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ShopSmart brings a unique approach to doing business online

Does the Internet make sense for your business? A good question with a pretty simple answer. It makes sense to be online only if it makes more sales, improves profit, cuts costs, simplifies operations, increases awareness, shortens the sales cycle and/or improves customer relationships.

As a premier designer and developer of Internet storefronts—see our store Awesome Ewe, with over 8,000 products online, at www.awesomeewe.com—our strength is in developing the backbone for doing online commerce in real time. This includes: obtaining merchant accounts for new businesses; Internet businesses; mail order and telephone order businesses; setting up credit card processing for real time Internet sales; and providing the best shopping cart software for processing your sales.

Merchant accounts and credit card processing
ShopSmart Online can get your business started with a merchant account and on your way to accepting all major credit cards within days. For existing businesses with merchant accounts, ShopSmart can process your online sales, and for new businesses with no accounts, the company can provide you with both Canadian and U.S. dollar accounts.

ShopSmart's Merchant Solutions Program makes getting a merchant account quick and easy. Why is it better than all the rest? ShopSmart maintains a premier relationship with a variety of financial institutions (both Canadian and American), ensuring that you receive a merchant account plan that best fits your business needs and situation.

Web sites designed to handle every e-commerce need
Up until now, e-commerce software has been fashioned after the warehouse store. Product stacked to the ceiling (huge databases, showing the product 10 deep) with little opportunity to develop a relationship with the client (let alone get their name, address, phone number and e-mail address).

ShopSmart web sites are fashioned after traditional stores (elaborate displays and better product presentation). They incorporate the approach of a direct marketer to developing a relationship with the client (a catalogue, toll- free assistance, Click4Help, Web2Call, contests, direct mail and e-mail newsletters). And finally, the checkout is the same as a real store—tally the products and process the credit card, quickly and easily.

Building better customer relationships through communication
E-mail is revolutionizing the way we communicate today. Anyone can turn a home or office computer into a list server, delivering thousands of individually addressed e-mails every hour. And, if you automate the process, it runs after hours. The software will even develop lists (based on keywords) from search engines, news groups and directories, eliminating the need to buy expensive lists.

ShopSmart provides seven services that improve customer response:

• Toll-free numbers with no contracts, set-up or monthly fees;
• Long-distance services with the lowest anytime/anywhere rates in Canada (7.5 cents per minute for calls in Canada and the U.S.);
• Click4Help allows site visitors to instantaneously communicate with you using text chat or voice over Internet;
• Push pages to visitors' browsers instantly send users to the page with the information they are looking for;
• Web2Call initiates a call from the user's PC, over the Internet, ending up as a phone call to you;
• You can add live chat to your e-mail; and
• With Fax2Email you have a private personal fax number where faxes are forwarded to your e-mail.

Get started building your online business today
ShopSmart has developed a mail order/e-commerce suite that has all the bells and whistles found at Victoria's Secret, Lands End, L.L. Bean, Gap and J.C. Penny. This suite equals the big players in terms of quality and ease of use, but it is differentiated by the fact that it is economical to deploy and scalable for anything from a one-person operation to a 100-person operation.

ShopSmart can design your total e-commerce solution or work with you or your web designer to add the shopping cart, merchant services, credit card processing and communications suite to your existing web site.

For information on ShopSmart, call Len Stalker at (604) 543-8577, toll free at 1-877-288-6558 or e-mail stalker@comserve.com.

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