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

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.

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.

Having just upgraded web space and bandwidth on both our single-site Starter and Business hosting packages we have also now instituted a system of quarterly payments. Previously, for these two packages, there was only an annual payment option. You can now get your eCommerce site online for just £11.99 (plus vat) per quarter.

You still get a free domain (all common domain types – see our site for full details), and a free install of an eCommerce shopping cart website (Zen Cart, Magento, Prestashop, osCommerce).

For those that want a Full SSL Certificate, rather than use our Shared SSL Certificate, we’ve also lowered the cost of purchasing Full SSL for your website.

It doesn’t get easier than this to get your dream business online!

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.

Gift Selection on www.thewhitecompany.com

Design

The bad news is that if you’re starting to consider getting a design make-over for Christmas then you’re already too late. Take out your calendar for 2010 and make a note in September to contact your designer about a Christmas 2010 design.

Christmas Designs can be achieved by homepage make-overs or you can give the entire site a wintery feel by changing the browser background and site elements (e.g. header).

Christmas Design on www.cathkidston.co.uk

Stock availability

Give clear stock information. If an item takes a few weeks to deliver, then say so. If you have 10+ items in stock and it’s ready for 48 hour delivery, then say so. Re-assure by giving clear information.

Stock Information on www.gearzap.com

Delivery

Have clear information on your site about how long delivery is likely to take. Give clear “last order dates for guaranteed delivery before Christmas”. If you offer more than one delivery method (e.g. standard and next day) give cut-off dates for all different options. As we get closer to Christmas, consider putting this information on your homepage to assure customers that their presents will arrive in time.

Delivery Information on www.asos.com

Courier Services

To take advantage of last minute shopping, consider offering a 24 or 48 hour courier service. This will maximise sales right up the last days before Christmas.

Delivery Options on www.johnlewis.com

Alternative Delivery Instructions

If your delivery service requires a signature, make this clear on your site and offer alternative delivery e.g. to an office address. Or try a delivery service which does not require a signature and give your customers the option to specify a safe place to deposit parcels (e.g. shed).

Delivery Comments on crocus.co.uk

Gift Wrapping

Time-strapped shoppers will appreciate the option to send gifts directly to the recipient with gift wrapping. And to ensure a great gift experience, ensure to send the invoice separately to the billing address.

Gift Wrapping on www.marksandspencer.com

Hosting Disk space and Bandwidth

Going offline due to exceeding account limits can cost sales. So during your busy period keep an eye on your site usage statistics and if it looks like you need higher limits, contact your hosting provider well in advance to arrange upgrades. You can usually find your usage statistics in your hosting control panel.

Website Usage Stats

Checkout & Testing

Having a fully working shop is always important but most crucially during those busy Xmas days. Consider giving your shop a weekly health check – go through the site from the viewpoint of your customer, make a note of any problems and areas of improvements. Test your checkout by putting through a test order.

DB error on www.lush.co.uk on Sunday, 22 November 2009

Do you have any tips? Share via the comments box below!

In 2001 along came osCommerce, a free Open Source eCommerce, PHP based, shopping cart – which put selling products online within reach of anyone with the drive and determination to succeed.  Later, along came offshoots of osCommerce called Zen Cart and CRE Loaded, and within the past two years some new players arrived – Magento and Prestashop.  But for a long time the original osCommerce languished and failed to progress as it should have.

There are of course many other pieces of shopping cart software available, but I have mentioned the main players whose names people may recognise.

At the latter end of last year I left the old osCommerce project, having resigned as a Team Member some time before, and started a new osCommerce Project.  The new team and myself took over and switched the old oscanswers.com forum to forums.oscommerceproject.org.  Our aim at that time was to bring the MS2 stream of osCommerce to a conclusion with a version 2.0 (Final), which we did, and to complete the MS3 stream – which we did not.  We decided early in 2009 to build  a new cart, from the ground up, to modern coding standards and practices and with no left-over osCommerce coding.  We recently announced the name of that new cart – which will be osQuantum.

As is the way with any new project we have experienced some setbacks, with shifting goals and team changes, but we are on track now with a schedule to release our first Alpha version by the New Year at the latest, with the first Production version within six months of that.

osQuantum is being built with a wealth of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work well in shopping carts, and what website owners want and need (also what they don’t want and need).  osQuantum will use Kohana as its framework.  Kohana is a light, fast, pure PHP 5 Object Orientated Programming (OOP) coded platform with a Model, View Controller (MVC) architecture.

