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Interland, a company well known in the Web hosting industry, is now offering tools that allow small businesses to create and maintain an ecommerce Web site quickly and easily. Last December, Interland purchased Trellix Corporation, a provider of Web solutions for small businesses. The acquisition led to the introduction several months ago of a new service called Online Marketing Suite, combining Interland's Web hosting with Trellix' store-building technology. http://www.interland.com/sb
Interland Online Marketing Suite costs $49.95/month plus a one-time $49.95 set-up fee. It includes everything you need to set up a Web site business: Domain name and Web hosting, mailboxes (up to 50 email addresses), a site builder with templates, 350 MB storage, tools (with features like maps, driving directions and counters), Web Trends statistics, Search Engine Manager for search engine submissions, and even a $50 credit toward Google AdWords.
In designing software, there is always a balance between ease-of-use and full-functionality. Interland figured out what "most" small businesses need, and created a program it says is extremely easy to use. You can see an example of a site built using Online Marketing Suite at http://www.riverwonders.com
E-Store Builder
http://www.interland.com/sb/estore
E-Store Builder is the part that allows site-owners to offer ecommerce capabilities. It's a product catalog that seamlessly integrates with your Site Builder Web site. Interland offers an easy way to upload product photos into your Picture Gallery, and says E-Store builder automatically resizes and optimizes images to look their best.
Accepting Payments
Currently Online Marketing Suite stores accept payment only through PayPal. Visitors to your site can only pay for purchases using PayPal, but if they have Visa or Mastercard credit cards, they can set up a PayPal account themselves. Interland will likely add other payment processing functionality in the future. The plus side is that in setting up your store, you simply choose the design of the PayPal buttons and enter your PayPal email address, and the program instantly creates a shopping cart system for you.
Marketing Your Store
Driving traffic to a retail site is critical. Search Engine Manager helps you optimize your site and offers search engine submission tools. The Online Marketing Suite also offers email marketing and blogging features and includes a $50 credit toward Google AdWords, an effective way to market sites of all sizes. Keyword searches on Google trigger an advertisement to customers looking for your product or service online.
Interland emphasizes that users should measure the success of their marketing efforts. Web Trends, included with the service, automatically analyzes your site's log files and graphs the statistics, making it easy to find vital information about your site's performance.
Kick-Start Your Store
http://www.interland.com/sb/design
If you really detest the idea of designing and creating a store yourself, or you just don't have the time, you can pay Interland a one-time fee to do it for you. Interland representatives will interview you for half an hour, take a look at your existing logos, and will design a site for you for $479. This includes a 5 page site with ecommerce features. You can then take over from there, expanding the site, making changes, adding products, etc. Or you can continue to hire Interland to tweak your site at a rate of $70 - $75/hour, depending on how much design time you need.
The key to Interland's Online Marketing Suite is integration. You don't have to learn a lot of different programs, and all the features work together seamlessly. With low set-up and monthly fees, it may be worth giving the service a look.
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