TerraNetwork

Sage Pay have announced that they have scheduled a major system upgrade beginning Saturday 17th April 2010 at 22.00 hrs UK time. As far as we can tell the main part of this upgrade will involve changing the ip addresses which their name servers work on.

Sage Pay are anticipating minimal disruption (calculated in minutes) while the ip address changes take place – but we have been here before with Sage Pay system upgrades and their track record is not great.

As Internet Service Providers lock onto the ip addresses which name servers use and not the actual names they use we hope that Sage Pay will put in place forwarding from the old ip addresses to the new. If they fail to do this, or fail to do it correctly, or their systems get overloaded with the redirects then you should expect disruption for much longer than a few minutes.

Our advice – if you have alternative payment modules installed but not currently in use, such as Pay Pal, then you should activate them ready for the 17th of April, thus guaranteeing that your customers are able to make payments to you.

Hopefully you won’t need this – but it’s just as well to be prepared!

Link to the Sage Pay email below:
Original Sage Pay Email

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You may soon be approached, if you haven’t already been, by companies trying to sell you the new .co type of domains. This new domain type has nothing to do with existing .co.uk domains. This type of domain, whilst it isn’t even available yet, is being marketed as “recognised worldwide as standing for company”. How it can be recognised world-wide as standing for “company” when it isn’t even available yet beats me.

The fact is that .co stands for Colombia, the South American country this domain type belongs to – just as .tv stands for TuValu and not for TeleVision.

Registering one of the .co domains at this point in time, the pre-launch “Sunrise” stage, will costs hundreds whether you calculate in Dollars, Pounds or Euros.

If you think it is essential for your business that you grab one of these domains then you will need to do so at this stage and absorb the cost.

There are new types of domains coming out all the time, some make it and some don’t. For instance, you’ll see .tv domains being used by some companies who advertise on television, but mainly it has been a flop.

My own, purely personal, view is that at this point in time it is too early to tell if the .co type of domain will take off in a meaningful way.

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At TerraNetwork we’ve been specialising in providing eCommerce websites and hosting since 2002. Quite a number of our customers have been with us since their early days and our early days.

However, we know that in this difficult economic climate there are many who are thinking about starting a Online Ecommerce Business, but are perhaps deterred by the cost and commitment required. That’s why we’ve decided to lower the entry bar for Start-Up businesses. [...]

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Christmas is the busiest and most important season for many online shops. So how you can ensure this Xmas turns out to be a good one?

Merchandising

Help your customers to buy online by guiding them to suitable presents and stocking fillers. Use your homepage to present your recommendations. Buying presents can be a tricky decision so ensure that you make it as easy as possible. Seasonal categories such as presents for her/him/kids etc will be appreciated by your customers.

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It’s hard to believe but around the time of the Millenium there were only two types of shopping cart software available – Actinic or custom coded in-house software specifically tailored to the needs of that particular company selling online.  Neither option was cheap but the latter option was only available to big companies with big pockets.  Yes, there were also HTML websites with Pay Pal “Buy Now” buttons – but this is not “shopping cart software”.

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Sage Pay is a UK payment processing service (formerly known as ProtX). In short, they handle the credit/debit card collection and authorisation process on behalf on online businesses.

SagePay is used by many shops I’ve built and they provide a reliable service with realistic fees. They’re usually top of my list when customers ask for a recommendation. An additional benefit is that they’re developer-friendly (good integration guides and test environment).

www.sagepay.co.uk - the new home for ProtX

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We’ve worked with many start-ups over the past years and it’s always great to see a new shop succeed and grow. But not all shops make it and this can be very tough on the owner. So before you empty your savings account, read our 5 tips & make sure your money is well spent.

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Anybody selling online will need to settle one question: Which shopping cart system do I choose? Googling in this case will not help – for one simple reason: there’s no “one best cart” out there. But there is the right cart for you. And we’ve got 7 simple steps to get you there.

7 steps:
1. Have a business plan
2. Put together a list of requirements
3. Research payment systems
4. Decide on who does what
5. Look into the future
6. Make your choice
7. Test, test and test again

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