E-Zekiel the "Easy Website Solution" for churches and ministries has partnered with Spread the Word in order to offer their customers the opportunity to offer a fully stocked online Christian store on their E-Zekiel website.
(PRWEB) June 10, 2004--Christian books and other products generate $5 billion annually, but less than 12% of those dollars are ever returned to ministry. With numbers like that in evidence, Spread the Word (STW) heeded a call to reclaim the Christian marketplace and drive back revenues to churches and other ministries.
The order is tall, but the process is easy. Churches with E-Zekiel sites can get a fully stocked online bookstore up and running in less than an hour online, thanks to STWs partnership with Praktikos Technologies, E-Zekiels developer.
The fully customizable, e-commerce solution enables churches and ministries to establish their own online bookstore, with immediate access to over 150,000 products, including Bible, book, gift, video, music and home schooling titles. The bookstore can also be set up to receive online donations and process conference registrations, and the church can add its own product, such as a sermon series.
Traditional merchant headaches, such as Visa, MasterCard and Amex transactions, are handled by STW, which processes the payment and sends it on to the ministry that owns the store. STW also provides all customer service.
From a practical standpoint, the bookstore will do two things," said Bill Nix, CEO of Praktikos. First, it will increase Web site traffic. The success of a Web site is really dependent on being able to draw visitors to the site – and to give them a reason to return time and again. Second, it also in many cases provides enough income that the church or ministry is able to pay for its Web presence through the bookstores sales. This is the most cost-effective way for a church to stock a bookstore and manage its sales and shipping."
Thirty percent of each sale comes off the top and, at the churchs discretion, can be given as a discount on sales, be placed in church coffers or divided any way the church sees fit.
The partnership between STW and Praktikos was a natural choice. We both have like minds in how to serve the Christian community," said Jim Ball, STWs sales director. E-Zekiel provides a turnkey Web site solution; STW provides a turnkey e-commerce solution for those Web sites.
For a one-time setup fee of $290, the STW program package includes shopping carts, payment processor, and shipping and distribution. Churches can offer the broadest selection available or narrow the offerings to appropriate denominational literature and related items.
Spread the Word does the shipping, but the invoices and other identifying factors are in the churchs name. That keeps the customer returning to the church Web site and its online bookstore, rather than to another vendor. We want traffic to go to our churches and stay with our churches," Mr. Ball said.
Since their introduction three years ago, E-Zekiel Web sites have provided a cost-effective Web presence for more than 7,000 churches or Christian organizations. In less than two years, STW has built over 1,500 distribution points for Christian products.
Churches of 500 members generate close to $15,000 each month for the Christian bookstore marketplace," Mr. Ball said. Its being spent somewhere." Spread the Word sees great potential for reclaiming a portion of that for Christian ministries.
Any online ministry with a Christian following or group that it serves should be plugged into the Christian marketplace to retake dollars for Christ," Mr. Ball noted. Its just a great stewardship opportunity over the resource that is the Christian Product Industry. It is a new way to get more out of our discretionary income that we spend anyway as believers."
For more information, contact E-Zekiel Support at 1-888-942-6607 or Jim Ball, sales director for Spread the Word, at (602) 614-6341 or 1 800 693-5133.
###
|
