In an age where online retailing has become the order of the day; web stores are forever vying to drive web traffic to their web sites in droves. Given the numerosity of web stores within the vast internet galaxy, its takes a fair deal of technical know how and expertise to stay on the top rungs to sustain your business. Complete Ecommerce solutions are needed as a paving material to accelerate business growth. Let’s face it, not every web owner understands the intricacies, technical jargons and complexities involved to make your web store stand out amidst the soaring competition. This is where the concept of a “Prostores Webstore” comes in. Prostores equips you with everything that is required to open a web store right from the word go.
Prostores is essentially an eBay company, located in San Jose California; which enables small and medium-sized businesses to sell products and services online through a completely customizable virtual storefront at their own internet domain. Well, that’s just about putting it in a nut shell. The credibility of Prostores is further validated by the fact that the prostores product is based on Storesense; which is an award winning ecommerce software. The StoreSense software, received numerous industry awards including Internet.com’s five star award, Web Hosting magazine’s 2000 Editors’ Choice Award for “Hottest New E-Commerce Software Contender”, Smart Business magazine’s 2001 and 2000 MVP Award for “Best E-Commerce Storefront Hosting”, and Computer Reseller News’ 2000 Editor’s Choice for “Best Storefront E-Commerce Software”.
Complete Ecommerce solutions and much more is offered to online retailers or web store owners to propel their businesses to dizzying heights. Prostores is instrumental in enhancing the profitability of the overall business as well as enable the merchants to reach vast majorities of online customers; hence extend and unfold their brands or services to a large consumer base.
All the essential constituents, instruments and services are provided by prostores which include store set up (no set up fee is required), shopping carts, domain hosting, credit card payment processing and much more. It offers a perfect platform to grow your online sales graph, reach new customers, and grow your business more than ever before. Multiple online sales channels help the merchants to expand their business, a customizable online storefront and a personalized web address helps you to promote and safely position your brands.
Depending on the products and services to offer and other merchant business needs; Prostores offers four stores tiers to choose from. Each tier offers services and products to fit individual business needs and requirements.
Merchants have the flexibility and option of choosing any tier plan that suits their business needs and something that perfectly fits their budget. In the event; that you would want to upgrade to another version as your business grows; ProStores is designed in a way that you can do so without losing any work or data. All this is just a click away, and you do not need to shut your online store for remodeling.
In case the merchant already owns an SSL certificate that was perhaps purchased outside of the ProStores control Panel, that certificate can be successfully installed and used to work with your ProStores account. However, as of now ProStores only supports certificates provided Thawte, Verisign and GeoTrust. Also merchants are requesed to note that their ProStores account must have a dedicated domain name that matches the domain on their private certificate in order for SSL to function.
After merchants have registered for a ProStores web store, it should take a few minutes to receive a confirmation email with other related details. Building your ProStore Web Store is a simple procedure and many online wizards have been set up to make this procedure simpler and streamlined. Moreover, it is advisable that you watch a video of the “Getting Started Webinar” which would help you to design and set your very own web store.
Below is a brief description of the online wizards that will help set up your web store:
• Store Set Up Wizard:
The Store Set Up Wizard guides you through the three simple steps towards creating your own web store. The first step is to design your web store; wherein you get to select a theme and choose pages and create unique designs and enhance the entire feel and appearance of your very own web store. Second step comprises of choosing your own personal settings like entering the basic set up information, upload image files and add products or services to be sold. The third and final step is to review all the settings and selections made by you and finally build your store to make it available online. That’s it, just 1 2 3…. And you are ready to roll!
• General Wizard:
The General Preferences Wizard allows you to set and customize your web store. This would include basic store information needed to manage your store efficiently and in an organized manner.
• Billing Wizard:
The Billing Preferences Wizard allows you to customize and set up your payment methods i.e. you get to select the payment options and methods you wish to accept for all transactions through your web store. In this; merchants can choose more than one method or form of payment. Some of its features include credit card processing options and payment processor options.
• Mail Wizard:
The Mail Preferences Wizard lets you set up and customize your email server. This includes entering information required like the SMTP server used to send email as well as the mail port for the server used to send email.
• The Shipping Setup Wizard:
The Shipping Setup Wizard allows you to choose a shipper and configure or set up the default ProStores shipper.
• Sales Tax Wizard:
The sales tax preferences wizard allows you to set up and customize your sales tax methods. I lets you choose the tax calculator of your preference. It is however recommended at this step to select the pro stores tax calculator.
• Add Product Wizard:
This wizard allows you to add products to your calculator. This includes storing basic product related information like price, SKU number and other relevant data.
