complex and costly telecom needs. Elias Shams, Telezoo.com’s chief zookeeper (yep, that’s what this company calls its CEO), says companies that spend more than $1,000 per month are most likely to benefit from requesting quotes. Take Timothy Wierbinski, for example. When the communications engineer needed to order a T1 line from Hawaii to Alexandria, Va., he didn’t know whom to call. Wierbinski, who works for Science Applications International Corp., in Tyson’s Corner, Va., turned to Telezoo.com and entered his request. “Within an hour somebody from Telezoo had called me back to get more details,” he says. The carriers, unfortunately, didn’t respond as rapidly as the Web site had; it took a couple of weeks for Wierbinski to receive a few bids. In the interim, he found Hawaiian carriers listed on Telezoo.com and called them himself. Regardless of which services they offer, all the sites provide easy-to-reach customer service. Telstreet.com, LetsTalk.com, Simplexity.com, Point.com, and Decide.com have toll-free numbers. The two sites we tested that don’t have toll-free numbers offer cyberservice: Telezoo.com provides online support through LivePerson.com — a real-time chat application. Customers click an on-screen button and choose a customer-service rep. It took less than a minute for the rep to join the online chat; he answered our question (about the request-a-quote service) immediately. ESpoke.com provides support only by E-mail but answered our question within an hour and a half. Both Telezoo.com and eSpoke.com list the phone numbers of corporate headquarters so customers can call (albeit for a fee) if need be. To take these sites for a test-drive, Inc. Technology asked three growing companies — MBA FreeAgents.com, WebCT, and eOriginal — each to submit one month’s long-distance phone bill. We plugged the information from those bills into eSpoke.com and Decide.com. (Simplexity.com’s long-distance portion wasn’t yet operating at press time, and we didn’t use Telezoo.com since it doesn’t offer any immediate price-comparison tools.) In addition, we entered information from one of eOriginal’s cellular-service bills into Simplexity.com, Telstreet.com, Decide.com, Point.com, and LetsTalk.com. (See the charts below.) MBA FreeAgents.com places experienced MBAs with start-up and other companies that need high-level employees. MBA FreeAgents.com is a fast-growing company with three full-time employees and seven part-timers. CEO Rob Steir works from his home in New York City and spends about $235 a month on long-distance calls with MCI WorldCom. When Steir first signed up with MCI WorldCom, he snagged a 12-cent-per-minute rate. At the time, Steir recalls, the provider promised 10,000 airline miles along with a 20% rebate if he stuck with the plan for a year. Steir knew there were cheaper per-minute rates available, but he resisted the advances of other carriers because he figured he was getting a good deal with the rebate and the miles. At year-end, however, MCI gave him only the airline miles, saying that he had chosen that option over the rebate. Steir says he feels misled by MCI, especially since his 20% rebate would have amounted to about $250 — more than a month’s long-distance bill. As a result, Steir was more than ready to dump MCI for another provider — if he could find a better deal. (An MCI spokesperson says that Steir’s account is being credited to correct the error.) And did he ever find a deal. ESpoke.com pulled up the lowest-priced plan — $102.24 per month, through a carrier called RSL Communications. Decide.com came in slightly higher, with a total estimated monthly cost at TTI National Inc. of $114.01. Those sites take usage patterns into account and occasionally turn up surprisingly useful information. For example, Decide.com also lists MCI WorldCom’s 5¢ Everyday plan — which might seem like a bargain. But after analyzing Steir’s calling pattern, Decide.com estimated that MBA FreeAgents.com would spend $283.13 per month with MCI WorldCom — no bargain at all. A larger company like WebCT, which builds systems that colleges use to create online classes, has more complex telecom needs. The company more than tripled in size, from 60 employees last fall (split between offices in Peabody, Mass., and Vancouver, British Columbia) to more than 200 today. The company counts millions of student users in 100,000 courses at 1,100-plus colleges and universities in more than 40 countries. “From a sales perspective, we need to make a high volume of calls around the world, 24 hours a day,” says Peter Segall, vice-president for sales and strategic partnerships at WebCT. “We need a plan that’s flexible enough so that as we see patterns about time of day emerge, or we see patterns about regions emerge, we can minimize our expenses by getting discounts in those categories.” In addition, because it’s growing so quickly, WebCT doesn’t want to get locked into any long-term contracts. Currently, WebCT uses Bell Atlantic for its in-state toll calls and American Long Lines for its state-to-state and international calls. The company spends about $1,347 a month on in-state, state-to-state, and international calls for its headquarters in Peabody. ESpoke.com came up with the cheapest deal — RSL’s Alliance plan, which would cost WebCT $986.38. Still, that may not be the best that WebCT can do. Bobby Martyna, president and CEO of eSpoke, says its site is optimized for companies with fewer than 20 employees. (Decide.com says it can handle phone bills from companies with up to 100 employees.) Since WebCT receives complicated 70-plus-page telephone bills each month, it might benefit from the customized bids that Telezoo.com and Simplexity.com offer. EOriginal Inc. is a four-year-old company that has developed a patented process for creating what it calls “electronic source documents” — digital versions of birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and