GeoCities to Offer Electronic Storefront Tools

Santa Monica-based GeoCities, a provider of World Wide Web home pages, said it will provide tools to allow its 1.4 million members to build electronic storefronts. It said the new service, dubbed GeoShops, which capitalizes on partnerships with transaction service provider Internet Commerce Services and software maker OpenMarket, will help it further tap into the fast-growing electronic commerce market. “This will be integrated within each of our 40 themed communities, leveraging the traffic of each community, and integrating shops based on [the] theme of the community and the theme of the shop,” said David Bohnett, GeoCities chief executive. The price of creating a GeoShops Web site includes a $120 fee for credit card processing; a flat fee of $24.95 a month; and an additional monthly charge of $80, or $40 plus 5% of transactions, whichever is larger. The site is at https://www.geocities.com/join/geoshops