Best Decorating Ideas is a company that specializes in providing marketing services to professionals in the interior design and the interior decorating service areas. Its primary product is the provision of a Designer Showcase and its accompanying Private Showroom. We believe that design professionals have better things to do with their time than create and maintain a website. The time and energy and expense to create and maintain and update a website is eliminated by using our services. The Designer Showcase is similar to a website. It provides a design professional with all of the advantages of having his or her own website without all of the expense to build his or her own site and without all of the effort to develop it and maintain it. The advantages are as follows:
1. The Designer Showcase costs $395 for one year of usage (less if the design professional takes advantage of a promotion). There are no charges for maintenance. There are no charges for how often it is used or how many images or pictures are loaded on the site. There are no charges when a design professional updates his or her site. This requires much less time, money and energy than building and maintaining a stand-alone website.
2. Every Designer Showcase comes with an unlimited number of Private Showrooms. These are very easy to create. Each client can be provided with his or her own Private Showroom. The Private Showroom can contain images or pictures of furniture (couches or chairs or stools or desks, etc…), art work, antiques, room layouts, colors of fabric or wall coverings or flooring or anything else that may be of interest to the client. Each image can be accompanied by a written description (provided by the design professional) that explains how the item may be used in the home or office or how much it costs. This saves both the client and the design professional a lot of time and money in meetings. Both win. This also provides the design professional with the ability to protect the source of his or her supplier, assuring that clients can only obtain the item directly from the design professional (preventing clients from going around the designer and going straight to a manufacturer or a manufacturer's representative). The Private Showroom does not take the place of all meetings or face to face contact, but it does make the meetings that do take place much more efficient and professional.
3. If the design professional already has his or her own website, the Designer Showcase can take the place of that site or be used to augment that site. He or she can put a link on the Designer Showcase and direct traffic to the site he or she already own..
4. Most importantly, each user gets zip code exclusivity. No other member of the interior design and decorating trade in the zip code of the user will have access to the service.
5. The Designer Showcase should be thought of as a substitute for a website or brochure. In the future however, when consumers have the ability to search for professionals on our site (this is scheduled for 2009), there will be no extra charge if the user signs up now. Signing up in the future will result in an extra charge to be included in the search results.
There are a number of questions that we have been asked about our service. Here are the common ones and our answers:
Why is the cost to design professionals for a subscription so low?
A: We are able to offset costs with advertising revenues provided to us by respected companies. This advertising is designed to be relevant to the category. This is why we are able to keep our subscription fees to design professionals very low and much less than anything comparable.
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How long have you been in business?
A: Our company has been in business for more than 10 years and our services to the design professionals have been available for five years.
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Are there any other ways I can save money with the service?
A: Yes, simply recommend our service to a friend or colleague, and we will extend that person an extra 3 months of usage beyond the subscription period and we will extend your usage period for an extra 6 months beyond the subscription period that you have signed up for. The way to do this is to have your friend send us an email at info@bestdecoratingideas.com and indicate that he or she is a friend of yours
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I am not very good in using the Internet, and so, how can you help me?
A: We will show you how to use it for no charge or if you want us to load all of your images, we will do so for a small charge…but it is very easy to use and you will probably not need to have us do anything for you.
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If I want multiple designer showcases, is there a discount?
A: Yes, it is decided on a case by case basis.
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How is your business different from other sites such as homeportfolio.com or building pros?
A: We focus only on design professionals and do not attempt to sell their clients anything or direct their clients to manufacturers or retailers. Other sites emphasize direct sales of products to consumers.
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Is this service primarily for interior designers or interior decorators?
A: It is available to everyone who participates in the design or décor business. In fact, we will soon be offering this service to landscape designers, lighting professionals, architects and others who need a convenient way to share information with clients. At the present time, however, we do have a few more interior decorators than interior designers.
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What assurances do I have that my information will be secure?
A: Our company does not share information provided on the site with any other company or individual. We say that in our Privacy Policy posted on our site and we state that in our user agreement that both we and our users sign. We have never had even one complaint to the Better Business Bureau or any other consumer organization about our company. We also process all transactions through the secure gateway provided by PayPal, the highly respected company that is owned by eBay. This way, you can be confident about the security of all your information. You can go to the Better Business Bureau to see we are a member in good standing with it. Here is a link you can click on to verify our membership:
Membership Verification
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Where do I get the images that I can load on my Designer Showcase?
A: Photos of your own work can be taken with a digital camera. Some of our users hire a professional photographer, and although we think that that is always a good thing to do, your own digital camera would probably be good enough. Of course, we encourage the highest quality possible. In terms of images that you put on your clients' Private Showrooms, you have a number of possibilities.
1. Manufacturers or suppliers that designers do business with will usually provide designers with a disk of images of their products that they want you to sell or they provide you with a link to a set of web pages on the Internet that contain images of their products.
2. You can go to popular general websites that provide stock photo images, such as gettyimages.com or punchstock.com or fotosearch.com or many other general photography sites. They have a wide variety of furniture images that can provide a client with an example of the ideas you wish to convey to the client in the Private Showroom you set up for the client. Sites such as getdecorating.com, designingonline.com, gettyimages.com, corbis.com, shutterstock.com, fotosearch.com have hundreds of thousands of pictures from which to choose.
3. You can take pages from magazines that have the images you want and scan them or pay someone to scan them and turn them into a jpeg that you can then upload to your site.
4. You can take your own pictures with a digital camera.
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Can you provide me with some examples of what some of your design professional sites look like?
A: Go to the home page of our site and click on featured design professional to see and example of what a showcase looks like.
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Are there going to be any additional benefits to my having a designer showcase at www.bestdecoratingideas.com ?
A: Yes, if you sign up before the end of the year, you will be given the opportunity to have zip code exclusivity when we begin brining new customers to the site. This means people who are looking for a design professional in your area will only be sent to your designer showcase.
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Are there any restrictions?
A: You need to agree to our terms and conditions of service. It requires you to provide language and images in good taste…we do not allow any pornographic material or images that offend people, but, with those exceptions, we do not restrict the usage at all.
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Is this something that can be used for both the home or office design professionals?
A: Both home and office design professionals can use this service.
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