(FORTUNE Small Business) – You can't afford to be the last business in America to launch an e-commerce site. The problem is knowing where to start. "Most small businesses find e-commerce intimidating," says Terri Lonier, a small business consultant and author of the bestseller Working Solo. "There are so many choices. But at a certain point, the train is leaving the station, and you'd better be on it."

Like any bricks-and-mortar store, a cyberstore needs a good location and a look and feel that engages customers. But remember that you're not just selling products but also building customer relationships, so you want to make sure that your site is secure and has access to site-traffic-analysis tools, e-mail, and other methods to develop that interaction.

How should you build your ideal store? Your e-commerce goals will make the decision for you. If you're just looking to experiment with the Web as a sales channel, you can start using a Web-based service such as Yahoo Store to build a small-scale operation quickly, easily, and at a minimal cost. If you are committed to giving e-commerce a shot as part of your business, you can enlist the help of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) with whom you can start small and grow. And if your e-commerce presence is going to be the core of your business, you might want to consider doing it yourself with off-the-shelf software and your own server. No matter which solution fits your situation, here are some tips on choosing the right product or service, with spotlights on representative offerings.

Getting your feet wet

A new class of dot-coms--the Web-based, storefront building service--can help you create a secure, customized online store quickly and cheaply through your browser. Each offers a Web catalog--usually limited to 50 to 100 products at the base price--and helps you secure an online merchant account. All of them manage the store for you on their servers, giving you a Web address that looks like yourstore.servicename .com. You can use your own domain name if you have one.

The downside is that the store you create might look as if it was stamped from a cookie cutter. Look for a service with enough options for store layout, color scheme, tables, and so on, which will give you a better chance at creating a store that reflects what your business is about. For even more flexibility, choose a service that lets you upload Web pages of your own design.

An appealing site design is important, but what happens behind the scenes can be even more critical. Take a close look at how easily you can set up a catalog and track inventory--and how much the service charges for selling additional products. Order processing also merits attention: Automatic tax, shipping, and discount calculations are highly desirable, as are automatic e-mails to customers that confirm orders and fulfillment.

The number of Websites out there promising you a quick and easy e-commerce site mushrooms every day. Two of the better ones are Bigstep.com and Yahoo Store. Bigstep.com's big deal is that you can build a site for free. Store building is easy, you can sell as many products as you'd like, and you get help with reporting and promotion. You will pay for added services such as a merchant account ($14.95 a month and 20 cents a transaction from Cardservice International), but that's standard. What's the catch? The most significant downside is that your Bigstep site has a strip across the top of every page with the Bigstep logo that links back to www.bigstep.com, which may compete with your own branding effort.

Yahoo Store ($100 per month for 50 items; store.yahoo.com) lets you put a store together quickly using one of 15 pre-defined templates--but the results may not thrill you. You can add your own html pages to the site, though, unlike with Bigstep. Your store will be placed in the Yahoo mall, but it's crowded with more than 7,000 stores. You cannot rely on it to send you traffic unless you're unique.

Enlisting an ISP

Every ISP and its brother offers some form of e-commerce hosting. This can range from services very similar to what Yahoo Store offers to those that pair you with a system integrator for expensive custom development. The appeal of going to an ISP is the service and support you'll get along the way and the opportunity to grow your site as your e-business expands.

An increasing number of ISPs now license versions of high-end e-commerce software to help you build your own store. These store-building tools will probably not be as easy to use as those offered by a site like Bigstep. You will be able to add features and special pages more easily, however, and use your preexisting product and customer databases instead of starting over. The tools generally require either html programming or the wherewithal to pay for such development, but you're more likely to end up with the store you want.

MindSpring Complete Commerce ($209.90 per month for unlimited products; 888-932-1997; business.mindspring.com) makes sense if you know your way around site development, since you can't complete a store without writing at least a little code. The provided store-building software lets you merchandise your products and suggestively sell related ones. Very good analytical reports show you how customers traverse your site.

Verio, one of the largest Web-hosting companies, offers VerioStore ($199 per month for 300 items; 888-663-6648; www.veriostore.com). You get a limited set of templates for your storefront, but you can cut and paste your own html into them or build custom pages using a macro language. Verio helps you establish a merchant account and builds in shipping and sales tax calculations.

Going it alone

Setting up an e-commerce site on your own costs a lot, presents a challenge even for the technically adept, and forces you to worry about issues such as security. When a small business decides to go the do-it-yourself route, "it must run the gauntlet through a process of many, many steps," says Mary Porter, a research analyst at International Data Corp. The main benefits, she says, are virtually unlimited customization and potential for growth. The price you pay for that freedom will be in the tens of thousands of dollars after you shell out for the necessary site development, hardware, cooling systems, bandwidth, and for a full-time system administrator.

There are advantages, though. For one thing, you get better control over your site's performance--you're not sharing all the resources mentioned above with other companies' sites as you are in the other scenarios. And you can always add any bells and whistles you want, either through custom programming or software designed for building and maintaining stores.

If you're going to do it yourself, Able Commerce Pro! 2.6 ($1,595, including ColdFusion Pro Web server; 360-253-4142; www.ablecommerce.com) can make the path smoother. It comes with 300 page templates, so you don't have to build your store from the ground up. You can use the administrative tools to manage inventory, calculate shipping, and run reports. And secure credit card payment is relatively easy to set up thanks to built-in integration with CyberCash.

A popular solution for serious commerce, Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition ($4,609; 800-426-9400; www.microsoft.com/siteserver/commerce/default.htm) helps you model your online-business process graphically, from shopping cart to shipping. Its wizards (step-by-step guides) and templates only go so far, requiring you to code the features you'll need for a big-league store.