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ST-12
Building a WEB Site SCORE
Chapter 570 |
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Building Your Own Store Front |
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Adapted
from the Wall Street Journal, Nov 22, 1999, E-Commerce section “Small Investment,
Big Results” It is now possible to
build and launch your own store front on the World Wide Web at a reasonable
cost using a set of easily accessible and useable tools. A small business can be set up and running
on the internet in a very short time using browser-based Web-site software
packages and support services that require little or no technical
knowledge. For about $100 per month or
less, and about the same for support services, you can use a set of
instructions, templates, site-building tools and hosting services to set up
your own Web-based retail store. This do-it-yourself
approach to taking your business on-line is a 3-step process. 1. Build a Web-site To display your
products and take orders electronically.
A number of the services listed below will walk you through the
process of setting up an on-line store - complete with product catalog and a
virtual shopping cart. For an extra
fee you can have real-time, online credit-card processing. 2. Find someone to “host” your
site. The services mentioned
below offer hosting services for an additional fee. Hosting is placing your site on a computer
called a Web server that is tied into the Web so that it can be accessed by
your customers. 3. Advertise and promote your store. Shopping for Web-site
building tools and hosting is much like picking out a new car. Any model will get you there but they all
do not share the same features. The
number, types, and graphic content of ready-made templates will vary as will
the pricing structure of each of the services. So examine each of the
services carefully and decide which one best suits your needs. One of the most
important elements, and unfortunately frequently ignored, components of
running a successful Web store is marketing.
Without marketing you may have built a better mousetrap, but no one
will know about it. You need to get
potential customers to your Website.
In addition to the traditional marketing venues and media, you must
build a presence on the internet also.
This requires constant advertising and marketing. On the internet, the
trick is to get your Web store listed or cross-referenced on as many portals
as possible and to advertise the store and its products on the most popular
portals. (Portals are Websites that
serve as a gateway to other services and products, e.g. Yahoo.com,
Excite.com, Amazon.com, etc.) Several
services, listed below, will register your site with a host of search engines
and directories. Some will provide
banner advertising free of charge by providing one free banner on another
site for every two it accepts from other sites. Following is a list of
services specifically designed to assist small businesses to get up and
running on the internet. They are mostly browser-based and require no
technical knowledge. They hide the
complexity of setting up an online store by providing “drag and
drop” functions and “click here” instructions that just
about anyone can follow. They also
offer lots of Web-page templates and use terms that laypeople understand, e.g.
describing storage space in terms of number of pages rather than megabytes. ENTREPRENEUR.COM (www.entrepreneur.com/ebiz)
has a very comprehensive site to teach you all that you will need to know
about putting your business on the Internet. It is one of the many self-help
sites available to assist you establish your business on the web. See others
below. AMAZON.COM Inc. is offering a new service, ZSHOPS, which allows small businesses
to sell on Amazon’s site for $9.95 per month plus a “success
fee” of 2% to 5% of each sale. Credit card transactions are also
enabled for an additional $0.60 per transaction plus 4.75% of any sale. BIGSTEP.COM (http://www.bigstep.com)offers free
templates, site-building tools and hosting services. It also offers free tools to help small
businesses to set up and manage customer e-mail lists, as well as tools to
help them track where visitors go on their sites and what is selling
well. Credit card processing costs
$14.95 per month, plus $0.15 per transaction and 2.67% of each sale. Card service International Inc. and Clear
Commerce Corp. do the processing. IBM offers HOMEPAGE
CREATOR, (http://ibm.com.hpc) which enables a merchant to create as many
as five Web pages and display up to 12 catalog items for a $25 setup fee and
$24.95 per month. This service lets
shoppers place orders with a credit card number and sends those orders to an
IBM server. IBM then notifies the merchant
of the sale. For a $35 setup fee and
$39.95 per month, IBM adds real-time credit card authorization and
processing. This option includes 6 Web
pages and 24 catalog items. The
top-of-the-line package, for 50 pages and 500 items, costs $200 per month
after a $150 setup fee. INTEL’s Icat division offers WEB STORE, (http://www.icat.com)
which costs $9.95 per month for as many as 10 items; $99.95 per month for as
many as 100 items; and $249.95 per month for as many as 1,000 items. INTERNET STORE offered by Qsound Labs Inc.’s Virtual
Spin division (http://www.virtualspin.com), costs $19.95 per month for stores
with as many as 25 items; $49.95 per month for as many as 100 items; and
$149.95 per month for as many as 1,000 items. NETOPIA, INC. offers
VIRTUAL OFFICE (http://www.netopia.com/software/nvo) which includes three
packages. For $19.95 per month, Netopia provides a 10- to 12-page Website
that essentially serves as an online brochure. For $59.95 per month, the company adds
offline credit card processing - which means that shoppers enter their credit
card numbers for Netopia to pass along to the merchant. An additional plan for $99 per month is
being introduced that includes real-time online credit card processing. SITEMATIC CORP. offers SITEMATIC
EXPRESS (http://www.sitematic.com) which lets a merchant set up a simple
12-page Web site for $29.95 per month.
Its Sitematic catalog allows construction of a virtual storefront
selling up to 20 items for $39.95 per month.
Both require a $50 setup fee.
As with many of the other services listed here, prices rise as you add
pages and catalog items. YAHOO!
STORE offered by Yahoo! Inc. (http://www.store.yahoo.com) costs $100 per
month for merchants selling as many as 50 items and $300 per month for up to
1,000 items. The company will include
your store in Yahoo! Shopping, its giant online
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