ProStores.com - The complete E-Commerce Solution Service Backed by EBay Company
Introduction about ProStores
ProStores is an eBay supported E-Commerce service providing e-commerce products and services for small and medium sized businesses to promote and sell their products and services online. In simpler words to say, ProStores is an e-commerce website hosting company owned by eBay.
The services of ProStores include everything what an online business setup needs viz. to set up, to design, and to manage a customizable virtual (online) showroom. The great thing is that this online showroom (or storefront) is set up in the Internet Domain of the owner itself and not that of ProStores. This provides better control, security, and better promotions to the storefront.
ProStores products are based on “Store Sense”, an award winner e-commerce software originally created by Kurant in 1998. EBay acquired Kurant and Store Sense and launched ProStores with its own back up in June 2005. EBay and ProStores continue dedicated efforts in improving their ecommerce solution including tighter integration with the eBay marketplace and making it as easy as possible for all merchants to build and promote their online businesses.
Sets of services and features of ProStores are quite wide in range. They provide simple e-commerce solutions in the form of wizard based website creation with different e-commerce capabilities. With these simple wizard based websites, even the users with no technical knowledge or very less knowledge of web development and online business can take benefits of promoting their business over internet and connect to new customers across regional boundaries.
With such simple e-commerce solutions, ProStores also provide sophisticated services of business web site designing tools, advanced e-commerce functionalities and high end e-business management services. In addition, smaller merchants can also manage the entire process of posting and selling products on eBay using the interface they use to manage their online ProStores. ProStores also provides merchants with the tools to better reach and retain customers with the support of several popular online shopping search engines, including Google Base, Yahoo Shopping, and Shopping.com etc. It also offers services like inventory management, supplier communication, and integration with QuickBooks and Dreamweaver.
ProStores provides complete and end to end ecommerce solutions for retailers interested in promoting their products and accelerating their growth and profitability. Solutions of ProStores to merchants help them in reaching to new customers and extend regional boundaries of their sales. ProStores in this way helps merchants in promoting their brands online. For eBay Sellers who are thinking about growing their business through an additional online sales channel, ProStores provides a complete ecommerce solution that allows sellers to manage both their eBay business and off-eBay sales from one central location.
Depending on the products and services to offer and other merchant business needs; Prostores offers two store tiers to choose from. Each tier offers services and products to fit individual business needs and requirements.
Services from ProStores offered free of cost
E-Bay does not charge for each and every service to the user of ProStores. There are few service options available free of cost too. In these free services, a user is allowed to add its business name to a logo image. Not only this, even the watermarked image in the web site can be customized and replaced with another image as provided by the user. ProStores also permits the users to edit its “header.tpl” file which is its template file. By editing this template file in the web site, the user can also remove out the commented portion for the ProStores. Version 9.3.1 of JavaScript coding works correctly on this. There are also some ProStores paragraphs in the website which can be removed by editing “storefront.tpl” template file of the website. ProStores permits editing in this file free of cost. Credit links in the web site can also be edited. ProStores allows editing in “footer.tpl” template file of the website without charging any cost for this. Users are allowed to add their own information, copyright tags, and small links to disclaimers, terms and conditions of use, legal liabilities, and contact information etc. and other footer information as required. The great thing is that ProStores does not charge anything for these editing permissions.
Professional eCommerce Upgrades
ProStores E-Commerce solutions grow with its subscribers and their business needs. The Subscribers can upgrade to more features and functionality at the touch of a button and they in fact will not lose any of their E-Commerce design customizations, settings or web store information.
ProStores allows upgrade options in the subscription plans from its “Professional E-Commerce Service” to “Professional E-Commerce Plus Service”. This is not the only upgrading options with the subscribers. The subscribers can also avail the upgrade facilities with dedicated SSL Security, additional domain registration, and dedicated web store address addition to the ProStores Starter packages. The subscribers can easily upgrade their storefront as their business grows. The upgrades can be purchased and availed with no interruption to their online business.
