WHAT IS THE EPITOME?
The Epitome is a provider of professional looking, prefabricated, non-exclusive e-commerce ready showcases to small businesses, helping them level the playing field with large competitors at a small price. These showcases are complete, navigable web sites, lacking only your product images and text. The sites are designed for novice-level text placement and updating, which can be accomplished without programming knowledge with the use of a wysiwyg HTML editor (see the "How-To Guide" for a list of possible tools, that are free, or low-cost). If you are not inclined towards updating your web site, you will be able to find low-cost assistance from your local high school or community college's New Media department. All that is required of anyone to know is how to insert text, how to insert an image, and how to upload your site to your web host. The image manipulation of sizing, cropping, and enhancing images, can be accomplished for free online, then saved to your computer, which most anyone can do. In addition to low-cost e-commerce ready showcases, we will be offering blog designs, bank and credit union designs and wine industry designs, however they will be higher in price.

The Epitome sites offer an alternative to a cheesey-looking web site from a low-cost vendor. The list of design mistakes found in such sites include: uncontrolled text page widths, the use of "rules" for topic separation, centering all text, too large of a font size (as in a child's reader), visible hit counters, cartoon clip art (not for serious business!), blinking text, busy backgrounds making it difficult to read the page and hard edged photos placed on the page without integrating them into the design (see Bad Example 1). The result of these amateurish design practices is a cheesey-looking web site, like the one in Bad Example 2. Would you trust your credit card to a business with such a site? Visit our Showroom and imagine how your "front door to the world" might look with a prefabricated design from The Epitome.

HOW DOES THE EPITOME DIFFER FROM TEMPLATE SELLERS?
The Epitome prefabricated web site designs are completely linked and navigable. The Epitome offers already built e-commerce ready showcases that only require your product images and text, without having to use expensive software tools. Most template sellers require you to possess Photoshop (at almost seven hundred dollars) and an expensive wysiwyg editor (three to four hundred dollars) in order to complete the menu items graphics, program the links for the menu items and place your text. Many of these templates are "plain" and do not draw interest. With a The Epitome site, you can use expensive software if you have it to insert your product images and text, but it is not necessary. The templates are only that -- just templates. They are not linked, not e-commerce ready, nor programmed for a showcase, leaving you do figure that out.

Summing it up, The Epitome sites don't require expensive software, they are graphic-rich enough to generate plenty of viewer interest, are e-commerce ready, and are professional looking enough to lend credibility to your business and inspire the trust of your visitors.

SERVICES NOT OFFERED
The Epitome is a design service ONLY, not a full-featured web consulting firm, one reason for the very low cost. The addition of your images and text is not included in the design service we offer, nor are site updates. We will, however, put your company name and slogan on the header graphic that appears on each page. Too, we set the cagegory linking and email variables to yours. For instance, we will change "Category 1" to your product category in the menu and change the links to the category pages, as well. We will also change the generic email links to yours, so that all that is needed are product images and text.

If you have knowledge of html, have the time and are inclined, you can populate and update your site yourself. If you are not inclined and want to leave that to others, it can be done inexpensively because a professional skill level is not required. There are many high school students who have enough knowledge to populate The Epitome site and keep it updated. A future topic addition to the Resources section will be a list of low-cost providers of such services, as they are discovered.

You need to know, too, that if you already have a logo that you want to use, you must make outside arragements to have it applied. A header graphic without a company name can be provided to you upon request, however, you will need professional help, as the header graphic without a company name will only come in native Photoshop file format and must be saved in Photoshop's ImageReady to have a small enough file size to download fast enough for the internet. (A .jpg image will not be offered, as it will degrade considerably with an additional file save. A .gif image will not be offered, as the file size is much too large to download fast enough for the internet, without additional expensive tools.)

Shopping cart integration isn't included. Look for the term "Plug & Play" when choosing a shopping cart. You can choose a payment processor first, or you can choose a shopping cart first. If you have found a payment processor with a very low rate, or a third party payment processor that requires no merchant account, for instance, you would then find what shopping carts the processor's system is compatible with. The payment processor will have vendor partners that are compatible.

If you are mostly concerned with shopping cart features, such as having the ability to export data to QuickBooks, then you would choose a shopping cart first, then go with payment processors who have systems that are compatible with your chosen shopping cart.

Finally, The Epitome designs are offered on a non-exclusive basis. With 30,000,000 web sites on the internet, the chances of your customers ever coming across another site also using your design are low, so why pay more in the unlikely event they do?

To avoid any disappointments, it is imperative that you understand what is not being offered, as these limitations are the reason the price can be so low. Despite the limitations, The Epitome has a lot to offer a lot of people who want to get out there with their products as inexpensively as they possibly can!

HOW DOES THE EPITOME DO IT?
The way The Epitome does it is by offering designs on a non-exclusive basis, reducing the cost of web design exponentially. As well as offering non-exclusive designs, being a design-only firm, offering inexpensively updatable sites, vastly reduces costs. That is how The Epitome does it.

MORE QUESTIONS? . . .
Please see Frequently Asked Questions.

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