Much like a physical location for your store, you first need to establish an on-line location by purchasing a web address (a.k.a. domain name). You may already have a web address for your corporate website which you can continue to use for your on-line store. If you need a domain name, please contact us and we will help you obtain one.

If you prefer a shipping provider (UPS, USPS, FedEx, DHL, etc...) or currently have a contract with a shipping provider, then you will want to make sure that the e-commerce service provider you choose either supports a direct connection with your shipping provider and/or provides the ability for you to enter in your shipping provider's rates. It is important to make sure that the e-commerce service provider you choose supports custom shipping rates so that you can also create your own rates, setup promotional rates, or offer free shipping.

Renown Merchant provides the ability to connect to any of the major shipping providers to auto-calculate the shipping amount based on the weight and location of the customer. In addition, you can create an unlimited number of shipping rules to support local shipping providers, special promotions, or free shipping.

Before you open your on-line store you should consider how you want to process payments from your customers. There are generally three ways that you can process payments within an on-line store: manually, via payment gateway into your bank account, and PayPal. Processing payments manually means that the payment information of an order will be read from the secured store admin area and manually typed into your physical credit card processing device. Processing payments via a "payment gateway" means that you will purchase the services of payment gateway company like Authorize.net to accept the payment information and deposit the money directly into your business checking account. If you do not have a business checking account or a merchant account for processing credit cards, then you can use the services of PayPal, which charges a higher processing fee, but does not require a merchant account or business checking acccount.

The trade-offs between the three methods are essentially time and cost. Entering the payment informaiton manually into your own physical credit card processing device is definitely cheaper, but requires more time dealing with the customer if the card doesn't go through. Purchasing the services of a payment gateway like Authorize.net will automate the authorization and capture of the customers credit card, but you will pay a little extra for this convenience. Signing up with PayPal and using their services to process your customer payments may cost the same or more than a payment gateway, but you will have the added work of transferring money between your PayPal account and your business checking account. Choose the option that best suits your business and please contact us if you would like us to walk you through these options.

Renown Merchant is a flexible solution that offers all three of the payment processing options described above. You can even start out with one processing method and switch to another method with little effort. In addition to these payment processing options, Renown Merchant ensures that the credit card number is valid by doing a first-level validation as soon as the credit card is entered by the customer.

There are many companies that offer e-commerce software and services, and most of them require that you spend a lot of time and energy learning the technology and often times require you to install the software yourself. Even if you feel confident with technology, you are here because you want to SELL not because you want to waste valuable time. Choose a solution that will allow you to get setup quickly, provides a deep set of features that will help you grow your business, and most importantly, offers dedicated customer support that will keep you focused on selling and not on the technology.

Renown Merchant is a unique e-commerce solution that handles the technologies behind the scenes and allows you focus on sales. Our highly trained staff are on hand when you need them to answer questions or walk you through a feature, even if it requires an in-person meeting. Our deep set of features will effectively sell your products, and our engineers are ready to handle custom features that are unique to your store. We will personally work with you from the begining to identify your on-line sales goals and help you to accomplish each one of them.

If you have your catalog in some sort of digital format, then you should be able to have your e-commerce service provider load that data into your on-line catalog. If you do not have a catalog in digital format, then you will need to enter your catalog in manually. If you have a small number of products, then you should be able to enter them into your on-line catalog with little effort. Although, if you have thousands of products, then speak with your e-commerce service provider to see if they can help you in any way.

Renown Merchant will handle loading your digital catalog file(s) into your on-line store. If you do not have your catalog in a digital format, then we can provide you with a template to follow for creating your own digital catalog file. If you have hundreds to thousands of products that need to be entered into a digital catalog file, then we will help you enter your data quickly so that you can start selling!

