Economic Justification
Being on the web isn't free. Assuming that you will use a remote host for your web site, sign-up for one of the credit card processors, and include your ISP charges, it will cost between $100 to $150 a month to operate the web site. These are tax deductible, so the "real" cost will be somewhat less, typically by the business' cost-of-sales percentage. You have to determine how much product has to be moved, discounted to the gross margins, that it will take to pay for this. Keep in mind that it may (and probably will) take several months before the web site starts to operationally pay its own way. Of course, there may be reasons other than purely economic ones that may warrant investing in an eCommerce-enabled web site.

Credit Card Processors
A "verifone over the web" doesn't exist as yet. While an established business can get a Verifone system quickly installed, typically a day or so after ordering, it can take several weeks to get an internet credit card system authorized. The following list is for web-based credit card processors that we have operating interfaces to. Each has its own set of products, services and offerings, with various sign-on fees, transaction rates, purchase or lease options, etc. You'll have to examine each of them to see what fits your budget and requirements. All you need is the credit card clearing function; don't get any "catalog" feature because you already have your own product database as an integral part of SOLStem.

• www.authorize.net
• www.billitonline.com
• www.charge.com
• www.cybercash.com
• www.ecx.com
• www.takeonlinepayments.com

Disclosure: From time to time some of these companies have promotional campaigns that reward the FutureWares of the world when someone signs up with them; when this happens we pass the incentive to you.

The Merchant Account
You're going to need a bank account into which web sales will be (hopefully) poured. Even though many of the web credit card processors shelter varying degrees of the complexity for this from you, sooner or later a bank will be involved, and when they hear "internet sales" they do strange things. Be prepared to divulge a fairly healthy amount of documentation about your business and even yourself. Often, these demands for documentation come out peacemeal; get a list of all the required documentation up front. The bank (among others) will also be very interested in the next topic.

Returns
You will need to have a clearly defined and detailed returns policy, including how return shipping is to be handled and payed for. SOLStem has a built-in page with a returns policy modeled on an American Bankers Association workgroup recommendation, which you can change to meet your requirements. Returns means bank chargebacks; too many (nebulously defined) chargebacks and the bank pulls the plug, usually without advanced warning.

Promotion, Promotion, Promotion
There are literally hundreds of millions of web sites out there, growing every day, and the chance of someone finding yours is, well, one out of hundreds of millions (and growing). Unless you got a good domain name five (or more) years ago, the chances of finding an encompassing domain name if you don't already have one is pretty remote (hundreds of millions again). By a demonstrable mathematical calculation, the chances of your domain name showing in the first 25 results of a search engine are even less. Your promotional efforts should, at a minimum, include or otherwise mention your web site, be they print, radio or TV ads, trade show banners, fliers, business cards, product literature, etc. The good thing is that customers tend to return to sites where they've made a purchase. (We have to mention that FutureWare has a product that tracks the effectiveness of promotional efforts, but we'll pass on the opportunity for now.)

Privacy Issues
SOLStem has a built-in page that describes a privacy policy, based on eTrust's model. You can change this if needed, but if customer information is sold, exchanged, shared, or otherwise exposed to any third party for any reason, then you should disclose this fact. Please note that SOLStem does not save or otherwise maintain any credit card information.

It's Your Stuff
All of the data, pages, whatever, that are on your web site are yours. Sometimes, an Internet Service Provider will keep it, or otherwise claim it's their "intellectual" property. The only good thing about this is that they won't be able to install and use it in another system (the FutureWare CopyLock prevents that), and all of the heavy-duty stuff is encrypted. You should back-up your web site on a regular basis: The complete site once a week, and the transaction logs every day. Fortunately, SOLStem's desktop utility program can do this for you. You spend the evenings going over the day's receipts after closing the store; the web site should get the same attention. One more thing: Make a copy of the weekly back-up and rotate it through a safe deposit box.

Things Happen
Contrary to sayings by some otherwise famous people, the web and the internet are neither secure nor stable. Servers go down, backhoes dig up fiber trunks, remote hosting companies go bankrupt, hackers get more invidious, the web credit card processors have problems of their own, banks get uppity. Keep things in perspective; remember late and short deliveries, road work driving away walk-in customers, rain water coming through the roof. You're not alone.

Browser And Host System Requirements
Server Requirements

• SOLStem is designed for use on a Windows NT/2000 Server. A Linux/Apache version will be available by Summer 2001
• The web software running in the web server must be either Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 or better, or O'Reilly's WebSitePro (WSP) 2.4 or better, or Omnicron's OmniHTTP 2.0 or better.
• The web server must support ADO Version 2.1 or better
• The database server can be in the same machine as the web server. If it's on a different machine, then it must support ADO Version 2.1 or better, and have an OLEDB Provider installed. For security purposes we recommend that the database server be on a separate machine, isolated from the web server by a firewall, and using NetBUI (or some other non-routable networking protocol) as the intra-connection method.
• The web server must support ActiveServerPages (ASP), either native Microsoft's or a proven equivalent, such as Chilli!Soft's ASP object.
• The web server must support both the SendMail object (specifically the "CDONTS.NewMail" object), and the FileSystemObject (specifically the "Scripting.FileSystemObject" object).
• The web server must have the SOLStem object installed and registered. This is provided at no charge: If the business uses a remote host (the most common case) then all we need is the ISP's NIC Handle number, while if the business has its own web server then we need the MS Server License Number.
• FutureWare maintains a list of remote hosts on its web site that have the SOLStem product in production. There is also a test script available that can verify all of these requirements.