by Chris Dawson

    ProStores have just released the latest upgrade which makes setting up your own shop on the Internet easier than ever for eBay sellers.
    Possibly the most attractive upgrade is the ease with which eBay fixed price listings can be imported into ProStores enabling you to get set up for business in just minutes. Not only will ProStores import your eBay listings but it’ll regularly sync with eBay to ensure your stock levels are always up to date.
Other updates include a new tabbed design to present the most important information up front to your customers (that sounds suspiciously like the new view item page on eBay), making the product image, price and attributes, and a more prominent “Add to Cart” button more visible.
    The shopping cart itself has been upgraded giving a smoother checkout flow and search pages which have no matching products now have a ‘Featured Products’ display and an ‘Advanced Search’ box that includes search tips to keep buyers on your site.
   ProStores costs start at just $9.95 a month, although in reality that limits you to just 20 live products in your store. Most serious sellers will start straight off with the Business package at $29.95 allowing you to stock up to 10,000 products.
    ProStores has always been a US based product, eBay integration is with eBay.com only. Also prices will be displayed in US $ although there is a third party currency converter add on which will allow buyers to select their country from a drop down.
    ProStores is great for US users with the eBay.com integration, but for users in other countries it’s a fairly expensive way to run an online store. It would be great to see a similar product available in the UK, but currently standalone ecommerce packages look a better more flexible and more cost effective option.