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Why Gourmet Food Mall
Why
should I choose Gourmet Food Mall?
I already have a website. Why do I need Gourmet
Food Mall?
Why are "category floors" important for my
products?
What is "dynamic product merchandising"?
Will online shoppers be able to find my webstore
using
search engines?
Managing My Webstore
Will GourmetFoodMall help me set up my online
store?
How often can I change my product listings?
What if my webstore sells the same products as
another
store?
How long will it take to get my webstore online?
Where is my
webstore hosted?
Do I need to know HTML to maintain my webstore?
What will my store's URL be? Can I use my existing
domain
name?
How do I
receive my orders?
Security
What kind of security do you have for online
transactions?
Why do I need a "card not present" merchant
account?
Can I receive my orders via email and then process them through my POS
terminal
in my store?
How do I get a "card-not-present" merchant
account?
General
What is the difference between GourmetFoodMall.com
and
GourmetFoodMall.net?
How
much does it
cost?
Who can I call if I have a problem or question?
Why should I choose Gourmet Food Mall?
Gourmet Food Mall is the first
and only
completely integrated e-commerce platform for the gourmet products and
specialty
food industry. Gourmet Food Mall provides you with a state of the
art
platform to do business on the Internet; the location
where your webstore and products can be seen by your targeted customers;
and the
customized strategies that you need to use to be
successful and
profitable in this online channel.
Benefits of our platform include:
- Qualified online
traffic
- Web-based point and
click
interface
- No HTML knowledge
required
to maintain and update your webstore
- 24/7/365 access to
your
webstore to manage and update
- Low cost, pre-paid
store
maintenance plans
- Participation in
online and
offline marketing programs
We are actively
selecting companies with unique products and a great story
to
tell to be featured on the
award winning Gourmet Food Mall website. To find out if your company
qualifies to be a Gourmet Food Mall merchant, please visit out our
Join GourmetFoodMall page.
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I already have a website. Why do I need Gourmet
Food Mall?
GourmetFoodMall uses a multi-channel approach to helping you gain visibility for your products and, just as importantly, your brand. From webstores to email blasts, product reviews to product photography, we do it all! For more information, visit www.gogfm.com, or contact us at sales@gourmetfoodmall.com.
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Why are “category floors” important for my products?
Gourmet Food Mall is very similar to a
“real life”
shopping mall or a large department store. Our Mall is structured
to replicate
the way people generally shop at their local mall, except we make the
process
much easier, informative, and more convenient. Our “category
floors” are a
convenient way for online shoppers to browse the Mall and
discover your
products and webstore.
Most of the time, online shoppers may
only have a
general idea of what they are interested in. By having products
and webstores
grouped into category floors, shoppers can more easily browse and
see
what’s available. If your webstore has several types of products,
this gives
you a greater opportunity to merchandise to these shoppers.
Gourmet Food Mall
currently offers online shoppers over 40 category floors to
browse. Your
Gourmet Food Mall account manager will assist you in selecting the most
pertinent category floors to ensure that you are positioned properly to
merchandise to our online shoppers.
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What is “dynamic product merchandising”?
Gourmet Food Mall’s “dynamic product
merchandising” technology allows you to feature products that are
relevant to
the interests of each individual online shopper. Each webstore has
the
capability to feature four (4) products on the home page. With
dynamic product
merchandising, these 4 products change to fit the interests of the
shopper
according to the path that they arrived at the webstore. For
instance, if a
shopper was searching for coffee and tea products and they clicked your
webstore, they would see your coffee and tea products featured on your
home
page. If another shopper was browsing on the candy and chocolate
category floor
and then clicked to your webstore, that shopper would see your candy and
chocolate products featured on your home page.
Our dynamic product merchandising
technology is a
powerful feature that allows you to merchandise to the individual online
shopper.
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Will online shoppers be able to find my webstore using
search
engines?
Yes. An additional benefit in being a
Gourmet
Food Mall merchant is that we optimize your webstore and products for
all of the
major search engines. Each merchant is assigned their own unique
URL address (www.mystore.gourmetfoodmall.com).