so on. At the end of last year, eOriginal had 25 employees. This year the company expects to grow to more than 60 employees and about $12 million in sales. Doug Trotter, eOriginal’s CEO, says his company looks for the cheapest long-distance service possible for its headquarters, in Baltimore. Last fall eOriginal spent about $133 a month on direct-dial long distance with AT&T and used its teleconference service once, for a cost of $90. Again, eSpoke.com found the cheapest plan: RSL came in at $81.16 per month. Both eSpoke.com and Decide.com also pulled up TTI’s Month-to-Month plan, but eSpoke.com estimated the monthly cost would be $83.76 while Decide.com estimated that same plan would cost eOriginal $96.13. Unfortunately, neither site compares teleconferencing services. Simplexity.com promises to do so later this year. Ultimately, Trotter feels his cellular service is more important than his long-distance plan. He’s looking for high-quality cellular service for his senior executives, general managers, and sales force. All senior staffers at eOriginal are converting to one-rate national plans. “We’re getting really large telecommunications bills from hotels when we’re traveling,” says Trotter, adding that, as more and more employees download E-mail on the road, the bills are mounting. “Normal direct dial on a computer without an 800 number can run you up to a couple hundred dollars an hour in a hotel room,” he says. EOriginal founder and executive VP Stephen Bisbee already uses AT&T One Rate service from AT&T Wireless Services and pays $149 for 1,400 minutes a month. But Bisbee, who used the phone for only 300 minutes in December 1999 (the bill we used), is obviously overpaying for a plan he doesn’t need. Simplexity.com, Telstreet.com, Decide.com, and Point.com all recommended AT&T’s Digital One Rate plan, through which Bisbee could get 300 minutes for $59.99 a month. LetsTalk.com recommended Sprint PCS’s Free & Clear 500 plan, which would give Bisbee 500 minutes for $50. Even the pros admit that comparing wireless plans is no simple task. Without a Web site to help buyers navigate roaming charges and off-peak bundles, it’s next to impossible. “My guess is that the majority of the people in the wireless area are on the wrong plan, just because it’s hard to understand,” says Decide. com’s Roy Prasad. But by investing about half an hour — and a little patience — in these sites, most consumers should be able to turn the odds in their favor. Even those customers with a Ph.D. Rachael King is a freelance writer based in Hoboken, N.J. Test-Drive: Long-Distance Here are the plans currently in use by our three companies compared with the Web experts’ recommendations: COMPANY DECIDE.COM ESPOKE.COM MBA FreeAgents.com MCI WorldCom MCI One for Small Business Extra $235.35 per month TTI National Term plan $.069 per minute $114.01 RSL, Alliance plan $.069 per minute $102.24 WebCT Bell Atlantic/In-state American Long Lines/Interstate, Intl. $1,346.90 per month TTI National MTM promo $.069 per minute $1,201.89 RSL, Alliance plan $.069 per minute $986.38 eOriginal AT&T $133.35 per month TTI National MTM promo $.069 per minute $96.13 RSL, Alliance plan $.069 per minute $81.16 Test-Drive: Wireless We put the wireless plan used by eOriginal’s Stephen Bisbee to the test at five different Web sites. Here are their recommendations: WIRELESS CUSTOMER WIRELESS PLANS Stephen Bisbee AT&T One Rate plan is 1,400 mins./$149 currently uses 300 mins. Simplexity.com AT&T Digital One Rate 300 mins./$59.99 Telstreet.com AT&T Digital One Rate 300/$59.99 Decide.com AT&T Digital One Rate 300/$59.99 Point.com AT&T Digital One Rate 300 /$59.99 LetsTalk.com Sprint PCS Free & Clear 500 500/$50 The Players DECIDE.COM What it compares: Wireless, long-distance, prepaid calling cards Site launched: September 1999 Funding: $20.5 million in 1999 from Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV), Morgenthaler, Information Technology Ventures (ITV), and J.F. Shea & Co. Customer service: 800-792-3890, M – F, 6 a.m. – 11 p.m. Pacific time; Weekends, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Pacific time LETSTALK.COM What it compares: Wireless Site launched: December 1999 Funding: $20 million in 1999 from Brentwood Venture Capital, Accel Partners, HIG Capital Management, and Goldman Sachs Customer service: 877-825-5460, M – F, 6 a.m. – 9 p.m. Pacific time POINT.COM What it compares: Wireless Site launched: May 1998 Funding: $18 million to date from private angel investors, Oak Investment Partners, IDG Ventures, and Kirlan Venture Capital; and $3.5 million from Staples Customer service: 888-764-6877, M – F, 6 a.m – 7 p.m. Pacific time; Saturdays, 8 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Pacific time SIMPLEXITY.COM What it compares: Wireless, long-distance, calling cards, and 800 service Site launched: January 2000 Funding: $28.5 million from ABS Capital, Best Buy, and Novak Biddle Venture Partners Customer service: 24-hour service, 800-321-8552; 877-868-2652 (fax); customerservice@simplexity.com ESPOKE.COM What it compares: Long-distance. Internet service providers and digital subscriber line (DSL) to begin this month Site launched: November 1999 Funding: At press time, the founders had bootstrapped $500,000 and were closing their first round of financing. Customer service: customer-service@espoke.com TELEZOO.COM What it compares: Long-distance, wireless, local, teleconferencing, DSL, Internet service providers, ATM, frame relay, Web hosting, and more Site launched: March 1999 Funding: $3 million from Lazard Technology Partners Customer service: Online chat, M – F, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Eastern time TELSTREET.COM What it compares: Wireless Site launched: September 1999 Funding: $17 million Customer service: 877-947-3537, M – F, 8 a.m. – 11 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. Eastern time