Now if your really ready to take the plunge, two commendable solutions come from OpenMarket's ShopSite and Blueworld's Ch-Ching. These are both well supported, complete online business solutions that can easily fulfill the needs of most small and medium sized businesses, with scaleable, stand alone systems that are relatively easy to use. Openmarket also offers full-blown industrial strength systems for larger applications. Don't consider this route unless you are both fearless and tech-savvy, because a substantial level of commitment and high security are a must.

Blueworld's system is a little less slick, but also offers some impressive features, while really being tailored for the on-site market (your own server at your office) rather than the broader market of web-hosted sites, but is adaptable.

These sort of solutions have other drawbacks, most notably the lack of access to a good database of deadbeats, who regularly charge-back purchases through their financial institutions and we do recomend a very good solution to the whole problem!

Last Notes

There are also many less sophisticated solutions, that do not involve such large outlays, and in some cases are freeware, (at CGI sites) but as usual, you should weigh your goals and invest wisely to avoid wasteful expenses should your electronic business grow far beyond your initial expectations (scaleability) or significant changes in the banking standards occur in the future.

Likewise, customer service are also important issues, as are the quality of your offerings. Customer service and responsiveness is the most paramount of issues for sites that offer subscriptions or do other forms of online sales, as many customers will test this aspect of your site before they plunk down any of their money! Consider also how much added time and expense customer service and site maintenance might add to your overhead, and what those costs might be!

Large investments in merchant accounts, servers and software are definitely not the better small business start up route, but some all-in-one solutions offered by Internet service providers involve serious compromises and restrictions that can really pose problems should your site be very successful!

Continued...