Building a Business Web Site

Building Virtual Storefronts with E-commerce Software

Traditional brick and mortar stores have a definite place in the business world, but today it's the virtual storefronts that are getting all of the attention. Virtual storefronts let you sell into that vast market known as the Web, where geographical boundaries and proximity no longer exist. As the name implies, the World Wide Web offers a truly worldwide store that lets you sell to customers a block away, across town, or clear on the other side of the world.

From a marketing perspective, e-commerce sites let a business monitor the number of "hits" that a site receives in certain areas, and see how many customers are visiting each section, and how these visits translate into sales. Since online customers fill in their own order forms, it can save a business time recording orders. Finally, a company's online presence can augment its real-life stores. Customers can go to a Web site to obtain information and find pricing specials.

To cash in on Web sales, you need to create a virtual storefront. Fortunately, there are e-commerce programs that will let just about anyone build an online store in a few hours, without having to learn or program HTML. And the sites built by these programs can look to customers as if they were professionally designed. As you may suspect, however, this ease of use has its limitations, because these programs don't offer many features for modifying their layouts. What you see is just about what you get.

Besides building a pretty site that will appeal to your customers, you have to consider how the site will process orders, the security of its transactions, how to integrate the e-commerce system into your company's existing system to fulfill orders. You'll have to decide whether to host the store internally, or have it hosted by a service provider. And even after you consider these many elements, you'll want a program that lets you quickly update your site with new items, and that can quickly post specials and product changes.

How We Tested
We used each of the products to build an e-commerce site for a fictitious business that sold computers and accessories. We tested each product on its ability to create attractive, professional-looking sites and online catalogs, complete with our test pictures. Particularly important to us was how easy each product was to use, the sophistication of the final Web site, and the ease with which a customer could navigate and buy goods on it. We also evaluated each product's ability to process orders, modify products for price changes and specials, and the ease with which we could get existing product information into each program without retyping it. Finally, to get an idea of how well these products suit small businesses, we spoke with business owners who used them.

Actinic Catalog
Actinic Catalog largely delivers on the e-commerce promise by offering a program that easily creates attractive Web sites. However, the program falls slightly short of the best of the products that we looked at. Actinic Catalog creates sites that you may host on any ISP.

Actinic Catalog offers an outline approach to organize products in categories. It's an intuitive approach that works, but doesn't do a great job of stepping you through the entire Web design process. One advantage with this approach is that it's easy to define and modify products for pricing and other factors, and re-sort them into different categories.

Using Actinic Catalog, we created an attractive online catalog that was easy to navigate. While the program only offers 6 different site themes, they are appealing, and there is an adequate number of color scheme options. Like the others programs we tested, Actinic imports existing inventory information as comma-delimited ASCII files.

When a customer orders a product, the order is stored in an orders file at the web site. You periodically download these orders into a file of open orders, and you can set Actinic Catalog to send you an e-mail when it receives new orders.

Actinic Catalog supports services for automatically processing credit cards, but does not support check processing. For security, Actinic uses its own 128-bit encryption within the browser of the buyer's PC, and decodes the transaction after you download it from the Web site.

"Adding a product is basically a point and click operation," says Earle W. Judd, Internet Director at Bruce Titus' Tacoma Nissan-Subaru. "You don't have to know how to use developers' tools." Judd used Actinic Catalog to create two commerce sites: one for his dealership's Subaru parts catalog and one for its Nissan accessories. Combined, the two sites receive over a quarter of a million hits per month and at our press time, was expected to earn the company $500,000 in online revenues in 1999. "Actinic was inexpensive and only charged a one time fee, which seemed to me to be a better model," adds Judd. "The last thing we wanted to do was to hire somebody else [to create the Web site]."

There's nothing to fault in Actinic Catalog-it performs the job that it was designed to do. But there are other programs that are more thorough and easier to use.

ecBuilder Pro
If you want a package that's easy to use and sweats all the e-commerce details, Multiactive's ecBuilder Pro 4.0 is the package of choice. It offers an excellent step-by-step approach that walks you through all the tasks of creating an e-commerce site, and is the most thorough package of the bunch. Like Actinic Catalog and Impulse, ecBuilder Pro lets you create Web sites that reside on any ISP.

We liked the program's predefined business categories, which made it easy to define products for different industries. The programs's 30 templates are attractive, and they can combine with 18 different color schemes. ecBuilder Pro creates sites that are simple for customers to navigate and use. You can easily designate products with discounts that run on certain dates, or for particular durations. Like the others, ecBuilder Pro could only import our existing inventory database via a comma delimited ASCII file. For security, ecBuilder Pro includes SSL-based encryption.

We were impressed with the program's automatic site promotion features. As you build your site, ecBuilder Pro lets you select popular Internet search engines that you wish to use to promote your site, and define the keywords that will bring your site up in searches. Each ecBuilder Web site also includes a storefront Web page that features the company profile, name and logo.
ecBuilder Pro supports automatic credit card processing, but doesn't support check processing. The site alerts you with an e-mail when it receives an order, and sends the customer a confirmation e-mail as well. You can also review a password-protected section of your Web site to view orders.

"Just follow it and it creates a great Web site," says Joe Vantroyen, President of Vantro Holdings, an import and export company. "It was easy to set up and design, and I like the way that it gives me preset templates." Vantroyen used ecBuilder Pro to create his e-commerce site, which displays and sells artwork from artists in British Columbia, Canada. As president, Vantroyen is completely self-taught, and had no problems figuring out how to use the program and building his company's Web site.