• Issues Credits Wizard:
This wizard allows you to search for an invoice or go directly to the invoice number in order to issue credits against a completed order.
• Upload Images Wizard:
At this step, the wizard allows you to upload single images files as well as archived zip files. Therefore you need to select the type of images to be uploaded.
Moreover, ProStores offers a one month free trial subscription to new entrants or merchants who open a ProStores account for the first time. This offer is absolutely non-transferable and cannot be combined with other discounts and offers. It cannot be redeemed for cash either. Under this offer, the monthly subscription fee is waived for the first month for first time qualified merchants.
Active eBay stores subscribers i.e. basic store, featured store and anchored store subscribers are entitled to a 30% discount on the ProStores monthly subscription price, following the one month free trial offer. However, in order to qualify for this subscription the merchant must be a current eBay stores seller on the day he/she is billed for the monthly ProStores subscription fee. The person must be 18 years or older in order to be eligible. In order to ensure that you successfully receive this discount, the merchant needs to first fine tune the settings under the ProStores Store Administration Panel. From the Product Section, you would need to go to the eBay set up location where you would request for an eBay token and connect your ProStores web store to your eBay store.
There is no adherence to a long-term contract and you may cancel the subscription at any time. However, it is recommended that you read the “Fees Policy” under the cancellation section for more related information.
Using the ProStores templates, merchants can upload or list pictures per item for a better description of the product. Under the ProStores Express tier plan, only one picture per item is allowed. For the ProStores Business, Prostores Advanced and Prostores Enterprise tiers, two images per item are supported. ProStores supports the following eBay selling formats: eBay in Auction, eBay fixed price and Bay stores inventory. You can only have one eBay ID in each ProStores web store.
You can list items – in single quantity or multiple units – directly onto eBay from your ProStores Web store. To do this, you need to go to Product/eBay from within Store Administration Panel.
PayPal is the method of payment that is common to all tiers of services. This means that the service allows members to make purchases using their PayPal account. The PayPal integration with ProStores also allows you to use PayPal Website Payments Pro as a payment gateway to manage all credit card transactions, including those from non-PayPal members. PayPal Website Payment Pro is a merchant application that makes it easy for a merchant to set up a merchant account. This is available only at the Business tier and above. The merchant will need to enable the PayPal payment method in order to view the “apply for the merchant account” button in the Billing and Credit Card interface. Standard PayPal fee applies for transactions.
For Business ProStores tier services and above, the following popular payment gateways are integrated into ProStores:
Authorize.net
CyberSource
Innovative Gateway
LinkPoint
Payflow Pro
PayPal Website Payments Pro
Quickbooks Merchant Services
It is possible to convert and import inventory from your current online store front as well. If the inventory content can be exported from your current storefront into an Excel or CSV file, you can easily import the file into your ProStores Web store. For Business ProStore subscribers and above, product information can be transferred in bulk directly from a database or Excel spreadsheet using the ProStores import feature. Moreover, all product related information like description, cost, sale price, quantity in stock etc. can easily be uploaded if you are a Quickbooks user.
Below is the list of the supported versions of QuickBooks
United States editions
QuickBooks Pro Edition 2002 – 2006
QuickBooks Premier Editions 2002 – 2006
• Accountant Edition
• Contractor Edition
• Manufacturing and Wholesale
• Nonprofit Edition
• Professional Services Edition
• Retail Edition
QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 2.0 – 6.0
• Accountant Edition
• Contractor Edition
• Manufacturing and Wholesale Edition
• Nonprofit Edition
• Professional Services Edition
• Retail Edition
QuickBooks Online Edition
Canada Editions
QuickBooks Pro Edition 2003 – 2006
QuickBooks Premier Editions 2003 – 2006
• Accountant / Bookkeeper Edition
• Contractor Edition
• Manufacturing / Wholesale
• Nonprofit / Association Edition
• Professional Services Edition
• Retail Edition
Business ProStores and above are fully integrated with most versions of QuickBooks, making the entire process more streamlined. Once an order has been placed and confirmed at your store, both the merchant and customer receive a notification email. You can also configure your Enterprise ProStores to automatically notify suppliers of orders by e-mail, EDI or fax. A VIP (Virtual Inventory Process) can be set up in order to send orders to the suppliers.
The Business ProStores tier and above have integration for check/ACH processing services provided by Electracash. All qualified merchants at ProStores are offered a shared SSL (Secure Socket Layer) which is available for all tiers. This is a 128-bit encryption shared SSL certificate provided by the Certificate Authority Thawte (a VeriSign company). The SSL encryption occurs when ProStores Control Panel, store administration and storefront pages are accessed as they contain sensitive data. However the ProStores merchants cannot upgrade to a dedicated SSL certificate.
