Web hosting resellers can offer their clientele the capacity to conduct
e-commerce transactions through the use of electronic storefront software.
Small and medium-sized businesses often demand the option to sell their
products and services through their single Web hosting company of record.
For this reason, most resellers ensure that they can offer their customers a
full compliment of easy-to-use, e-commerce solutions that includes a
complete storefront, or shopping cart system, and a payment-processing
gateway.
In order to fulfill this requirement, most resellers will purchase Web
hosting services from higher-tier providers who integrate turnkey e-commerce
capacity into their offerings for resale. A popular and stable e-commerce
solution that higher-tier providers often offer to resellers to push down
the value chain is Miva Merchant.
Miva Merchant is a dynamic browser based storefront development and
management system that allows merchants to create multiple online stores
from anywhere in the world where there is Internet access. Miva Merchant has
a large set of wizards that simplify the process of building a Web store.
The browser-based administration interface provides access to an array of
sophisticated tools that allows a reseller client's to self-maintain their
catalog. Resellers usually are very pleased with such a system, because
normally implementation of such a solution is transparent: it is maintained
by their higher-tier Web host.
An excellent top-tier host will maintain the entire e-commerce
infrastructure developed by a technology company such as Miva Corporation
(www.miva.com), while the reseller simply enlarges its client base by selling more hosting accounts with e-commerce functionality.
The goal of most resellers is thus to obtain access to e-commerce resources
that they can be resold effectively and inexpensively. In order for
e-commerce to become a relatively economical service to be provided by a
small to mid-sized reseller, the e-commerce solution must provide instant
gratification to both the consumer of products and services, and your
customers. In other words, e-store sales must be processed instantly, and
order fulfillment must be timely, in order to satisfy users who both
purchase and profit from the system.
An e-commerce solution must also require minimal technical support from the
reseller's end.
If these goals are achieved, then a Web hosting reseller will be able to
successfully provide order-processing services that will satisfy their
customers.
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