would anyone care to comment on the necessity of offering ecommerce solutions to potential customers.
if you offer ecommerce packages is there an inordinate amount of support dedicated to the end users?
Lastly what ecommerce packages seem to be the most simple to use and do requests for more complex ecommerce scripts
cost you bucks if you do not offer it as a package?

thanks

We use Miva Merchant and it seems to be abou the easiest for customers to use. You can demo it at miva.com

I currently work part time for a custom e-commerce company, so I feel I have to put in my 2.2 cents here.

Since our e-commerce systems are based on JSP/Tomcat, IBM DB2, JScript and HTML, there can be just a few things which go wrong, particularly if the server's acting up, so we have a dedicated team of admins and helpdesk people to keep an eye on the server and continually maintain its quality.

At the same time, we find that clients generally need hand holding to a certain degree (from just a little bit to everything being done for them). The software's designed to be easy to use so that anyone can use them, yet most people still find they need some help, so that's where the helpdesk people come in.

So yes, you usually will need to provide some amount of tech support to end users - how much, of course, depends on how quickly they learn :)

Charles,

Isn't that [Miva Merchant] $495/domain name? How do you handle the reg fee for every domain that you sign up?

Do you just pay the $495 for each account, and make up the difference in 10 months?

Matt
mlightner@site5.com

We buy so many a month we get it substantially cheaper. But yes we do lose a little bit at the beginning ut re recoop it after a couple of months