So even if you''re not one of the thousands of e-tailers who are preparing for a blockbuster holiday season because you don''t even have an e-commerce site, you can still think about creating your own place in the Web. All businesses require proper planning, development and execution to be successful and the climate may not be ideal to launch an e-business haphazardly. But if you are going to create a small business that fulfills a specific function, such as selling some homemade items or a recently uncovered stash of childhood baseball cards, the best site to build may be one that is free.
With Homestead you can build a fully functional e-commerce site with features that you would expect in a costly storefront builder. Essentially you can set-up, customize and go live with a Homestead hosted site in a matter of minutes. The extremely comprehensive tutorials guide you through the process of developing and designing a professional looking and operating e-store.
Homestead gives you all the tools you need to design a site for e-commerce while helping you to build your community of visitors. Each site is fully supported and secure, allowing customers to place orders in confidence. Additional functions include the site statistics and tracking tools that help you to analyze your traffic and customer base. Site promotion is also included among the features with business directory listings and meta tag builders.
Homestead is not supported by advertising, rather it generates income by licensing, partnerships and sponsorship of the "Elements" -- customized tools such as message boards, streaming video, link management, buy buttons and others too numerous to list. The Homestead-site also has components in place to help transfer an existing site or capitalize on any images, graphics and files that you''ve already created.
If you are determined to join the growing force of netrepreneurs, starting now will position you very well for the online shopping rush of 2001.
Storefront Software offers some in-depth reviews of some of these products.
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