Overall
At first sight a totally free e-commerce shopping cart and Web hosting product would seem to be the perfect solution for the small merchant.
And indeed FreeMerchant does have many things going for it. A small, professionally looking store can be created quite quickly and the provision of a friendly URL and unlimited email addresses are a welcome bonus.
However, the product does have some serious deficiencies. The set up process is hampered by the inability to import data from existing databases as well as the limited online support available. The order processing system is limited in the way that it handles sales tax and shipping costs and in its inability to support real-time credit card authorization. And day-to-day management and store promotion tasks are hindered by the restricted set of statistical reports provided.
I consistently advise people who are considering selling online to get started as soon as possible in order that they can start learning the key skills of how to attract visitors in to their stores and then how to convert them in to customers. So on that basis I might be tempted to recommend FreeMerchant to a wannabe Web merchant operating on a limited budget.
However FreeMerchant’s limited reporting capability makes it is very difficult for a merchant to learn much. This together with the lack of scalability, the restrictive terms and conditions of the FreeMerchant service and the potential loss of credibility when customers realise that a merchant is operating from a free site, makes it difficult to recommend this solution.
If you don’t yet have the funds available to build your store, my advice would be to take a look at iCat Commerce Online which provides a fully functioning professional e-commerce solution for just $9.95 per month for stores of up to 10 items.
Set Up
Like most of its competitors, FreeMerchant is configured using a series of wizards.
The first step is to create the catalog by outlining a hierarchy of categories, sub-categories and sellable products. FreeMerchant supports an unlimited number of levels and products. And unlike some solutions, FreeMerchant allows images and descriptive texts to be included at all levels and not just at the product level.
Once the structure of the catalog has been outlined, the next step is to define the products themselves by completing a simple form for each sellable item. Fields include price, whether the item is taxable or not and what the gross shipping cost is. It is also possible to specify options for each product for example size or color. However each option needs to have the same price and part number.
There is no capability to import data from an external database and so all products data has to be entered manually. This can be a major chore if the store is to carry a lot of items.
Once the catalog has been set up, the overall appearance of the store can be specified. Basic store colors, fonts and button styles can all be specified and category pages can have their overall layout defined, for example the number of columns.
FreeMerchant pages are search engine friendly. Meta titles and keywords can be specified and FreeMerchant automatically submits each new store to the major search engines.
Another nice feature is a “business credentials” feature that allows merchants to enter information such as Better Business Bureau or local Chamber of Commerce membership information. This information is then displayed within the store and helps to build credibility with potential customers.
Unlike some e-commerce solutions, FreeMerchant does not assign merchants a long and totally forgettable URL. Instead each merchant gets to choose his or her URL – http://you_choose.safeshopper.com. Each store also comes complete with unlimited e-mail addresses.
Online support is limited. The help function is fairly rudimentary and is not context sensitive. And there is no demonstration or tutorial available. The pre-sign up pages promise that a PDF user manual is available for download, but this does not appear to exist. At least I couldn’t find it and a request to FreeMerchant to clarify this went unanswered. Further help is available via e-mail – hopefully their technical support team will prove to be more responsive.
Cost is, of course, where FreeMerchant scores highly, because the service is completely free – there are no set up costs and no ongoing costs. However, as you would probably suspect, free really means advertising supported. Each FreeMerchant store currently carries three small ads at the foot of each page although there is nothing in the Terms of Service to prevent FreeMerchant increasing the size or frequency of these at a later date.
On the subject of the Terms of Service, I found many of these to be particularly onerous or restrictive. For example merchants are not allowed to include any advertising or external links on their pages. And some of the terms are frankly pretty scary, for example “Freemerchant.com reserves the right to modify or discontinue the Service with or without notice to member” and “Freemerchant.com assumes no responsibility for the deletion of or failure to store members data”.
Most people just skip over the agreements when signing up for a new service. If you do decide to go with FreeMerchant make sure you carefully read and understand the Terms of Service.
Order Processing
One simple form is used for setting up the major order processing options.
Merchants can select from three ordering methods – online, fax or phone – and up to eight payment options – five major credit cards plus COD, personal checks and money orders.
Up to three shipping methods can be specified – ground, two-day and next day – along with their associated costs. Unfortunately, there is no ability to define rates for international shipments. The only option for merchants who wish to ship internationally is to select the “merchant defined” option – this allows the merchant to add on shipping costs when creating the final customer invoice. Fortunately merchants can include a “Shipping and Handling Policy” so at least they can explain to the customer that shipping will be added in later.
FreeMerchant also has a very poor method for dealing with Sales Tax. There is no capability for sales tax to be automatically calculated – the merchant has to manually add an amount to the final customer invoice when processing an order.
On a brighter note, there is a good shopping cart provided and all sensitive data is secured via SSL. However there is no ability to authorise credit cards in real time.
When a customer places an order they receive a “Pre-Confirmation” e-mail which acknowledges the receipt of their order. The merchant can opt to include a message in this email.
The merchant has three options as to how they are notified when an order is received. They can choose to be notified by e-mail or by fax (at the cost of $0.25 per fax) or whenever they log in to their store.
Once an order is received the merchant processes it by adding in sales tax and shipping costs as required and then hitting the “approve invoice” button. This causes a final confirmation invoice to be sent to the customer. There is no facility available for customer approval of the final invoice total including sales tax and shipping.
And finally there is no online order tracking system, no inventory management capability and no way to set up discounts for repeat or volume customers.
Administration
The limited features set of the FreeMerchant system means that there is very little to administer beyond the basic product information. The only way to amend product details is to use the wizard that was used to create them in the first place and “drill down” to the product that needs amended. This is alright for making one or two changes, but is would not be much fun if you’re trying to put a large number of items on “special” for a limited period.
Traffic statistics are provided but they only include the hits on each page of the store. As I have said many times before, statistics are the eyes and ears of the online merchant. And without access to detailed statistics such as where visitors came from, what path they took through the store and what they purchased, a merchant is basically operating blind.
By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
January 16th, 1999
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