You are in: ECommerce-Guide > Solutions > ECommerce Building

ECommerce-Guide Essentials eBiz FAQ Everything you need to know to start your own successful e-business. Selling on eBay How to make money in the online marketplace. PayPal Payments and More What's new in secure payments for your online store. Shopping Cart Software Solutions to close, process and track your online sales. Related Articles •Getting More Than You Paid For: osCommerce's Open Source Storefront •Easy to Manage, Easy to Shop •Growing an Online Business Beyond eBay •Affinity Debuts Marketing, Management Add-Ons for Hosting Customers

Affinity Launches New Site Design Service
By Christopher Saunders
August 25, 2004

Web hosting player Affinity Internet has taken the wraps off a new offering aimed at helping Web merchants overhaul their site's design.

Targeted toward users taking their first steps into online selling, the company's new ReadyWeb package offers Web site design on an as-needed basis. ReadyWeb bundles Affinity's most popular ValueWeb hosting plan (the Standard shared hosting offering) with design help for five basic Web pages -- a homepage, contact page and up to three additional pages.

As part of the plan, Affinity's design team can make updates to your Web site each month as needed.

And while the five-page offering doesn't deliver design help as extensive as that found in Affinity's site-wide $1,999 custom Web plans, the introductory-level ReadyWeb bundle costs only $49.95 per month.

Users can also buy ReadyWeb design assistance as needed, for one-time fees.

Last month, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Affinity debuted a bundled premium services suite that included CreateIt! -- which now includes ReadyWeb -- as well as tools for site management and marketing. The tools, which were available to the company's shared hosting customers, are closely integrated and incorporate technology developed in-house at Affinity, and that provided by partners like Brightmail, Macromedia, Network Solutions, Miva Merchant and Cardservice International.

As with the launch of those bundled services, Affinity executives said its new offerings help small businesses by helping them find a wide variety of solutions from a single vendor.

"ReadyWeb is another piece of our strategy to bring valuable and affordable bundles of products and services to our customers that they can use to become successful on the Web," said Affinity Internet Chief Executive Peter Chambers. "We've also recognized that SMBs do not want one-size-fits-all solutions, so while we bundle our products and services, we still give our customers the freedom to mix-and-match what they need to meet their unique requirements."

In addition to CreateIt!, Affinity offers ManageIt!, PromoteIt!, anti-spam and site security offering ProtectIt!, and EnhanceIt!, which provides extra functionality and features for Web sites. The services are included with Affinity Internet's ValueWeb hosting accounts.

Affinity also announced this week that it has begun offering its bundled offerings to dedicated hosting customers.

"Until now, dedicated hosting providers have generally offered very little besides basic hosting and management tools," Chambers said. "What we've learned from speaking with our customers is that although dedicated customers generally require fewer technical services, they still want help building, marketing, maintaining and optimizing their Web sites and applications."

In addition to the current lineup, Affinity also has plans to introduce a bundled services component that will let online merchants integrate their products catalogs with eBay. Once that's introduced -- likely to be within the quarter -- e-commerce sellers can upload their products to eBay with relative ease.

Chambers last month also told eCommerce-Guide.com that Affinity is testing a new tool that helps to automate and assist in online advertising -- maximizing site keywords and helping with purchasing and tracking online advertising.

Christopher Saunders is managing editor of eCommerce-Guide.com.

Do you have a comment or question about this article or other e-commerce topics in general? Speak out in the SmallBusinessComputing.com E-Commerce Forum. Join the discussion today!

Tools:

Add ecommerce-guide.com to your favorites Add ecommerce-guide.com to your browser search box IE 7 | Firefox 2.0 | Firefox 1.5.x Receive news via our XML/RSS feed