Crexendo Website Competition Sparks the Imaginations of University Students
10 September 2010 - 3:16AM
iMergent, Inc. (AMEX:IIG), a leading provider of e-commerce
software, site development, web hosting and search engine
optimization for businesses and entrepreneurs, discussed results of
a contest they held at Brigham Young University (BYU) where
students were provided free website hosting and a chance to build
and run an e-commerce website using the Crexendo web building
platform. All the students who entered the contest were full time
students and were required to carry a full course load. Seventy
student teams entered the competition, 17 completed and published
websites by the contest deadline. The results showed that 13 of
those 17 teams managed to in the contest time develop an e-commerce
website which was profitable. All the teams were allowed to retain
their website after the contest and many are intending to continue
to use their websites.
The competition's student lead, Thomas Gosney, said the
competition motivated teams to try entrepreneurship in the form of
online marketing. "As a critical first step in entrepreneurship, a
website allows students to create a business without the large
amounts of capital that other types of businesses require," he
said.
First-, second-, third- and fourth-place websites won $8,000,
$5,000, $3,000, and $2,000 respectively.
Fourth-place winner Adam McMurtry commented, "One of the best
things about this contest was Crexendo's execution. They taught us
how to build a business from nothing, and get web presence in just
3 months. The execution on awards and prizes was incredible." Adam
still operates his site and maintains a #1 position in his search
rankings using what he learned from Crexendo. His site,
www.SimplifyEngineering.com, sells a plug-in for Microsoft Excel
that automatically converts units of measure.
Perhaps the best example of lasting effects from the contest is
its winner, Brady White. He and his teammate, Kyle Klein, built the
site www.NoteSync.com to sell a computer application Brady had
created. Since then they've had over 60,000 downloads and have
signed on as an early partner in the Adobe Melrose project. It will
enable them to sell their application as part of an Adobe
storefront with other top applications.
Third-place winner Devin Collier was working in marketing
part-time while attending BYU and decided to build a website for a
local chiropractor. He still operates a similar site because of his
experience and says the chiropractor's current success is directly
attributable to the Crexendo contest and tools.
Curtis Heyman and his partners, Shane Larsen, and Dustin Cook,
didn't win the contest but managed to use the site they built to
pull in about $35,000 of new business for a pool maintenance
company. The business owner still gets leads from the site. "The
customer support played a big part in helping us complete the
project," said Curtis. You can still see the site they built at
www.AZPoolRepairService.com. Partly because of the work Curtis did
on that website, Crexendo hired him shortly after the contest
ended.
Competing websites were scored on appearance (15%), mechanics
(35%), marketing (25%), overall idea (25%), plus there was a bonus
category called Traction, wherein contestants could earn up to 10%
extra points for actual leads or sales their websites brought
in.
Crexendo President Clint Sanderson stated, "I am pleased with
the results of the contest. We think it is remarkable that
students, many with no web building skills who were carrying a
full-time class load, took the time necessary to develop what in
some cases were extraordinary websites. Both we and the students
were able to use this as a learning experience. We have learned
more about the needs of our customers, and this contest will help
us to continue to optimize our software. We believe the university
contest is a model we can and will replicate at other universities.
We hope it will provide an opportunity for potential customers to
learn the benefits of our platform and for us to continue to
improve the experience of our customers."
Crexendo intends to extend the contest to the University of Utah
and California State University at Fullerton in addition to
repeating the contest at BYU. The program is an ideal way to give
students free experience in entrepreneurship and
website-building.
The Crexendo Business Solutions, Inc. logo is available at
http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=7604
CONTACT: iMergent, Inc.
Dominic Bria
dbria@crexendo.com
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