Overall, ecBuilder Pro is hard to beat. It offers the most thorough approach of any of the programs here, and is the easiest to use. On the downside, it's somewhat pricey at $499, but you generally get what you pay for. The program also comes in a Standard version that offers fewer templates, and can only handle up to 100 catalog items (the Pro version handles up to 5000 catalog items). If you're ready to enter the e-commerce world, ecBuilder Pro is the way to do it.
Rating: 92.5

Impulse 4.2
Impulse Software's Impulse 4.2 offers a fast way to create a professional-looking online storefront, and offers a trial version that you can download from the Web, so you can try it for free. The trial version lets you use all of Impulse's features, but can only hold up to 10 products, and you can't upload your site to the Web. Like Actinic and ecBuilder, Impulse creates sites that may be hosted by any ISP, but does offer accompanying hosting services.

Impulse's interface doesn't offer a step-by-step wizard, but a series of buttons that you press to work with each main area: defining company information, and the Web layout, importing products, configuring the order information, and then uploading the site to the Web. We found the process easy to use. In particular, we liked the way that Impulse made it easy for us to set taxes and shipping costs, and choose from a variety of payment options.

The program lists inventory in tabular sheets that provide an orderly and intuitive system for managing and editing products. While the sales information says that you can import data directly from popular accounting packages, we found out that this was only via a comma-delimited text file, which is something all of the packages do.

The templates are attractive, professional-looking, and easy to select and apply. The program supports automatic credit card processing, as well as the iCheck system for sending information to a company about a customers checking account to print out checks. The site e-mails orders to you as they come in, and for security, Impulse supports SSL.

Impulse Software offers hosting services to Impulse customers that cost $179 per year (there's a $50 setup fee, and you get 10 e-mail accounts). The only advantage that we could find when using Impulse Software's hosting services is that you get a statistics page that you can refer to on your site.
Without a doubt, Impulse is a competent program that is worth considering. And because of the trial version, you can test it for free without any risk.

QuickSite Business Edition
Another product that's easy to use and worth considering is Primecom Interactive's QuickSite Business Edition. Like VersaCheck Web Commerce, QuickSite is a package that offers software and accompanying hosting services.

QuickSite offers a tremendous amount of background information on e-commerce and the business of marketing products on the Web. It has a compelling video guide that makes excellent use of talking head footage. In fact, the program is practically a multimedia resource on e-commerce. No other package can touch QuickSite in this area.

To actually build the Web site, QuickSite relies on Microsoft FrontPage Express, which is somewhat confusing. You work with the main program to step you through the process of creating a Web site, and it calls out another one to do the building.

The program offers a generous 600 pre-designed Web sites that are varied, attractive, and suitable for use by different industries. We were impressed with the appealing sites that we were able to create with this program, which were logical and easy for customers to navigate. The program offers secure transactions with support for SSL.

To complement the design software, Primecom offers accompanying hosting. While you can host Web sites that you create with QuickSite with other ISPs, going with Primecom has its advantages. For one, there's convenient one-button uploading of your site, and automatic credit card processing. The hosting starts at $19.95/month. For $29.95/month, Primecom will host your domain. For $39.95/month, your site gains a shopping cart. And for $49.95/month, you get automatic credit card processing. QuickSite does not support check processing.
A worthy contender, QuickSite Business Edition is definitely one to consider. It's the best product here if you want to purchase e-commerce software with accompanying hosting.

VersaCheck Web Commerce
You can use Dateline America's VersaCheck Web Commerce to build a so-so site, but the emphasis in this program is its ability to process checks. Your customers don't have to mail checks to you, but provide you with information and authorize you to print out and cash special checks. The interface consists of a series of clunky on-screen buttons that cover each aspect of building your site. We were particularly impressed with the product pages that made it easy to add and edit products.

When you make sales, VersaCheck Web Commerce downloads this information into its own accounting program that resides on your desktop computer-it doesn't send this information via e-mail as the others do. The program can also import transactions file into financial programs such as Intuit Quicken and QuickBooks, and Microsoft Money. The program provides secure transactions via SSL support. In addition to supporting checks, the program supports automatic credit card processing.

While VersaCheck Web Commerce makes it easy to create an e-commerce site, the resulting Web sites have a primitive look that aren't as appealing as those created in the other packages. When you want to step forward with your best foot on the Web, VersaCheck Web Commerce creates the least attractive sites.

VersaCheck Web Commerce comes at a reasonable price. The software itself is $79.99, and the company will host your Web site for only $9.95 a month. For $29.95 a month, the company gives your site more sophisticated shopping cart options. And if you want to try the software for free, there's a free demo version that you can download and that only supports up to 10 products. VersaCheck Web Commerce can build the site. In spite of all that, it's just not in the same league with other packages.

What We Think
e-commerce packages let you easily create a full-featured online store without having to learn or understand Web programming. They vary somewhat in the quality of the sites that they produce, and some only create sites, while others offer hosting services as part of the mix. Most small businesses will find that these programs can give them a fast Web site and a fast e-commerce presence.
Of the packages we looked at, we liked ecBuilder Pro because it offered the most thorough approach, covering such aspects as site promotion, and offered the easiest way to create a Web site. On the other hand, if you want to get your feet wet, Impulse 4.2 is worth a look because it's a solid program and has a free trial version that's available for the download. Either way, you can quickly have your Web site and presence up and running.

Questions to Ask
Do you want hosting with a package's ISP, or do you want to use your own ISP?
Some of the packages include hosting as part of the deal. Hosting can include such things as built-in shopping carts, and automatic credit card processing. Both Primecom and Dateline America offer hosting services with their e-commerce design packages. It's simply a matter of deciding what services you would like in your Web site and paying for them.

909-593-9675 e-mail:wkawamoto@earthlink.net