If you’re nervous about sitting back and watching as scores of business owners try their hand at online sales, one local company is hoping its product is just what you need to test the unpredictable e-commerce waters without a heavy capital investment.
Electronic Merchant Systems of Cleveland recently unveiled a $129 a month turnkey e-commerce solution that promises to help businesses sell their products online without the headaches and expense of building from scratch. For the creatively and technologically challenged, EMS offers easy-to-use templates to help build the store, a mechanism for uploading banners and pictures and an unlimited number of pages where you can feature your company’s products or services. At its end, EMS provides the secure server, shopping cart system, credit card verification and sales tax calculations for each purchase.
But such an inexpensive path to e-commerce doesn’t come without its own problems: If you go this route, you could have trouble differentiating your business from competitors, who are also sure to migrate to the Web as the financial barriers continue to drop.
And in the end, that could make all the difference when it comes to carving out your e-commerce niche.
Jim Vickers
