MAKING WEB PAGES WORK FOR YOU AND YOUR CLIENTS

 


PART V - VENDOR-HOSTED;   ALMOST NO SOFTWARE NEEDED

This is a no-hassle, dive-right-in approach, you can use a variety of services that host your electronic-commerce (e-commerce) site on another party’s server.

Typically an ISP (Internet Service Provider) or an e-commerce solution vendor will place your site in an "e-mall", which is a collection of electronic stores providing templates for creating simple storefronts.

One of the most popular of these vendor-hosted solutions is Yahoo! Store ( www.viaweb.com ) which provides all the elements you need to build an e-commerce site from scratch or to add a commerce component to your existing site.

Once you fill out an on-line agreement and follow a set of prompts to build your store you can add items by submitting descriptions and photos.

You don’t need any software other than your browser. The prompts are easy to follow and in ten minutes or less you’ll be ready to enter your data.

There are no easy ways to upload an existing database so be prepared to do a lot of manual entry.

A collection of statistical reports and tracking tools are essential to guiding, maintaining and developing the e-commerce site. The cost for all this? You pay $100 per month if you offer up to 50 items, $300 per month for up to 1,000 items.

The down sides to this approach are credit card verification is up to you. You can do it manually or by signing up with a company such as Cybercash, which can provide a real-time credit card verification service.

or

Use Microsoft FrontPage2000 or simular product

Part 6