Given the goal to produce $100,000 gross in business from the web site including travel-related products and adventure tours, using a web host that offers an online store service is my recommendation. The alternative of setting a store up in house involves creating and maintaining a three-tier Internet/Intranet Infrastructure that would include an application server and database server plus duplicate back-up hardware. Adding to this the cost of technical staff, and other software that could provide useful statistics on visitors to the site could result in an initial cost of $12,000 to $40,000. While it may be done for less, it would be better to focus business priorities on developing the web presence than hardware and the technical aspects of keeping a web server functioning.

A Yahoo Store offers professional looking templates (to get the site up and running quickly); fast, reliable web servers; an incredible array of analysis tools and the ability to customize many aspects of the site while maintaining a consistent appearance. Space allowed is 50 MB which should be sufficient for considerable time. Based on $30,000 gross revenue from sales of products, the yearly expense of the webspace and tools to operate a Yahoo!store would be $1640 or about $136 per month.

To better control costs and analyze the profitability of selling products I suggest creating a new domain name of ValuelineGear.com which will avoid paying the Yahoo!Network revenue share charge for sales of tours. Every page would be linked to the main business site. The Yahoo! analysis tools allow us to determine the success of individual product pages while the site allows us to enter into some promotional activities which I will discuss in a later section of this online interview. Contract is month to month so if any problems are encountered or we wish to explore another option, we can do so very easily. Considering setup time, the analysis tools available, and the minimal costs to get the store up and running, a Yahoo!store would be the best way to transition the sales of travel-related products and books from your direct marketing stradgedy to e-commerce.

While knowledge of all the listed software is highly desirable and I have had exposure to many of them, there are several tools available to create the same effects. Additionally there are One Tool Does All solutions such as Canvas by Deneba, FrontPage 2000 (to a limited degree), and plug-ins available for many web site creation software programs. In general, the list includes Programming (Code), Operating Systems (OS), Graphic Manipulation/ Creation software (Graphic), Audio/ Visual creation software (AV), and Web Site creation software(Web).

Knowledge is one thing, skill is another and is developed through practice and by continual learning. Today's development tools and the many alternatives has resulted in specialty areas much like the profession of the medical field. As consumer machines improve, so does the software which requires that a web site creator to stay on top of developments while also practicing caution in latching on to the latest tools. In all decisions regarding the web presence the Targeted Marget must be considered. Can the users computer equipment and connection handle video and audio presentations? What is the users expectations from the site? How many labor hours will it take to create the effect and will it persuade the user to make a buying decision? Evaluating what elements will motivate and excite the consumer is the most important skill.

If certain effects were needed, I have bookmarks to several sites that offer tutorials where I can quickly develop the needed skill and I have a network of web building enthusiasts I can call upon for assistance. I may also offer lower cost alternatives to achieve the same objective. Developing a relationship with our audience and maintaining their interest while motivating them to tell others needs to be the main objective of every element of the web presence.

While researching several adventure tour companies, I came across a link to Orvis (http://www.orvis.com) which has 29 stores located in the United States and the United Kingdom. While their meta tags (which are used by web search engines to catalogue sites) describe the site as dealing with "Fly fishing gear and tackle", they offer many outdoor/ travel related items such as rugged clothing and sports glasses. The layout and techniques they use on their site are very professional and pleasant so I did some further research to determine what kind of web server they were using.

Research revealed they are using Windows 2000 and IIS5.0. Microsoft Visual InterDev 1.0 is used to generate their web pages. These elements would lead me to believe that they host their own site or have hired it out to a professional web organization. The cost of the hardware to run this software and the software itself is considerable but I believe we could use the design elements and achieve similar effects for considerable less.

While they offer travel tour services, their focus is on high quality and unique merchandise. The javascript used to pop-up a larger picture of the merchandise in a second, smaller window is a technique to emulate on the Valueline site.

Dual Navigation Links at the top of the pages to General Information and Specific Directories allows the user to reach an area of interest quickly. Once in a specific directory, Navigation on the right hand side links to specific items of interest. Good and intuitive navigation.

Two Customer Relationship Management elements offered on the Item page are "E-Mail to a Friend" and "Write a Recommendation" that would be a great element to include on the Valueline site. Additionally, items that relate (You May Also Be Interested In) showing in a smaller picture with a link to that item is a third customer convenience that could be provided. Involving the individual and communicating with the customer is the objective here.

The Travel section consists of basically two pages for each trip and while they are well written, they are not too exciting. I would suggest that Valueline.com devote more attention to this area and offer the following company site that is very well done.

Lindbald Expeditions (http://www.expeditions.com) provides a very clean layout and very effective use of CRM techniques that will generate consumer involvement and loyalty. Opening page offers an interesting, quick to load graphic that will fit within the smallest browser window. The home page offers an Option Menu List Box to allow the visitor to quickly locate the travel tour they desire. The CRM element that really sets this company apart thou, is the Daily Expedition Reports (http://der.expeditions.com/daily_reports.asp). From each of the ongoing tours, one of the tour guides provides a brief overview of things that happened that day and a picture from that day. These reports are catalogued and accessible by the user so that they could experience any of the tours in almost a first hand manner. The one section that is not yet developed thou is the Shared Adventures section, however they have cleverly used the statement "This page is temporarily disabled" with a click through to close the page instead of the usual "under construction". Newsletter option is also an excellent CRM that Valueline should consider. Finally, many of the pages contain multiple contact options on the very bottom including phone, address, e-mail, and link to a form to request more information.

A site that would appear to have all the makings of a high-tech web presence that is not well done is the Hushe Treks and Tours site (http://www.hushe.com.pk). Flash is used to display the title which takes a long time to load on normal dial-up connections even if the user has the flash player add-on for their browser. Prominently displayed on the top is a non-working link to their photo gallery. While there are itinerary descriptions, there are no actual dates or costs displayed. Also no details about the tour guides. Very impersonal site with a high-tech look and language suitable for mass-advertising, not for the web.

As previously introduced, Yahoo!store offers several tools to analyze our visitors including from which site they entered ours. This would allow us to offer a commission to other sites that agree to put a link on their site to the ValuelineGear site. We pay only when the click thru results in a sale so this cost could be rolled into the mark-up on the item. More information is available from the Yahoo! site which offers the suggestion of a 5% commission paid quarterly.

Do one more mailing of your catalogue with less items listed. Use your existing mailing list to inform your customers about your new online store and offer them a discount on their initial purchase if made from the site. This would also allow you to build a database with the user entered information saving lots of data entry man-hours while updating your list with genuine customers.

Good Meta-tag creation and paying to be evaluated by some of the search engines is another step. Care should be taken in creating a front page that is easily read by the search spiders. A brainstorming session with your agents to come up with 25 good, descriptive words of your service is what I would recommend. A few I offer are: Adventure Tours, Exotic, and trekking. It has been my experience that submitting sites for a free evaluation is a waste of time. We must pay for the "express service" even thou this does not guarantee placement in the serach directory. Yahoo charges $299 for this service for a 7-day response time. Further details are available from Yahoo! Suggest Site (http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/suggest.html) We will need to do this for both sites to be placed in seperate directories which will entail two charges. One for merchandise and the other for travel services.

Once the above has been accomplished with Yahoo! then the next possibility to explore is their Sponsored Site service to aquire enhanced placement. Price for this service is variable and may range from $25 to $300 per month or more. Until the site is listed, an estimated charge is not available. See http://sponsoredsites.yahoo.com for further details.

Partnering with web site publications that specialize in outdoors articles should be explored. This could be quite expensive and should be approached after we have established some significant hits on the web site.