Lycos Stores (http://products.lycos.com/merchantcenter/) has a different approach to zShops (reviewed last month http://wilsonweb.com/wct3/zshops.cfm) to providing merchant services. While Amazon.com zShops provides the ability to get into e-commerce with very little up-front cash, and no requirement for a Merchant Credit Card account, Lycos Stores offers a full-blown online store operation that includes superior order tracking capabilities, and the ability to build a store of 5,000 products or so.
ShopSite-TX Pro Platform
Lycos Stores uses ShopSite-TX Pro (reviewed in this issue), an extremely capable and easy-to-use store-building and store operation software. Lycos Stores' implementation only allows the "Lefty" selections from the layout and color scheme menu which lists pages or sections on a wide band of color to the left of the product area of the page. This is an excellent choice, since the other layouts are pretty bizarre anyway. However, Lycos Stores does not allow the "plain" choice which allows website designers to create a unique and beautiful design. Designers do have access to the Universal Header and Footer, but other than a different logo at the top, all Lycos Stores will look pretty much the same, except for a choice of 8 colors in the band of color.
Ordering and Credit Card Details
Lycos Stores' Universal Shopping Cart offers one-click buying and a single convenient checkout system for customers who can select items from all the stores in the system and then register and check-out only once with a single receipt. If the customer has purchased items in several stores, however, they will receive a major receipt as well as a sub order receipt for each store (which detail taxes and shipping from each store). After the sale, merchants are sent an Advice Of Order (AOO) e-mail message. After the merchant ships an item and records that fact in the back office, the Transact system charges it to the shopper's credit card.
The Transact system maintains its own connection to the credit card processor (so far, First Data Corp.) so no further payment gateway such as Signio or CyberCash is necessary. Merchants must supply a merchant account number and a terminal number.
Lycos has a special relationship with CardService International to set up Merchant Credit Card Accounts. The "application fee" and "annual fee" are waived, says the Lycos' description, but merchants pay a $75 "set-up fee" and an additional $10 per month "customer service fee" ($120 per year). Both the discount rate (2.35%) and the transaction fees (30 cents including AVS) seem normal. If you have your own Merchant Credit Card Account you avoid those "set-up" and "customer service" fees. :-)
Pricing
Lycos Stores fee schedule for their online stores was as follows as of mid-October 1999:
Rent
$99 per month
Transaction fee
5.0% up to $100
2.5% from $100.01 up to $1000
1.25% of the balance over $1000
Taxware software transaction fee
5 cents per transaction
You can sign up online to be a merchant (however, note that the sign-up form that asks for your credit card information is not secure).
Analysis
While Lycos Stores isn't for the tiniest shops, their $99 per month plus 2.5% to 5% typical fees are quite reasonable. Since the merchant does NOT have to pay an additional payment gateway fee of $30 to $50 per month, the monthly cost sounds pretty good. The transaction fees are almost exactly those of Amazon zShops. These cover the kind of marketing exposure that a major portal site can offer, listing the merchant's shop and products in a searchable product database. I don't see any kind of set-up fee listed on Lycos' site, which means that the merchant's up-front cost (except for obtaining a merchant credit card account) is minimal, except for time to set up the store.
On the downside, merchants can't use their own domain name. Their store URL is tied to the Lycos.com domain, which keeps them pretty dependent upon Lycos for marketing. Design limitations, too, limit a store's look and feel to what Lycos Stores allows.
But overall, merchants get a top notch store management product for a reasonable monthly cost, and exposure to the shopping traffic of a major portal site.
