Small Business e-Commerce Portals Check out Small Business Center and the other e-commerce portals mentioned.

Then answer the questions.

Note: Small Business Center and Entrabase.com are interesting sites that offer a wide variety of products and services. For example: Small Business Center Small Business Center's website offers assistance in starting a Web site, marketing businesses online, and helping manage them more effectively.

The website is free but the services such as marketing or web hosting are not. Microsoft appears to have adopted the strategy that if they can help their customer get off the ground with free information ("How to Write a Business Plan", etc.) then the customer is more likely to need Microsoft's services.

Microsoft has a section for small business which advertises that they can bring together best in-class products and services to serve small businesses through the Web.

With marketplace news, better buying opportunities for products and services, and technology solutions for marketing and sales, web-design, hosting, e-commerce and more, this site claims they can take a business online quickly, enable it to reach new customers, turn browsers into buyers, and extend and customize the site. Entrabase.com Entrabase offers a soup to nuts solution to get its customers off the ground and onto the web.

Services include web hosting, eCommerce hosting, management and administration tools, and consulting services. Entrabase allows managers to focus on their business and not the technology.

The website's design was extremely effective in organization and presentation. Even though Entrabase has a lot to offer its customers, a visitor does not need to explore randomly in order to discover Entrabase' full product and service spectrum.

a. Which Web site is your favorite? Why?

b. Which site would you recommend or use to help a small business wanting to get into e-commerce? Why?