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There are a lot of snake oil salesmen out here in Internet land. It costs very little time or effort to issue a press release, but many many programmer-hours of work to actually build an e-commerce site that will process transactions securely and robustly. As more steps in the supply chain move onto the Internet, businesses need flexible solutions that will keep their proprietary data safe. It's hard for users of such a site to evaluate the risks that they may be taking.

Because of these concerns, we enthusiastically support "seals of approval" for e-commerce sites. Trade associations can play an important role by providing independent and impartial evaluations and standards for e-commerce in their industries. VerticalNet, the parent company of Semiconductor Online, encourages such efforts and is eager to work with associations in the industries we serve.

In order to be credible, though, such a standards-setting body must actually be impartial. Vague "endorsements" are meaningless without clear evaluation criteria. We therefore encourage our readers to take a closer look at all web site claims, including ours. Useful questions for the site or the endorsing organization might include:

• Does the endorser have any financial or other relationship with the site? The American Medical Association's ill-fated venture into product endorsements serves as a cautionary tale here.
• Is the endorsement permanent, or subject to renewal and recertification? For example, sites displaying the Trust-E privacy certification are subject to random compliance checks.
• How were the endorsement criteria established, and are they publicly available? Current standards-setting mechanisms in the semiconductor manufacturing industry work well, and are equally applicable to the e-commerce domain.
• Does the e-commerce site provide facilities, such as escrow services, to make sure that goods and funds are delivered as promised?
• Does the site comply with software industry standards for secure data exchange?
• Does the site comply with the relevant industry's standards, if any, for product description and specification? If no such standards exist, is the site helping to develop them?
• Does the site use standard methods and interfaces to make sure that databases such as online catalogs are portable? No one wants to maintain three different catalogs for three different Web sites.
• What is the site's business model and financial position? Will it be around to support your e-commerce needs as they grow and change?
• E-commerce software spans a vast array of topics, from catalog building to transaction processing. Is the site investing enough in software development to keep up with technological change?

Many of these questions probably seem like common sense. They are. The snake oil salesmen would have you check your common sense at the door. They want you to believe that e-commerce is so frighteningly complicated that the only answer is to trust your business to "the experts." But you don't have to be a legal expert to hire a good lawyer, and you don't have to be a programmer to evaluate a Web site.

Semiconductor Online welcomes this kind of scrutiny. We invite our competitors to do the same.