ProStores Business Reviewer's Comments
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Our #2 ranked ecommerce software and "TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award" winner is ProStores Business from Kurant Corporation. ProStores Business offers a website creator, hosting, and an excellent shopping cart—all for a $100.00 dollar set up fee. ProStores Business’s website building tools offer you 143 design templates so you’ll be able to build a custom website to meet all your needs.
With ProStores Business, you’ll be able to offer an unlimited number of products on your website and you’ll have easy access to website marketing tools including search engine submission, email tools, and the ability to set up affiliate programs.
ProStores Business does not offer in-house credit card processing, but their tools easily integrate with several credit card processing services. (Visit our Credit Card Processing review website.)
ProStores Business is a fine package deal if you already have a credit card company you want to keep. But if you're looking for an all-in-one package, we recommend GoEmerchant. Learn how to start your eCommerce site here.
ProStores Business Screenshots. Click to Enlarge
Feature Set:
ProStores Business offers some great features with their standard program, including the ability to sell as many products as you like on your website. If you sell products from different manufacturers, you can customize your online catalog with the manufacturer listing in addition to the product name and category. ProStores Business offers over a dozen different reports to help you manage your online store thoroughly. Or, you can export your customer, product, and order data into an Excel spreadsheet.
ProStores Business also offers UPS and FedEx shipping compatibility as well as sophisticated tax calculations. As part of a marketing strategy, you can easily place your products on eBay through ProStores Business's integration tool. ProStores Business also offers integration for your accounting software. To read reviews on popular, small business accounting software, click here to go to our Accounting-Software-Review website.
Ease of Use:
ProStores Business is simple to use. You don't need to be an expert to create your ecommerce site; all you need to know how to do is open a webpage. Once you have opened the ProStores Business webpage, the navigation is simple-on the left side of the screen ProStores Business lists your options, broken up into categories and sub-categories.
For example, if you want to know how many products you sold yesterday, you would click on the Reports category. This would open a few more options, such as Product, Sales, Inventory and Executive. Clicking on Sales will let you roam a wide range of dates and areas; you can easily zero on sales for yesterday. Everything at ProStores Business is intuitive, point-and-click.
Ease of Setup:
ProStores Business is a web-based program. This means that you don't have to install any software on your computer. All the building and maintaining of your website is through your web browser.
ProStores Business offers several simple-to-use wizards that walk you through each part of setting up your online store. ProStores Business will build your store in three easy steps: first, design your store. Select the theme, layout and look of your online shop, including how you want products displayed on your website. Second, choose your store's settings. Here you'll enter basic set up information, including the text and the products that will appear on your website. You don't even have to plan-ProStores Business gives you the options, you decide which to include. Third-when you're ready-open your store for business!
ProStores Business understands many people have websites already; for these customers, they offer a tool that lets you build onto the website you already have. With Copy Center you can keep your old website's design elements, images and data, yet updating the site is a snap.
ProStores Business also realizes that not everyone has the same design skills. They provide a design tool for those who want to go beyond the website wizard; you can further customize your website with Design Studio. Because this design program packs some power, it takes time to learn. But this method is simpler than learning design on your own, and far less expensive than hiring a professional website designer. Once you master the basics you can take your site to a whole new level.
Help/Documentation:
The key to success with an ecommerce service is the quality of their help. ProStores Business offers quality help everywhere, starting with easy access to a quick start guide and user's manual. On the right side of their main screen they provide a list of quick set up wizards. They also offer FAQs and email support.
Also, ProStores Business places small help icons beside items on their website that might be confusing for a computer novice. Simply click on the icon to go directly to the right help area. They also have "How Do I.?" links throughout their online store administration screens.
Fraud Protection:
Click here to learn how credit card fraud affects you.
ProStores Business offers ways to help you reduce your risk for credit card fraud, including a secure https server (SSL) for transactions. ProStores Business also asks potential customers for their CVV2 code (printed on the back of most credit cards). This helps ensure that your customer has the physical card, not simply the number.
Summary:
ProStores Business is an outstanding service. If you are looking for flexible, user-friendly ecommerce services that will grow with you, ProStores Business can deliver.
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