Many successful online retailers start out as eBay sellers or with Yahoo stores, then eventually outgrow those venues and want a URL of their own. Leaving the sheltered environment of a supported venue is not easy and requires a big leap in understanding of how to operate a web site. Our first speaker is an analyst with JupiterResearch who has evaluated retailer's options for e-commerce platforms. He will discuss the factors that retailers should take into consideration when weighing outsourcing, buying or a hybrid approach to an e-commerce platform. Our second speaker, head of a small online toy store, will walk retailers through how to decide whether to go to a stand-alone site or stay in a hosted environment and how to know when you've become big enough to go out on your own. Both speakers will also talk about how to define your web site needs before you start analyzing e-commerce platform providers, how to make sure the functionality you get in an e-commerce platform is actually what you need, what questions to ask to find out what's included in the platform and how to identify the right platform provider.