Modeling Your Business for Success

Different industries provide unique challenges for creating successful e-commerce sites. We picked the brains of real life web entrepreneurs in three common sectors—business to business, retail, and perishables—to discover what it takes to create a profitable web business. These e-commerce vendors share with you the lessons they've learned as they created and implemented their sites, and what are the unique challenges posed by each particular kind of industry. You have the choice of reading the text of these interviews, as well as listening to highlights in RealAudio.

Retail and the Web
John Ettema, owner of Inside-Out Home and Garden, knew that e-commerce was going to be hard to ignore, but he found it difficult justifying the dollars. His approach was to work with E-Congo, which is offering free web services to businesses in exchange for increased traffic to boost their banner ad sales.

Business-to-Business and the Art of Change
Garey De Martini, executive creative director for a San Jose advertising and public relations firm, Carter-Israel, has already overseen the third remake of the company's web site. Here's how they used the Web to help them promote their intellectual product.

Dealing With Perishables
Wild Alaska Smoked Salmon invested considerable time in honing e-commerce processes to ensure that their site would flourish. Victoria Rhoads tells us about the unique challenges they faced selling perishable items on the Web.

Modeling Your Business for Success

The Story of an Online Purchase