Since June 2005 many eBay sellers have used ProStores in its various versions to open their own online Web shop. Today, ProStores is more than a solution for eBay sellers—it's a full e-commerce storefront platform for any online merchant.
This month, ProStores added several new features to help online store owners grow their businesses. With that in mind, we decided it was time to take a look at what ProStores has to offer as an e-commerce platform for general online merchants and eBay sellers.
Create an Off-eBay Web Store
EBay sellers can use ProStores to open an "off-eBay" Web store that completely integrates with their eBay account information, listings and settings.
One of the biggest challenges eBay sellers — who use both eBay and their own store — face is avoiding "double selling". Fortunately ProStores synchronizes eBay listings and Web shop inventory. If an item sells on eBay, it will not appear as available for purchase on your ProStores Web shop (and vise versa).
Even if you do not currently use eBay, you can still use ProStores to create your own Web shop.
Getting Started
After you have created a ProStores account, you log in to the Store Administration dashboard. You will be prompted through a series of steps to create your Web shop. You don’t need any design or HTML knowledge to get started — ProStores offers a number of design wizards to make customizing your shop a painless task.
You need to provide business information, including a store name, mailing, phone and e-mail details. You also need a store logo. ProStores offers a built-in logo generator, but you might want to consider having a logo professionally designed if you don’t already have one.
To populate your store with products, you add categories and products one-at-a-time using the Add Category and Add Product wizards or you can import a store catalog from a spreadsheet. After you have added products, you continue on to set up payment information, shipping details and sales tax.
ProStores lets you accept PayPal payments, or you can set up your checkout to process credit cards. For shipping, you can set custom rates or turn on the option to show rate calculators from USPS, FedEx, UPS or Canada Post. You also set sales tax through a wizard-based interface.
ProStores offers more than 200 standard e-commerce design templates. The template you use will determine the style and layout of your Web shop. You can purchase a more professional-looking template or hire a ProStores designer to get a unique look for the Web shop, but that cost is not included in your ProStores subscription.
The biggest benefit to eBay sellers using ProStores is the tight integration with eBay. If you link your ProStores Web shop with your eBay account, you have the option to import current eBay listings to your new shop, and going forward you can list new items on eBay from within ProStores.
Managing a ProStores Web Shop
ProStores has a built-in inventory tracking system that deducts sold items from your inventory automatically, but you can change inventory numbers by hand if necessary. When you have a sale the ProStores Order Manager alerts you by e-mail, and once an item checkout occurs you can track it during the entire purchase cycle using the Store Admin dashboard.
ProStores lets you track customers and keep up-to-date information about them. There are options for exporting a customer list to manage e-mail marketing campaigns, and ProStores provides Web shop sales and visitor tracking so you can see how well your business improves over time.
Newly Added Features
ProStores recently incorporated a number of new features, including product feeds for TheFind.com and ways for merchants to offer coupons and discounts as buying incentives. Also, merchants can show up to four images per product and a progress indicator has been added to the multi-page checkout flow so buyers know where they are in the checkout process.
 The Store Admin dashboard offers one-click access to set up, customize or change your Web shop.
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ProStores will fit the needs of many eBay sellers and online merchants who want a Web shop that isn't time-consuming to maintain or difficult to set up. ProStores provides merchant assistance through its online user guide, FAQs and e-mail support.
ProStores Pricing
For eBay sellers, ProStores has a Professional eCommerce subscription that lets you list up to 5,000 products. It costs $20.95 a month for Bronze or Silver PowerSellers. Gold PowerSellers and above do not have a set monthly fee; they pay a 0.5 percent per transaction fee. You can upgrade to Professional eCommerce Plus (up to 100,000 products) for $41.95 per month for Bronze or Silver and no change in pricing for Gold PowerSellers.
Online merchants who don’t use eBay but who want use ProStores for their Web shop platform can choose the Professional eCommerce subscription at $29.95 monthly plus a 0.5 percent transaction fee, or use Professional eCommerce Plus with 100,000 products for $59.95 per month, plus the 0.5 percent transaction fee.
ProStores currently offers a free one-month trial subscription. Check out the full pricing plan details.
Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.
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