Ever since Kor Koopman, managing director and software design engineer for a South African company, was introduced to StoresOnline at an Internet Marketing Conference, he can't stop talking about the StoresOnline software.

"Coming from an environment where I have actually developed software, it is quite a substantial package that StoresOnline has developed. I think the Stores Online software package is absolutely fabulous," he says.

Kor, who is married and has two children, has a master's degree in Information Technology and is currently busy earning a doctorate in the same field. He has also managed his own business. While working as a functional design engineer and managing director for a company, he specialized in designing software that people with no computer skills could understand and use.

When he discovered StoresOnline, he was impressed with both its usability and its functionality.

"It is very easy to use-even if I look at it from the perspective of somebody who is not very technologically advanced, or people who have never used computers. For them to get onto the Internet with a business is very easy."

Kor found out about StoresOnline while reading an advertisement in a local South African newspaper. He called StoresOnline and attended one of their workshops, where the presenters provided a live demonstration of the StoresOnline Store Builder in action.

Kor was so impressed with the software that he purchased three website licenses immediately and began developing a site.

Along the way Kor contacted Customer Service a few times for help.

"They were very friendly and helped me every single time I needed help," he says. "I like [their] order tracking. It is easy for [them] to refer to [calls] that happened before."

After using StoresOnline to build his site, Kor had a corporate webpage designer evaluate the site's look and feel, navigation, featured items, and other elements, and then tell him what he thought. The designer responded by saying it would normally cost 150,000 Rand (around USD $25,000) to develop.

"That is just development-no customer service, autoresponder functionality, no facilities to change color, no payment processor connection," Kor says.

Creating a product similar to StoresOnline's software would be extremely difficult and costly, says Kor.

"From a professional person who can do software programming, HTML coding, and stuff like that, it would actually be ridiculous to try," he says. "It would consume huge amounts of time to get set up, and then, in the future, it will take you a lot of time to get the software managed. It will also take you a lot of time to maintain your software."

"It will be very costly to try and do it yourself. The cost difference between setting it up yourself [versus] purchasing [StoresOnline] itself is humungous. I think someone would be foolish to try to do it themselves."

Alternatives comparable to StoresOnline's software are hard to come by, says Kor.

"I don't think you can go out there and just find something like Stores Online to help you set up a business," he says. "If you purchase [alternative] software, it takes a few months to set it up, and then you don't have any facilities in the background that will help you run your business."

However, he says, when "you purchase [the StoresOnline] product, you set it up-it takes you a week or two weeks to get it set up-and then you start doing the marketing."

"It gives you all the tools you need from A to Z to get the business going. You don't have to worry about outsourcing; you don't have to worry about expensive programmers-nothing like that. It's amazing,"

Another boon for Kor is the way his Internet retail store fits his lifestyle.

"I tend to work too much; I tend to push myself to hard," he says. "So, I decided that I needed to do something which is not physically attached to bricks and mortars. And if I want to pack up and go somewhere else, I rather do that."

Plus, Kor's lifestyle keeps him up into the night and waking up later in the morning.

"That is not suitable to the normal working environment," he says. "The Internet gives me the freedom I actually need to be more relaxed and a have a fuller life."

Kor's website can be found at http://www.waveleisure.com and http://www.drmikehills.com

*Testimonial results are not typical and your individual results will vary. Your success depends on having the right price, product, and marketing efforts.