LOOKING FOR A STOREFRONT?
The recent merger of RPGNow and DTRPG to form OneBookShelf.com has created a rare situation for the PDF segment of the RPG industry. With publishers up in arms at the various changes and monopolistic policies established by this new monolithic corporation, many are scrambling to establish their own retail storefronts as quickly as possible. Here at ARP, we can accomodate your needs. If you have a paypal account, I can provide a storefront that's fast, reliable, and cheap. Due to business ventures outside the RPG industry, I happen to have a reliable web service, complete with dirt cheap bandwidth, though storage space is at a premium until February. Your site will be operating on the same storefront scripts that run my own storefront on this site. The storefront currently offers these benefits:
- Closed Source - Nobody sees the code except me. This makes the site significantly more difficult to hack compared to purchased or freeware storefront scripts, such as osCommerce or Zen Cart.
- Secure Downloads - download URLs are encrypted and thus are never at risk of being archived by google.
- Offsite Linkage - optional link capability to most online storefronts.
- Membership not required - shoppers are not required to join the site in order to make a purchase, nor are they required to possess a paypal account as long as they have a credit card that paypal can validate.
- Contact System - form-based email system that lets your customers access you for customer service issues with ease.
- "Bulletproof" email - due to spam, worms, and worse, a lot of folks have problems accessing email servers due to ISP port blockage. Our email system has been hand crafted to circumvent that problem.
- FTP upload - quick, simple, most times reliable.
- Database driven - the site is database driven making for easy updates for globally presented data.
- Bulk sale pricing/cancellation - a feature folks wanted from RPGnow for years, my store had it first. Set an entire product line's sale prices all at the same time.
- Categories - This isn't the standard store, so no generic product categories. You create and manage your own categories, whether you want things listed by game system, product line, genre, or something else.
- Surcharge instructions - paypal's transaction fees can be a real killer on low cost items. Instructions for setting your own surcharge rate and limit via paypal settings.
- Comment Systems - shoppers can leave comments regarding your products, including a 5-star rating.
- Offsite Catalog Management - data entry occurs completely off your site. This minimizes the ability of individual with malicious intent to locate you data management system, hack it, and damage or steal from your business.
To be added by January 1:
- Templates - For the most part, the code is neatly packaged into two major segments. This allows for some significant capability to develop basic templates or allow you to develop your own.
- Database Conversion - current selection of database is suitable for a handful of stores, but I expect this offer will require a conversion to an enterprise system.
- Membership System - a shared membership system allowing shoppers additional benefits. Partially implemented. Visitors will be able to use one membership account to access all host storefronts.
- Transaction Recordkeeping - currently the system relies on paypal's recordkeeping. Transaction recordkeeping will be a part of the membership system.
- Variable surcharge system - for low total purchases, allows you to set the surcharge amount and limit.
To be added later:
- API integration with paypal for website payments pro account holders, providing invisible transactions.
- Catalog Sharing - the ability to strike deals to sell one another's products within the catalog, without any significant additional data entry.
- "Multi-cart" - major step in establishing an online "mallfront", shoppers can browse the different stores, add everything into a single shopping cart, and check out once. However, the multi-cart concept is essentially adding a third party retailer to the system due to checkout limitations - purchases would go to a central cart with disbursements monthly.
- Web-based Uploading - secure web-based upload system supporting both product uploads and image uploads.
- Coupons
- Gift Certificates
The cost:
- Setup Fee: $25 - one time fee, includes prepping the system for your account, doctoring up the catalog and comments page to match your site, and providing the frameset page that will disguise the storefront as part of your URL.
- Storage Fee: $0.02 per MB, billed upon setup, then annually. Pays for maintenance of the RAID disk array.
- Transaction Fees: $0.10 per item sold. Billable monthly. Storage space is currently limited until February 2007. This fee may undergo adjustment due to individual disk space usage/sales rate ratio. Remember, flat fee transaction costs are better for you than percentage commissions. 10 cents is 20% of the revenues for a $2.00 product, but its a mere 1% of your revenues on a $10 item. Additional transaction fees will still be incurred via paypal.The surcharge drops to a nickel for products priced at $1.00 or less.
- Offsite Linkage Fee: $20 annually. Small price to pay for the capacity to link to every site you do business with, so that your customers have a one-stop shop that allows them to buy at whatever retail outlet they prefer.
