MOST POPULAR E-COMMERCE SOFTWARE Ecommerce software allows an online merchant to quickly, efficiently, and professionally process online sales. Ease of the software's use and its application depends upon the software's features, but with technology constantly improving and focusing on the customer, most software packages are becoming more and more user friendly for both the seller (you) and the buyer (your customers). By "user-friendly", we mean things like minimal to no required programming (on your part), bulk uploading of the products you wish to sell, easy import of an existing product database, automatic calculations, and more. But with so many choices available today, it may seem difficult to choose the right e-commerce software package for your e-commerce website. This short guide allows you to narrow the selection by matching your goals to the capabilities of some popular e-commerce software packages. 1. If you are an e-commerce novice, you may appreciate a software package that assists site development with templates and/or wizards. Templates and/or wizards help set up your e-commerce website by offering a selection of site feature choices. Building your e-commerce site is then a matter of making a series of choices, rather than coding by hand via plain HTML. Templates and wizards can be found in e-commerce software such as Intershop Online (http://www.intershop.com) and MonsterCommerce (http://www.monstercommerce.com). 2. If you need and want to offer your website shoppers a safe and secure shopping experience - but can't or don't want to program this environment yourself, look at packages like Ecommerce Software, Inc. (http://www.ecommerce-software-inc.com), and Yahoo Store - http://store.yahoo.com. These e-commerce solutions incorporate SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and/or SET (Secure Electronic Transactions) security into your website for you. 3. Should you have a database of products and/or services in a file separate from your website, and you want to easily import these items into an online catalog, consider software such as ICCart (http://www.iccart.com). These types of packages offer support for your off-line database provided they are SQL, Excel, Access, or ODBC type collections. 4. If you have several different shops to manage, and desire a mall type environment for your website, investigate software from SmartWin.Net (http://www.smartwin.com.au) or the CyberOffice Franchise Builder (http://demo.smartwin.net/cybermall/front.htm). These ecommerce software types enable you to create, open, maintain, and close as many online stores that your heart desires, often with an individual database per store. 5. If you prefer using a 3rd party transaction service, check out Intershop Online (http://www.intershop.com), Yahoo Store - http://store.yahoo.com, InstanteStore (http://www.instantestore.com), iBill (http://www.ibill.com), PayPal (http://www.paypal.com), or Nexternal Solutions Inc.(http://www.nexternal.com). Not only can ecommerce software packages like these tremendously cut back-end employees and costs, they can also save costs associated with operating and maintaining your own web server. 3rd party e-commerce solutions like these work with your current data to present an online shopping environment as if it were your own. | 
