In addition to Web store sales, your business can also move and sell product through popular sites such as eBay, Amazon, Shopping.com and Froogle with Aplus.net's "connectors," which are tools that link your products to these sites, listing them in shoppers' searches and hopefully, making sales.

Connectors are the virtual icing on Aplus.net's online cake, complimenting the company's first-rate e-commerce services, including business hosting and professional Web site design. If you're just getting started in e-commerce or unhappy with your current Web store, Aplus.net may be the answer.

Hosting and the Page
At its core, Aplus.net is a service provider that offers Web hosting, domain name registration, e-mail boxes, Web page design, credit card processing and Web site maintenance. But beyond these capabilities, which are available from the company's many competitors, Aplus.net is carving a niche for itself with its thorough e-commerce solution.

To start, if you need a new Web site, Aplus.net offers superb design services that can create smashing, professional-looking e-commerce sites. Unlike many online Web site creation services that rely on wizards to create a plain vanilla, generic Web site, with Aplus.net, you use a wizard to select a hosting plan, choose a look and configure a few options, and the designers at Aplus.net take over to build your site.

You end up with a professional-looking Web site that features your logos, pictures and products. To offer e-commerce and shopping cart features in its Web sites, Aplus.net relies on its own connections with Miva Merchant, the well-known storefront development and management service.

When deciding to join Aplus.net, you first have to decide on a hosting plan. According to Aplus.net, its $34.95 per month ePro program is the most popular and offers basic hosting, a shopping cart and secure credit card processing, as well as free setup, 2500 MB of disc storage, 500 e-mail boxes and free domain name registration. At $49.95 per month, the more expensive Maxima Plan also handles security certificates, offers Microsoft database compatibility and supports major scripting languages.

To define a look for your site, Aplus.net offers some 3000 site templates to choose from. We were impressed with the sophisticated and professional look of the company's templates. Some were flamboyant and showcased eye-catching animations for edgy gaming, nightclub and fashion sites. Others offered a conservative appearance that would appeal to more traditional businesses. All of the templates that we viewed offered logical layouts and well-coordinated color schemes. With such a wide assortment of attractive templates, there's bound to be one that appeals to you and can compliment your business.

You pay for Web site design and the cost depends on the number of pages -- the more pages, the higher the price and the more comprehensive the options.

At the entry level, you can purchase a three-page site for $249. A $649, 15-page package supports up to 16 products in a shopping cart while a $1,849 25-page package supports up to 60 products in a shopping cart. Finally, the $3,549 60-page package handles some 150 products.

You can purchase Aplus.net's design services without arranging for hosting through the company, but you will pay significantly more for your Web site. Also, you may design your own sites or use existing sites and still have Aplus.net integrate its e-commerce features into them, as well as host them.

The company offers a wealth of extras that you can incorporate into Web sites. You can pay extra to have Aplus.net's designers create logos, add live chat, deliver survey results, add a site search engine, create a knowledge base, build animated introductions and more. You simply select an option, and in some cases provide some information, and the option becomes part of your e-commerce site. Web site options range in price from $25 to $500 and turnaround times vary from six days for three-page sites to 45 days for 60-page sites. Maintenance costs vary by the task, but the company provided us with a $75 per hour figure that businesses may use as a rough estimate.

Making Online Connections
During our evaluation, we found that Aplus.net stands out thanks to "connectors," which allow sellers to enter product data into your Miva Merchant store and then post the products on the sites of the popular online sellers and shopping directories.

While Aplus.net couldn't arrange for us to actually set up a series of connectors on a live site, we viewed sample screens and perused help files. Based on our limited evaluation, it appears that the process of setting up connectors is fairly straightforward and consists of a series of clear steps. You probably don't need to be a techie to set up and work with connectors.

As with regular e-commerce sales, connector sales are processed through your e-commerce merchant account and the funds deposited into your designated bank account. If you use Intuit's QuickBooks, Miva offers a $99 Miva Synchro program that imports data from Miva Merchant into the accounting application. And you can configure the application to automatically synchronize data at set intervals.

With this feature, you may add products, customers and inventory to QuickBooks and update the data in Miva Merchant. For now, QuickBooks is the only accounting application that Miva supports, so if you use another accounting application, you're out of luck.

Bottom Line
Aplus.net offers a viable e-commerce solution that includes reasonable hosting, professional Web design and the means to make sales on popular online shopping sites and directories. If you're new to e-commerce, Aplus.net is worth a look. And if you've been wanting to upgrade your Web store, you should probably evaluate Aplus.net to see if it offers what you need.

Wayne N. Kawamoto is a contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com.

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