If you already have a domain name, you can easily transfer that address
to your
Gourmet Food Mall webstore. Either way, your products and webstore
will be
accessible directly from search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, AOL, and
more.
Contact your Gourmet Food Mall account manager or our technical services
department for more details.
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Will GourmetFoodMall help me set up my online store?
Yes. The only way to tell your story
online
and communicate your value proposition is through your own branded
webstore.
The look, feel and functionality of your webstore are critical to the
success of
your online business. We are experts at what works well
online and
what doesn’t. Our professional design staff will assist you
in
developing the best webstore solutions for your online objectives.
Please
contact our sales department via email at sales@gourmetfoodmall.com
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How often can I change my product listings?
You can update your webstore as often as
you want,
from any internet-connected computer, through your Merchant
Console. While we
have made it easy to make changes to your webstore, we realize that many
of our
merchants have neither the time nor inclination to make these changes
themselves. That is why Gourmet Food Mall offers an inexpensive
Pre-Paid
Maintenance program where we handle all of your webstore maintenance
quickly and
professionally. For more information please contact our technical
services
department.
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What if my webstore sells the same products as another
store?
Because there will be hundreds of
merchants who
list thousands of products on Gourmet Food Mall, there will be some
overlap in
products and brands. We do not assign exclusive rights to offer
particular
products. There will be competition, just as in any shopping
mall.
Why do your customers buy from
you right
now? It is not about being the
cheapest. Each
successful business has a distinctive value proposition or competitive
advantage. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t stay in business very
long. Gourmet
Food Mall works with you to translate your value proposition to the
online
environment. The Web is the most ideal communication channel ever
devised and
the companies that will be the most successful are the ones that view
the
Internet as a complement to their traditional ways of competing.
In addition,
Gourmet Food Mall offers many different ways to merchandize your
products and
webstore to create added awareness and visibility.
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How
long will it take to get my webstore online?
Most of our webstores can be created in
just a few
days. It all depends on how many products will be added to your
store database
and if you have all of your information readily available. You
will need all
product information, all graphic images (in jpg format), and an e-mail
address
so we can send information to you. You also need to set up your
“card-not-present” merchant account in order to accept credit cards and
use our
“mall-wide” shopping cart. Allowing time for you to get your
information
together and setting up your merchant account, we can have your webstore
up and
running in about a week.
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Where is my webstore hosted?
In order to ensure a stable and reliable
shopping
environment for our online shoppers, all of our webstores are hosted on
our
platform and servers. If you already have a website, we can
replicate the look
and feel of that site in your Gourmet Food Mall webstore.
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Do
I
need to know HTML to maintain my webstore?
No experience with HTML or related
technologies is
required. Our easy-to-use Merchant Console takes care of the
formatting and
automation for you.
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What will my store’s URL be? Can I use my existing
domain name?
Each webstore has its own unique URL or
internet
address such as www.mystore.gourmetfoodmall.com . And, YES
you can use
your existing domain name. For example if you owned the “salsa.com”
domain name, you can continue to use that domain name and it will take
your
online customers to your Gourmet Food Mall webstore. To obtain the
greatest
benefit from Gourmet Food Mall we highly recommend that you transfer
your
current online address to your Gourmet Food Mall webstore. It is
easy to do and
our technical services department will help you.
For larger brands that have invested
heavily in
their current website, please note that we do not require
exclusive
arrangements. You can continue to maintain another website outside
of our
Mall. However, for the majority of our merchants, there is no
practical reason
to maintain two websites.
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How do I receive my orders?
Currently there are two ways that you can
receive your
online orders:
- You will receive
notification of your orders via email. This notification will
include all of
the necessary information to process that order, and
- You can access your
orders
online through your Merchant Console.
Coming soon … you will be able to
retrieve orders
as database files in a choice of common formats. This allows
merchants with a
large volume of orders to integrate their web orders directly into their
existing ordering system.
By providing several ways of receiving
your
orders, it minimizes the risk that an order will not be processed due to
human
error or technical disruption.
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What kind of security do you have for online
transactions?
