AIT: Ecommerce as easy as 1-2-3

February 23, 2005; 09:07 AM

(FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.) -- · Millions of dollars in suction cups sold each year by a New York company · Oysters fresh from the Chesapeake to your table in 24 hours · A West Coast software engineer who made 30K part-time selling caps They are among the thousands of entrepreneurs who, with the help of AIT (http://ait.com/ecommercehosting.php), appeal to the millions of consumers spending billions of dollars on the Internet.

"Going online is been absolutely no risk," says Richard Cantwell, the Virginia oysterman. Even though Cantwell sells offline, too, "I believe the real growth in the business is in the Internet component."

AIT has now made e-commerce even easier with the introduction of a series of plans that includes all of the components needed for online sales. Each package comes with AIT's proprietary shopping cart along with a merchant account and gateway, plus a billing solution. "Any way that you add up the numbers, online sales has gained mainstream acceptance in terms of consumer behavior," said Clarence Briggs, AIT's Chief Executive.

"Our role is to make it easy for any business to establish a beach head on this continually growing economic front." Merchants can access sales data from any browser, transactions are automatically settled every day, and there are no software upgrades. In addition, AIT recently released an upgraded version of its Mcart shopping cart software, making the entire online buying process - from product presentation to order fulfillment - more personalized for the buyer and more intuitive for the merchant.

Mcart 2005 analyzes search terms used in purchasing decisions, it shows associated products on the cart page, it catalogs ‘most frequently bought' items, and even provides cart AIT is also continuing a 30-day Test Drive of all of its products and hosting plans, something the company began offering earlier this year, leading many of its competitors to follow suit.

"The best test of a service is the reality test," says Chief Operating Officer Kirk deViere. "Performance is why customers stay with a hosting company, and there is no better means of judging performance than actually using a plan and using it with no risk."