Following are the upgrade facilities available with the ProStores Subscribers in brief:
1. Dedicated and Additional Domain Names for the Storefront: Originally the ProStores subscriber are served with a shared domain name like “HTTP://STORE.PROSTORES.COM/YOURSTORENAME”, but the subscribers can select a dedicated domain at any time. When the user is an existing ProStores E-Commerce solutions subscriber, it can simply call the ProStores technical support phone number to select a domain name. The subscribers are served with one free domain name with each subscription, but they can also purchase additional domain names and have them to point to their ProStores web store. If the subscriber want more than one domain name, the appropriate additional charges will apply for the domain names beyond the one domain name that is included with their subscription.
2. Dedicated SSL Certificate Provision: ProStores includes a shared SSL for E-Commerce merchants who do not wish to purchase their own SSL. This is a 128-bit encryption shared SSL certificate provided by the Certificate Authority “VeriSign”. A ProStores merchant does have the option to upgrade to a dedicated SSL certificate. They can anytime purchase a Dedicated Geo Trust SSL Certificate for applicable price. Details for purchasing a dedicated SSL certificate are available in the ProStores Account Control Panel.
3. Static IP for ProStores web store: ProStores hosting accounts are not assigned a static IP originally but Static IPs are available if an SSL certificate is purchased or transferred to the ProStores hosting account.
ProStores as understood is a highly flexible, template driven ecommerce solution providing podium developed and maintained by eBay. It is a great solution for small to medium sized businesses to get up and running on the internet with a shopping cart platform. There are also available some highly appreciable Enterprise level solutions even for larger businesses. As with any ecommerce platform, however, it can be tricky to customize ProStores as per the exact specifications and needs of the customer or user but that is made easy with the user-friendly solutions offered by Prostores.com
Advantages for existing Ebay Sellers
If you are an existing e-Bay user and have been listing and selling your products on eBay.com, ProStores brings great benefits to you. For the existing eBay customers, ProStores provides instant and automatic setup of online web storefront using their eBay listings of products. ProStores can also import the store settings from the existing eBay account of the user. It also synchronizes the existing eBay store to the newly created online storefront and creates a common synchronized inventory for the products listed at the two places. This synchronization exercise avoids the risks of double selling of the items.
Not only this, apart from the ease of creating a new online retail storefront with the existing settings of eBay listing of products and a luxury of multiple listings of products with no worries of inventory management or double selling of products, the existing eBay users get extra advantages of fee waiver and other discounts too. Like any other subscriber of ProStores, the existing eBay users also get the benefit of free trial period on their ProStores Subscription. But after expiry of this trial use period, the eBay users get more discount offers. The initial offer is for the eBay power Sellers, the “eBay Power Seller Discount”.
Following the free trial subscription period, qualifying eBay Power Sellers will receive a discount of 30% off the ProStores Monthly Subscription Fee. To qualify for this discount, the subscriber must be a current eBay Bronze or Silver Power Seller on the day the subscriber receives its monthly ProStores account statement.
The second offer from ProStores to the existing eBay users is “eBay Power Seller Monthly Subscription Fee Waiver”. This offer allows waiving off the Monthly Subscription Fee only until the August 2010 bill is generated for the subscriber. Starting in August, qualifying eBay Power Sellers will receive a discount of 30% off the ProStores Monthly Subscription Fee as per the “eBay Power Seller Discount” offer mentioned earlier. Successful Transaction Fee of 0.5% still applies. To qualify for “eBay Power Seller Monthly Subscription Fee Waiver” offer, the subscriber needs to be a current eBay Gold, Platinum, or Titanium Power Seller member on the day the monthly ProStores account statement is received by the subscriber.
The terms and conditions of ProStores however are applicable on these offers. All of these offers are nontransferable for benefits. These may not be combined with other offers and discounts, and also may not be exchanged or redeemed for cash. For the details of all additional terms and conditions applicable on these offers, the subscribers are requested to carefully go through the Merchant User Agreement