Before buying
StoresOnline's
e-commerce software, there are three questions that you should ask
yourself:
- Will your business benefit from selling your product or service
online? In other words, is building a website a sound investment
for you?
- Is the StoresOnline
Software being offered at a reasonable price?
- And lastly, does the StoresOnline
software and services meet your needs? Or, does it do what you
need it to do?
Let's take a look at each of these questions to see if the
StoresOnline's
software product is right for you.
Question 1: Will my business benefit from selling our product
or service online?
The internet is a viable, genuine market that is going to benefit
most companies and businesses. In 1999 about 0.5% of all purchases
were made online. The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce
estimates that in just the second quarter of 2007 nearly $34 billion
was spent online, an increase of 20.8% from last year. During
that same time, conventional retail sales increased just 3.8%.
And that's just in America. EBay's global gross merchandise
volume for the second quarter of 2007 was $14.46 billion!
So the question that an entrepreneur must ask is: Can I afford
to ignore a market with the growth and immediate results such
as the internet provides?
Professor H.G. Parsa of Ohio State University showed that 59%
of restaurants closed within the first three years. Small businesses
have similar failure rates. The number often tossed around is
the 5-Year mark, meaning that if you can make it through 5-years
you'll probably survive. But survival alone isn't
the goal of most small businesses and entrepreneurs. You want
to grow your company. The internet in many cases is that next
step you should consider taking.
Question 2: Is the StoresOnline
Software being offered at a reasonable price?
In the past, it was typical to spend $2000-$50,000 to set up a
web page for your company with a shopping cart. Then, once you
had a website, you had to add to it the potential salary for an
in-house IT person, online marketing and hosting which could easily
cost a company an additional $35,000 annually. As times have changed
and people have demanded to have more cost efficient options for
website needs, companies began to create less expensive options
that did all the things that an expensive website could do. StoresOnline
has been a top provider in the past decade of bringing all of
the technical needs and necessary website features together in
the easy to use StoresOnline
website builder.
If you were to purchase three StoresOnline
licenses it would cost somewhere around $2300, which is to say
that you can buy the StoresOnline
software to produce three web pages for about $767 per
site. A domain with Godaddy.com is about $8.99 per site per year
and you'll pay $25 a month per site for hosting and StoresOnline
customer service. These figures are much more reasonable
than the tens of thousands of dollars that people once had to
spend for a website.
Your total investment for one StoresOnline
webpage: you paid approximately $767 for the StoresOnline
program, $8.99 for the domain, $25 per month for hosting
and StoresOnline
customer support ($300 per year) and about $30 a month
a merchant account. Grand total: $1435.99. The next year you won't
pay for the StoresOnline
license fee, so then your StoresOnline
site costs $668.99. Not bad. And considering that you
can use your merchant account on multiple web pages the costs
go down per site the more pages you have. Another
advantage is that StoresOnline does not take any of your profit by charging you 'transaction'
fees. Compare that with Yahoo Stores that will take 1.5%-0.75%
of each sell as a 'transaction fee' then they charge
you $299 a month for their professional package. The YahooStores
package is the only one that compares option for option with StoresOnline,
but look at the cost difference. So you're looking at over
$3500 a year just in hosting with Yahoo, more than twice what
everything combined costs with StoresOnline.
Does the StoresOnline
Software Meet My Needs?
StoresOnline
is just like any software that you may use on your computer. StoresOnline
software was designed so that if you can use a Microsoft Windows-type
program you'll be able to use StoresOnline
as well.
StoresOnline
software is internet-based. What that means to you is that you
do not have to load CDs and DVDs on each computer you plan to
use to update and modify your StoresOnline
site. It also means that you can work on your StoresOnline
site on just about any computer with internet access. Meaning,
you can be on vacation in Tahiti and make modifications to your
company's StoresOnline
website headquartered in New Jersey. StoresOnline's
software does not require you to know HTML or any other programming
language to produce your site. StoresOnline
even provides the option to build your site for you for only $150
if you want that help. With StoresOnline's
software you can enter Meta tags, you can drag and click elements
and move them around your site all with your mouse. You
can view and preview any modifications you want with your
StoresOnline
site and can revert to a stored version of the site in case you
make a mistake. Another great feature is that your StoresOnline
site is backed-up daily so you don't have to worry about
losing your hard work. It has a built-in shopping cart that takes
American Express, Visa and MasterCard. To view a video demonstration
of the StoresOnline
software technology, simply visit www.StoresOnlinePro.com.
StoresOnline's
software also has link management elements, customer and visitor
statistical software and analysis and built-in blog and forum
functions. StoresOnline
software is integrated with UPS, DHL and FedEx. It calculates
shipping rates and prints labels from your computer. StoresOnline
software manages your inventory and helps with backend fulfillment.
StoresOnline
software integrates with EBay so you won't have to manually
enter each item.
StoresOnline
gives you 500 MB of site space for each website you host with
them. StoresOnline
also offers 24-hour, 7-Day a week support with telephone, email
and chat. One of the biggest reasons people will leave your site
and never return is if it takes too long to load. StoresOnline
is aware of this issue and has programmed their website software
to automatically compress images for optimal page loading and
unlimited bandwidth transfer.
StoresOnline does have very advanced security to protect you from internet
crime. Not only is this good for you as the site's owner
but your customers are going to feel more confident in making
online purchases of your products and services. StoresOnline gives you 128-bit SSL Encryption. The 128-bit SSL (Secure Sockets
Layer) gives you the highest level of protection possible for
credit cards or any other financial or confidential transactions
over the Internet. StoresOnline software also gives you a firewall that keeps in line with security
compliance with Visa and Mastercard.
StoresOnline:
The Verdict
Your ability to succeed with an internet company has less to do
with which program you use to build your site than it does with
sound accounting and business practices, a good marketing plan
and a product priced well that is in demand. But if you are looking
for website software that is reasonably priced and will meet your
needs, StoresOnline
software is the solution for you.
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