The ProStores Advanced and Enterprise tiers have the provision of a built-in virtual POS system. This allows you to enter any phone or other off-line order directly into your customers’ existing online accounts, or even create new accounts for them. All these features help strengthen and develop your business considerably.
The ProStores hosting accounts do not provide a static IP. However, static IPs are only made available if an SSL certificate is purchased or transferred to the ProStores hosting account.
Well, if all this is not enough ProStores is also instrumental in driving customers or web traffic to your ProStores web store. The features and services provided to merchants include:
• Listing your products on eBay from the merchant’s ProStores Web store.
• Easy submission of your products to popular shopping engines like shopping.com, shopzilla.com, froogle and yahoo.com. (Feature available for business tier and above).
• ProStores offers the “ProStores Traffic Generation Services” which guarantees a minimum of additional website visitors to your site or your money is refunded.
Merchants have the additional benefit of running online store promotions which allows you put individual or bulk products on sale. The advanced and enterprise tiers offer additional promotional options like storewide sales, quantity discounts, or target specific buyer groups with a variety of coded promotions. Not only this; the reporting features enables you to track, detect compare and analyze the success of individual promotions. The Enterprise tier plan has the benefit of offering special price structures for special customer groups and create loyalty pricing programs or offer wholesale pricing. This tier also offers affiliate programs to help in the growth of your sales.
The Traffic Generation Services offered by ProStores helps in the following ways:
• Helps build and enhance your brand awareness through online advertising.
• Helps in driving targeted traffic to your web store; resulting in higher conversion to sales
• Marketing professionals take care of all the traffic generation and other related services.
In order to avail this service the merchant would first need to sign up and speak to a special sales team. Your website address is then forwarded to a marketing consultant. The merchant then needs to fill up a questionnaire or information about their business and customers and submit this to the marketing consultant. Your website is then thoroughly analyzed and examined and compared to your competitor sites. The consultant then identifies and pin points he best online ad placements to drive targeted traffic to the merchant’s website. The campaign then starts on major search engines within a stipulated budget to meet traffic targets. The campaign is constantly monitored by the marketing consultants especially in terms of click activity and further adjustments are made to deliver the best possible results as well as sales leads. Detailed report of the entire campaign activity is emailed to you for your perusal. You also have the option of providing feedback on the progress and if any adjustments are required.
The Traffic Generation Service offers a fully managed marketing solution – in increments of $250/month. The most advanced online research and reporting tools are used. The team responsible for promoting your website is highly trained and professional and all the ProStores Marketing Consultants are Google certified. Ads are placed in rotation and spread over time to optimize your campaign and ensure our guarantee of at least 10,000 ad views per month.
For more information related to ProStores, the following Toll-Free number is available from Monday to Friday (8am to 5pm MT): 1-866-747-3229.
It just does not end here. In a sincere attempt to offer more quality services to our customers, ProStores offers a learning center to give merchants ideas, pointers and resources needed to grow their business. In cooperation with Entrepreneur.com and Practical Ecommerce, ProStores will be delivering helpful articles on everything from SEO and paid search to legal tips and management best practices. Moreover merchants get access to Merchant Profiles, Quick Tips, Featured Resources, special offers, and the ProStores Pulse – a quick poll.
Besides offering the one month free trial subscription and an eBay stores subscriber discount, ProStores merchant offers and discounts also includes:
• $50 off on Logomaker or Logoworks which is a professionally designed corporate identity package.
• Merchants get $50 in a Shopping.com account toward sales leads.
• Merchants get a $50 credit when they sign up for Yahoo!Search Marketing and hence drive more traffic to their ProStores web store.
• You get to save $300 on Channel Management from MerchantAdvantage.
The latest ProStores 8.1 features more product attributes which will further help merchants to create, manage and display attributes. It also offers merchants the benefit of sending partial shipments in case part of the order is on back order. Following are enhanced feature highlights:
• Support for up to 10 attributes per product
• Display attributes by drop down menu or radio buttons
• Support for reordering attributes on the storefront.
• Shared attributes across products
• Support of partial shipments
In the light of the above, ProStore offers a complete package comprising of every minute detail and component required to set up and successfully run your very own ProStores web store. Moreover, the first month is a free trial subscription; so merchants have really nothing to lose. It offers a win-win situation as ProStores constantly endeavors to offer its esteemed customers unsurpassed quality services. So get clicking and get your very own ProStores web store up and running.