The e-mall portal at www.trolleymania.com, ‘opened’ last week with 37 shops and more than 4,000 products online. Eight e-shops will come on stream shortly.

Aimed at all local businesses seeking to venture into e-commerce, the project came to fruition through a public-private partnership between the government and Alert Communications.

At the inauguration, Communications Minister Austin Gatt pointed out that although 73 per cent of the local online population has recently made a purchase, only seven per cent were made through local online retailers.

Malta Information Technology Agency chairman Claudio Grech said the local business community had responded positively to the initiative – the original target was to have 50 retailers by October next year but the target was expected to be surpassed earlier.

Trolleymania reduces e-commerce set-up costs to a €250 (excluding VAT) one-time fee, a €232 fee per annum (excluding VAT), and a transaction charge of 0.25 per cent, also excluding VAT, on purchases.

The procedure is completely web-based: merchants register, choose a design template, add products in the product catalogue, select preferred methods for receiving payment (cash on delivery, debit and credit card payments, or both) and choose delivery options (own delivery or Malta Post delivery).

Trolleymania.com customers can browse 4,000 different products divided into 25 product categories. Besides the ability to view each product, customers can also compare similar items from different retailers.