Does your company market products or services that can be sold via a catalog and delivered online or through the mail? Does your target audience number in the tens of thousands or more? If so, an online storefront can be the right move to grow your business with little additional investment.

With an online store, you can take orders over the Internet. At its most basic, an online storefront consists of a catalog that allows you to display and describe your offerings, a shopping cart that permits the addition and deletion of items to a shopper's order, and a secure order processing system that relays the order and payment information to you.

Despite these common elements, no two storefront systems seem to be quite the same. It is well worth the time to evaluate the various options to ensure a satisfactory shopping experience both from the customer's perspective and your own.

If you want to add online ordering to your web site, start shopping for a good shopping cart. The best way to do it is by finding an e-commerce provider and trying to buy product from another online store that uses that company for its shopping cart. As you browse or search through the catalog, check for an intuitive interface that makes products easy to find. Is it difficult to add or remove products from the shipping cart? If you don't feel comfortable going through the shopping process, your customers won't either.

Don't forget to actually place an order. That way, you can see how shipping charges and taxes are calculated and displayed. You can also get a sense for how your account is managed after the order is placed. For example, are you sent an e-mail receipt after the order is placed? Can you track your orders online? Do you receive an e-mail when your order has been shipped? Keep in mind that some features can be turned on and off. If you do not run across a feature you want during your shopping test, it may in fact exist but has not been enabled at the site that you are visiting.

If you're satisfied with the shopping experience, you should evaluate the actual nuts and bolts of setting up and maintaining the store. First, see how easy it is to add, update and delete items from your catalog. Does each item need to be listed individually or can you upload them in batches? How many images can you display per item? How easy is it to update text or images? Do you need to know HTML to create Web pages for your online store?

When it comes to implementation, you can set up your storefront yourself. However, if setting up online shopping seems technically daunting, many companies exist that can help.

Although you may be tempted to sign up for a program right away so you can finally get an online shopping presence, resist the urge. This is one purchase where impulse shopping is not advised.