IT Certification Lounge is another in-house project, born out of necessity and pragmatism. We had material on several test simulators on CompTIA A+, Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Illustrator CS3, remnants of a bankrupt business whose owner didn’t want to have anything to do with certifications ever again.
So, we completed the test content, created the actual test simulators, and started advertising the materials.
The intent was to build (yet another) shoestring-budget e-commerce, but this time we went with WordPress.com/Paypal integration.
The decision to go with WordPress rather than Blogger is because WordPress was more serious, a step up in professionalism compared to Blogger, and it is better, far better for SEO and social media integration.
As this was a business aimed at IT professionals who care about their career, we decided to grab a hold of LinkedIn and leverage its membership. So we created a group, ITC Lounge, and started advertising the training simulators.
The group grew relatively quickly, activity followed, of course.
It’s been several years since it was started, and although we aren’t actively working on it, or developing new training materials, the group still grows, and actually accelerates, perhaps thanks to it reaching a critical mass so it went viral.
All in all, yet another great e-commerce on a shoestring budget experience, a proof of concept that the most important thing in e-commerce is the idea, and the ability to communicate the Unique Value Proposition of the products and services. The design is only secondary.
