(FORTUNE Small Business) – As a consumer, it's hard not to love the reach of the World Wide Web. Round-trip tickets to Bora Bora, Callaway golf clubs, Darth Maul action figures--it seems everything can be had online these days. Still, all that choice can be daunting. How does a consumer who is poised to click on a case of Gravy Train truly know if he or she is getting the best possible price? Or if the site will follow up if the Gravy Train shipment gets derailed en route? If consumers are overwhelmed, e-businesses surely are too, trying to meet the ever-increasing expectations of hard-to-please online customers.

Julio Gomez believes he has the answers to these and other e-commerce head-scratchers. He is the founder and CEO of Gomez Advisors, a three-year-old startup outside of Boston. His Website, Gomez.com, rates consumer e-commerce Websites on a scale of zero to ten in 25 online markets ranging from booksellers to stock brokerages to pet stores. It also reviews the sites, measures their strengths and weaknesses, and compares them with one another on price, ease of use, and other criteria. These ratings and reviews are highly anticipated in the industry, and a top score is a coveted prize that is heralded in press releases and news reports.

Yet Gomez doesn't simply want to be a big-thumbed Roger Ebert for the Web. His company also takes the analysis it uses to rate a site and packages it as "e-commerce intelligence" for business customers. Gomez, a 40-year-old native of Cuba who grew up in Trenton, N.J., is well on his way to positioning his company, which had $3 million in sales in the past two quarters, as a first-rate authority on e-commerce--and he is gearing up for an initial public offering. He recently sat down with FSB to discuss Gomez Advisors and what small businesses can do to create winning e-commerce Websites.

--How did you develop the idea for setting up a ranking system for consumer Websites?

We wanted to make sure our young company became known for its expertise, so we decided that a unique way to do it would be to analyze the quality of Internet services and create a ranking out of that analysis. Immediately we found that consumers had a thirst for this kind of information. The rankings also stimulated interaction between consumers and businesses and put us right in the middle of that information flow.

--How did you come up with your rankings?

Our methodology is not subjective like judging figure skating, where you say, "Oh, we liked that flip or that costume." It relies on putting together objective criteria and then scoring each site in its industry based on that criteria. For example, What do you want from an online broker? Alerts would be one thing. You want them to call you when there is something going on in your portfolio that you should know about. Or if you're a travel agent, your site either allows you to reserve a flight today and buy it tomorrow, or it doesn't. We apply as many as 250 criteria like these to the sites, and each company in a sector is subject to the same measure. That's why we think our rankings are so valuable.

--And you keep your criteria--which you use to evaluate the elements of a site--secret. Why not tell the world exactly what you scrutinize?

As a business we need to protect ourselves from three guys and a dog at Stanford who have decided that they're going into the rankings business too, with our criteria and a couple of million dollars in venture capital. This is like our Coca-Cola formula.

Switching to the e-commerce consulting side of the company, how do you advise business customers what's strong and what's weak on their Websites?

In our research division we take all the data we collect from scoring the sites and analyze them for business customers for a subscription fee. The idea here is to help e-commerce firms answer three basic questions: First, what does the competitive landscape look like online in my industry? Our scorecard is, of course, an invaluable description of that landscape because it compares competitors.

Second, what is the face of the changing online consumer? This is important because the people who are coming online today want and expect different benefits from e-commerce firms than they did even a year ago.

Last, what are the trends in technology that I have to stay on top of, and what companies should I become a partner with to do this?

--Your business model has taken some heat from critics who are disturbed by possible conflicts of interest. For example, you score companies that also advertise on your Website, and your consulting can help a company move up in the rankings. How do you respond to this critique?

This is a deeply cynical view. I would encourage you to call all 850 firms that we rank, and I think you will find that Gomez Advisors has never committed any impropriety. The only places where I have seen reports of a perceived conflict of interest have been in publications that receive advertising from companies that also appear in featured lists and stories in those publications.

Besides, I can make an economic argument that says the market valuation of a fast-growing Internet company like ours is such that there is not anyone who could pay us enough to have us squander our business. What truly drives us here is the mission to create undeniable value with unshakable integrity and unparalleled expertise. That's what gets us up in the morning--not figuring out a way to get an additional $10,000 out of an advertiser.

--What advice can you provide to small companies that are contemplating or preparing to launch e-commerce Websites?

First, I think that if you have never been a big user of technology you need to take a "technology vacation" and really immerse yourself in the culture of the Internet and maybe the technology itself. Do a lot of homework, and determine whether you have a passion for it. If you do, fine. But if you don't, you need to look around your organization and find someone who does and then empower that person.

You see, it's the passion that really makes the difference right now. A company that wants to go into e-commerce should really be asking itself why. If it doesn't have a good answer, it should stay out.

--Is a good, concrete answer to that question, "Well, I can add 'x' to my revenue stream?"

Yes. The right answer is: "I can grow my business." The wrong answer is: "Everyone else is doing it. I guess I should too."

--So how do you stand out from the pack? Is developing the brand the be-all-and-end-all solution?

Well, brand is an important part of it at this stage of the game, where national if not global online companies are being built. But there is another opportunity for smaller firms to actually exploit the fact that they are local and take advantage of the existing familiarity of their brands in their local market. Take "cross-channel integration." That means a local dry cleaner or pizza restaurant can schedule deliveries over the Internet in their market and advertise that service at the point of sale or in the local newspaper. That's e-commerce, and you don't need a Super Bowl ad to do it.

--Still, developing an effective e-commerce site that you are reasonably sure will help you make more money is tricky--and expensive.

There is no question that expanding your business to have an e-commerce component constitutes an investment. There's no way around it. And the reality is that small businesses are staffed with extremely busy people. So the big challenge is to make the time for this and dedicate the resources for it.

But the good news for small businesses is that there are quite a large number of vendors out there with inexpensive software you can use to build a Website, and even if you have limited functionality, you can create an e-commerce capacity relatively cheaply. You could be the first pizza parlor in Scarsdale, N.Y., for intstance, to take orders over the Internet, and that will not only generate additional sales, but it will also create tremendous public relations benefits that small companies don't normally get.

--So over the past year, what factors have most affected e-commerce that is targeted to consumers?

I think that today the mainstream consumer is beginning to consider the Internet a routine part of his or her everyday purchasing. Consumers are highly motivated to buy whatever they need online, and they are highly responsive to the branding efforts of e-commerce companies. I believe we are seeing the fastest change in consumer behavior in the history of humanity.