Do It Yourself E-Commerce Solutions

[mandy]

E-tail hosting is an active market space, and it's getting hotter. Shopster.com, which is based in Calgary, Alberta, is one of several companies that are providing aspiring online retailers with the e-commerce platforms and tools they need to launch their own businesses.

Shopster e-tailers, for instance, can pick and choose what they want to sell from the company's inventory of nearly 700,000 products delivered directly to customers from warehouses situated around the U.S.

"After searching for several tools, we decided to build our own, as the market didn't offer a solution which could meet the demands we expected from a system such as we envisioned," Shopster.com CEO Sarath Samarasekara told the E-Commerce Times. "Add to that a fundamental disagreement on what products to sell and markets to tackle, a huge disparity in actual technical know-how (on the part of potential e-tailers), and we ended up with a system rather than just a store -- a system which could be quickly and easily customizable, driven from an easy-to-use interface, and which allowed each user to market in the way they thought best."...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/ekZ8fv3U...tter.xhtml

[BellisimaJ.]

Interesting concept, but it sounds to me like a dropshipper simply decided to make it easier for those who prefer dropshipping to do so without actually having to build their own business.
Personally, I would not use a dropshipper for a number of reasons, the most important being the lack of control over the product.
Not interested in explaining to my customers why an order did not arrive on time or was not as ordered, on a more regular basis than this would naturally occur if you were shipping yourself.

Edited to add:

Additionally, product selection from the dropshippers I have checked out tends to be low-end and over-priced; not a good combination in my view.


However, if this catches on, it could hurt greedbay, which is great, in my view!

[FiberGuy]

Ohhhh yeahh.... shopster...

They were spamming OTWA a while back, amongst other forums, I might add.  Even without the spam, I find the whole idea kinda tacky.  But each to his/her own.

http://www.otwa.com/community/showpost.php?p=403923&postcount=107 

which is part of http://www.otwa.com/community/showthread.php?t=42489&page=3

Then there's THIS gem: http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/in...opic=37660&pid=188354&st=0&#entry188354

The whole idea seems... a little.... pimpy. 

Cheers

[FiberGuy]

Heyyyyyy...

I just noticed....

I have a "little member" next to my name!

<------------

I resemble that statement!  >

[BellisimaJ.]

[quote author=FiberGuy link=topic=5196.msg23746#msg23746 date=1158678328]
Ohhhh yeahh.... shopster...

They were spamming OTWA a while back, amongst other forums, I might add.  Even without the spam, I find the whole idea kinda tacky.  But each to his/her own.

http://www.otwa.com/community/showpost.php?p=403923&postcount=107 

which is part of http://www.otwa.com/community/showthread.php?t=42489&page=3

Then there's THIS gem: http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums/in...opic=37660&pid=188354&st=0&#entry188354

The whole idea seems... a little.... pimpy. 

Cheers


[/quote]


I agree, tacky and "pimpy"



[quote author=FiberGuy link=topic=5196.msg23747#msg23747 date=1158678530]
Heyyyyyy...

I just noticed....

I have a "little member" next to my name!

<------------

I resemble that statement!  >




[/quote]

[cranky_hippie]

[quote author=FiberGuy link=topic=5196.msg23747#msg23747 date=1158678530]
Heyyyyyy...

I just noticed....

I have a "little member" next to my name!

<------------

I resemble that statement!   >




[/quote]



I am on a posting spree trying to get rid of the "big member"  next to my name. I don't even WANT to resemble that one. 

[mandy]

Part 2 of the article:

The business of providing small businesses with e-commerce hosting and support solutions is growing fast. The large-enterprise market is crowded, and competition is fierce. That has led an increasing number of e-commerce platform providers to enter the SMB end, where they are looking to establish footholds. This second installment in a three-part series on Do It Yourself e-commerce examines key issues and system attributes that aspiring e-tailers should consider when developing their business plans and choosing hosting and support

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/HPuAIaJk...olts.xhtml

The only hosted ecommerce platforms mentioned in today's article are NetSuite, ProStores, and Shopster. 

[cranky_hippie]

An old retailers' maxim holds true today in the online world: Once lost, a customer's trust is difficult to regain.

OOPS. Forget about ProStores then. 

[mandy]

Part 3 of the article:

One of the most important considerations when shopping for an e-commerce hosting and e-tail support system is how effective it is at freeing the e-tailer to focus on the marketing and sales aspects of the business.

"Online merchants want to spend more time focusing on their inventory and product specializations, and less on store maintenance -- they're experts in their products and customers, not necessarily in Web design," noted ProStores' Julian Green.

"E-commerce vendors definitely need to help their customer with search engine optimization and online marketing," Philbert Shih, SMB analyst with Tier1 Research, told the E-Commerce Times. "These are two areas that the typical SMB just getting into e-commerce is likely to know nothing about and is going to need the most help in," he said...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/MXBVAvYz...ness.xhtml

[mandy]

Part 4 of the article: Comparison shopping engines

"Comparison shopping engines function as an alternative to traditional search engines," Aaron Rosenthal, director of channels research at Marketing Experiments, told the E-Commerce Times. "Traditional search engines are information-centric, meaning they attempt to rank sites or pages based on criteria designed to identify information or content. Shopping engines are product-centric, meaning they focus on users purchasing a product."...

One of the big incentives for smaller e-tailers to become adept at using comparison engines is their potential to level the playing field and help them compete with their larger cousins. "CSEs create something of a central marketplace," said Aaron Rosenthal, director of channels research at Marketing Experiments...

full article: http://ecommercetimes.com/story/RbWWNnFC...ines.xhtml