HyperMart, a Go2Net property, was mentioned in yesterday's (12/7/98) Wall Street Journal, in their special Internet section. Here's an excerpt from the article which was entitled Think Big: For entrepreneurs, size isn't nearly the handicap in cyberspace that
it is in the real world (by Quentin Hardy)
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The Wall Street Journal via Dow Jones
(this is an excerpt)
"Thousands of small businesses have gone onto the Internet in the past
few years. Go2net Inc.'s Hypermart, which offers free Internet space to small businesses in exchange for the right to put ads on the businesses' Web pages,has posted more than 90,000 companies in the past two years, and is adding more than 400 new businesses a day, it says.
Hypermart's list of clients is bracing testimony to entrepreneurial diversity and optimism: Besides high-tech shops, such as software programmers who work out of their homes, there are Canadian salvage divers, a seller of handicrafts made from the kudzu vine, and a Christian ventriloquist, among other enterprises.
Most, however, don't take full advantage of the tools at their disposal. Indeed, most businesses on the Web offer little more on their sites than they would in a classified ad: They list goods and services, perhaps their prices,and how to contact them to place orders. A recent study by Chaners In-Stat Group, a Boston market-research firm, found that of small businesses on the Web,only 19% offered one-step online shopping, the ability to process orders and take credit-card numbers on a secure link. More than one-quarter were equipped to take customer orders but required a phone call or fax to relay credit-card information.
Yet experience shows that even sites that don't sell a product themselves, or that don't offer one-step purchasing, can boost sales. Since Juanita Baldwin started her Kudzu Kingdom Web site eight months ago to help sell a book she wrote on the pesky vine, the Kodiak, Tenn., writer says she has tripled sales to 2,500 copies. Her site describes the book and offers an order form, but it doesn't take credit-card numbers. Instead, it gives would-be readers a link to Internet book retailer Amazon.com Inc. One thing her site has that you can't get at Amazon.com: such kudzu-related products as jelly and baskets --goods Ms.Baldwin sells on behalf of others that have earned her some $2,000." |