The appearance of your on-line store will convey to your customers what you value as a business. You want an appearance that is clean, organized, and with high quality graphics so that you can convey that your business is serious and ready to handle your customer's orders. If you have an existing on-line store or website and have a developed appearance, then make sure that the e-commerce service provider that you choose can accomodate your custom appearance. If you do not have a developed on-line appearance or want to improve your appearance to convey a stronger image, then investigate what options the e-commerce service provider you choose will offer.

Renown Merchant can accomodate any existing on-line store or website appearance. If you do not have a on-line store or website, then we can work with you to build a strong appearance that will instill confidence in your customers.

Many companies that open an on-line store are under the misconception that being on the Internet will by itself bring in new customers and new orders without marketing. While it is true that companies every day draw in new customers from the Internet that they would not normally have been able to reach, these same companies have invested heavily in traditional and Internet marketing strategies. An on-line store is essentially an order-taker that needs marketing to direct traffic into it. Without marketing, the hundreds of millions of people connected to the Internet will not know that you exist.

Once your on-line store is setup and ready to take orders, the easiest way to draw people to your store is by reaching out to the customers that you already have a relationship with. Your first marketing campaign could be phone calls, mass mailings, billing envelope stuffers, post cards, or simply mentioning the on-line store when the customer visits your physical location.

Contacting your existing customer base is a great way to start, but you also need to reach out to the Internet community and draw in new customers. The best way to start marketing your on-line store within the Internet community is by submitting your main web address to the major web search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Alta Vista, MSN, AOL, etc... Before you notify the search engines that your web address is ready to be indexed, you must make sure that your website and on-line store are optimized to achieve the best ranking possible. There is no point in being indexed by a search engine if you never get into the top 20 ranking for the search keywords that best represent your business. It is vital that you choose an e-commerce service provider that understands search engine ranking and can help you achieve the best possible results.

In addition to traditional marketing and search engine indexing of your website and on-line store, cost effective Internet advertising can be purchased to directly market people searching or browsing content that is similiar to your business. On-line advertising can be an effective strategy, but you should consult with an expert before experiementing with this form of marketing.

Renown Merchant was built with the knowledge that marketing is key to driving customers to on-line stores. We have studied what the search engines expect out of a website and have built Renown Merchant to display search engine friendly web pages that will be highly ranked. Since we have acquired knowledge on how search engines work, we can work with you to ensure that your main website is fully optimized and achieving the best ranking possible.

Even though Renown Merchant is not a marketing company, we have partnered with marketing companies to understand how to integrate marketing tools within the store administration and allow store owners to quickly promote products via e-mail and Internet marketplaces such as eBay, Froogle, BizRate, etc... Look for these new features in an upcoming version of Renown Merchant.

If you are looking for an expert to handle your traditional and e-marketing pursuits, please contact us and we will put you in touch with one of our highly skilled marketing partners.

According to the Computer Industry Almanac, the estimated number of people within the United States that have access to the Internet is approximately 186 million, with 140 million considered "Active Users". When you open up your store on-line, you have millions of english speaking people that are a few clicks away from browsing your catalog.

Not only do you have the Internet population of the United States a few clicks from your on-line store, you also have the Internet population of the whole world. The Computer Industry Almanac also estimates that the Internet population of the world is 1.21 billion people, with 334 million considered "Active Users". By tapping into the entire world, you can start expanding your business to places you never thought possible.

I'm sure the prospect of this seems impossible, but it's not. In fact, it's as simple as translating your on-line catalog into the most popular languages on the planet and providing the ability for your customers to transact in the currency they are familiar with. This is simple if the e-commerce service provider that you choose is built to handle taking you to the next level.

Renown Merchant was built from the ground up to take on-line stores of any size to the global market place. Every aspect of Renown Merchant can be translated into any language in the world and the order processing can display and transact any currency supported by banks. Almost all e-commerce platforms can not offer to truly take you global without selling you another store and forcing you to managing duplicate catalogs. Renown Merchant was intentionally built to help you sell locally and easily position you globally.