Annette Jackson owns a small crafts store in central Missouri. She wants to expand her store’s reach outside the region to increase her profits and simultaneously reduce her inventory. Annette’s teenage daughter suggested that she consider selling online to expand her total sales. She asked you to help her estimate how much it might cost in the first year to create a simple store with a catalog of about 100 items. Annette wants you to investigate two CSP offerings and report back to her what you find. Because her store is small, limit your research to basic commerce and mall-style services. Annette would like to consider the following information for the two CSP offerings you examine:
Costs: initial setup fee, monthly fee, and transaction fees
Amount of disk space the CSP would provide for Annette’s 100-item store
Existence of a search engine within each store
Promotion and marketing opportunities
Customer communications capabilities, such as automated e-mail confirmation of orders
Shopping cart or other order entry mechanism
Storefront-building wizards for creating a new store
Security provisions for transactions
Nature of the domain names available (sub domain of the site or not)
Upload capabilities for product names, descriptions, images, and costs (can they be uploaded from files or databases, or must the merchant enter each item individually?)
Existence of an online user manual for the merchant
The Online Companion includes links to several CSP and mall-style hosting providers, but feel free to use your favorite search engine to find CSPs that might meet Annette’s needs. Produce a report of about 500 words summarizing your findings.