Prom time players

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Apr 5, 2004 | by Brice Wallace Deseret Morning News

The site's "dress finder" feature allows a person to search by designer, price and color from among more than 300 designs. They'll then be told where to find exactly what they're looking for.

"We do have an area to shop for supplies, but we just provide information online about dresses," Jacobs said. "We really want them to go into the store and try them on."

"A lot of of people are concerned about ordering online," Dixon said. "The majority of sites out there have final sales on these dresses."

But hers has manufacturer specification size charts and, if that fails, a return policy.

And, Dixon said, the online environment actually has an advantage over physical stores. Boys have accessed the site to surprise their dates with the gift of a particular dress seen in magazines. "We help them figure that out, and it's not as intimidating as going into a store. The Web is kind of anonymous."

PromSpot's message boards also help guys who "won't go to CVS and buy a prom magazine," Jacobs said.

Those message boards -- for members only, although membership is free -- have proven popular with girls and guys, with 15,000 posts daily, she said. "They love talking to each other and getting information from each other. They're talking not just to friends but an infinite number of teenagers in the same boat."

The site strives to present information in a "best friend" way, she said. "When you're going to prom or dealing with certain situations, your best friend might be sick of hearing about it, but there are others with the same problem who want to talk about it."

While many prom-goers have yet to discover prom Web sites, tens of thousands, if not more, already have. During the peak season, PromGirl and Offtoprom each get about 30,000 unique visitors a day. Last Wednesday, PromGirl had 258,000 page hits. PromSpot registers about 3 million page views per month.

"We've been pleasantly swamped," Dixon said. "The phones here ring from 6:30 in the morning with the before-they-go-to-school crew, and then there are moms calling all day long and calls from after school until about 1 a.m. That's something I underestimated. I'm in Eastern time, and girls in L.A. are just finishing their homework when I'm getting ready to go to bed."

This is the busy season for the sites. A PromSpot member survey last year indicated most girls start shopping for dresses two months or more before their proms. Nearly half planned to spend between $100 and $200 on the dresses alone, and more than a third expected to fork over more than $100 on accessories. Nearly half expected to spend $20 to $50 more just for cosmetics or fragrances.

With that kind of cash flying around, the pressure is on individual prom-goers to make the best choices. That pressure often is transferred to the prom Web site operators, who realize the burden they bear in helping people with a once- or twice-in-a-lifetime experience.

"For many people, this is their first 15 minutes of fame, when they're a teenager and at a prom," Jacobs said. "But with a prom, they face so many grown-up experiences they've not done before. They want to look their best, come back with great pictures, and have a safe and fun experience."