Online security is a priority to Gourmet Food
Mall.
We use a secure transaction environment and industry-standard SSL
encryption
wherever sensitive information is required to be used, such as during
the
shopping cart checkout process. SSL provides privacy
protection by encrypting
the channel of communication between Gourmet Food Mall, you - our
merchant and
your online customer. Through SSL, your customers can complete
transactions at
Gourmet Food Mall with confidence that no one else can read, change, or
fool
with their payment information as it travels over the Internet.
Gourmet Food Mall gives your customers
the most
comprehensive protection available on the Web today. Only Gourmet
Food Mall’s
Safe Shopping Guarantee protects online shoppers when they shop any of
the
webstores in our mall:
- We guarantee their
Credit Card Safety,
- We guarantee their
100% Satisfaction when ordering products from any or our
merchant
webstores, and
- We guarantee their
Privacy by not releasing personal information to any 3rd
party.
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Why do I need a “card not present” merchant account?
All bankcard companies (i.e. Visa and
MasterCard)
contractually require merchants to have “card not present” merchant
accounts for
all online transactions. Card-Not-Present (CNP) merchants
are targets for
bankcard fraud. Scamsters take advantage of the fact that they can
operate
anonymously. They know that many of the bankcard features (such as
checking the
cardholder’s signature on the sales draft against the signature on the
card)
that prevent fraud in the physical world do not apply in the
card-not-present
environment. Mail order/telephone order (MO/TO) and e-commerce
merchants who
choose to process transactions in the card-not-present environment must
understand that there is greater need for protection against fraud
exposure and
associated losses.
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Can I receive my orders via email and then process them
through
my POS terminal in my store?
No. Email works independently of any
security
software, such as SSL and is not protected. Email is vulnerable
and should
probably never be used to send or receive sensitive information such as
credit
card numbers. In our email order notification to the merchant, the
purchaser’s
credit card number is not included for these security reasons.
Gourmet Food
Mall’s shopping cart and order processing system provides a secure and
robust
payment infrastructure. In addition, Visa and
MasterCard prohibit the use of
card-not-present transactions processed through retail POS
terminals. Please
contact your merchant account provider for details.
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How
do I get a “card-not-present” merchant account?
Gourmet Food Mall requires all merchants to
have an
approved “card-not-present” merchant account prior to activation of
their
webstore. Gourmet Food Mall has partnered with Paymentech, the
nation’s leading
processor of e-commerce and direct marketing payment transactions to
offer a
preferred merchant account program. As the preferred merchant
account provider
to Gourmet Food Mall, Paymentech offers low prices and great service for
Gourmet
Food Mall merchants to accept credit cards in their webstore.
Please contact your Account Manager for
costs and
details. You can also log-on to your Merchant Console to apply for
your
merchant account or set-up an existing merchant account. If you
already have a
“card-not-present” merchant account or would like to choose a different
merchant
account provider, you are welcome to use any bank that is compatible
with the
Authorize.net platform.
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What is the difference between GourmetFoodMall.com and
GourmetFoodMall.net?
GourmetFoodMall.com is our retail or
direct-to-consumer (B2C) website and GourmetFoodMall.net is our
wholesale or
trade only (B2B) website. If you are interested in selling
wholesale,
please contact your Account Manager
or send
us a
Prospective Merchant Form for more information.
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How
much does it cost?
GourmetFoodMall charges a monthly
rent
based on the size of your webstore. Your rent will be charged to
your credit
card each month and you will receive an e-receipt (email receipt) on the
same
day. You can learn more about our progam here Join GourmetFoodMall
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Who
can
I call if I have a problem or question?
Shortly after registration you
will be
assigned a personal account manager. Our account managers
are there to help
you get the most out of your GourmetFoodMall webstore.
Having access to this
valuable resource is included in your monthly rent. You can
reach your account
manager via email at accountmanager@gourmetfoodmall.com
In addition, our technical services
department is
available to answer any technical questions that you may have. You
can
reach technical services during normal business hours M-F 9am-5pm EST via email by clicking here
Technical
Services Group.
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