If you were to ask me to explain in a nutshell what we are trying to achieve with osQuantum I suppose the most understandable reply would have to be – to provide what Magento does but to do it quicker, better, with a lighter footprint and so cause much less of a strain on server resources.

Below is a preview of just some of what will be contained in the 1st Alpha version:

a. Several payment modules, including but not limited to Pay Pal and Pay By Cheque/Money Order.

b. A modern up to date template design. Users may provide templates in any manner they wish, with templates being dropped into a templates folder and actioned from within the admin panel.

c. Minimum PHP version will be 5.2

d. osQuantum can be used with most major SQL types e.g. MySQL, Postgre SQL and MS SQL.

e. SEO URLs that will work across server types.

f. Discount Coupons, but not eGift Vouchers.

g. Multi Product images.

h. Cross Sell capability.

i. Multi-tier easy attribute management.

j.  Advanced sales reporting.

To find out more about osQuantum visit http://forums.oscommerceproject.org

Miss Rhea Anthony (Vger)

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

Form or Direct?

Sage Pay offers 2 main services: Sage Pay Form where customers go offsite to Sage Pay to pay the invoice & are then returned back to your shop; and Sage Pay Direct where customers stay on your website and only the payment details are sent to Sage Pay.

Both options required the business to have its own internet merchant account. Sage Pay provides a list of compatible banks here: http://www.sagepay.com/developers/industry_knowledge/merchant_acquirers.asp.

The form integration is very simple. The website doesn’t even need an SSL certificate (although we do recommend this for all e-commerce websites). Customers go to the Sage Pay site to pay and are then redirected back to the website. Sage Pay Form comes with the added benefit of PayPal integration.

With Sage Pay Direct, customers stay on the website and only their card details are passed over to Sage Pay. Website will therefore need an SSL certificate and be PCI DSS compliant. Customers enter their card details on checkout_confirmation. If 3D Secure is required, the bank’s 3D Secure page appears. On successful autorisation, customers go the checkout_success page. Voids/Refunds can be processed from within the admin area.

Taking payments

Multi Currency: Sage Pay is in principle multi currency compatible, however accepting multiple currencies must be agreed with the merchant account provider (usually your bank) and can be expensive. If you need to take multiple currencies, check the fees carefully in advance. For smaller shops, PayPal may be a cheaper method to handle several currencies.

MoTo: Sage Pay can provide a virtual terminal for accepting payments in writing and over the phone. Very useful and doesn’t cost anything extra.

Cashflow: Sage Pay transfers the authorised payments into your bank account at the end of each working day cycle. This makes it great for cash flow, especially when compared to PayPal where transfers can take over a week to reach you.

Sage Pay Integration with osCommerce

The form integration is available as standard with all osCommerce shops. It can be found & activated under “Modules -> Payment”.

For the direct integration, we recommend http://forums.oscommerceproject.org/index.php?autocom=downloads&showfile=20 . The module is actively maintained and very reliable.

A paid installation service is also available from TerraNetwork.

Look after the pennies

Start-ups often begin with high hopes and a desire to own a proper online shop. All good, but many also fail in the first year or run out of cash. So for the first year, examine every penny you spend. Start selling on marketplaces which require no investment (eBay, Amazon) and if you need your own online shop, consider open source or budget-friendly off-the-shelf solutions. Unless you are entering a design-conscious market, having your own design with your custom-made shop can wait for year 2.

Acorns need time

Start-ups are often compared to acorns growing into mighty oaks. A good comparison, but don’t forget how long oaks need to grow to a decent size. So give yourself time. Don’t rely on breaking even in year 1. If you do, great, but the marketplace may be tougher than expected so have enough money to keep going into year 2 and 3. Sometimes good businesses fail simply because they run of out money. Don’t let this happen to you.

Don’t have one plan, have many

Successful businesses often get sales from many avenues – they don’t just have one marketing / sales plan, but many. Sales may come by word of mouth, via Google, forums, blogs, twitter, social networking, advertising, brick & mortar shops, fairs, expos, markets, ….. and the list goes on. The important lesson is that you need to find out what works for your business and build up several channels. Relying on just one source hardly ever works and makes you very vulnerable. So get out there & sell wherever you can.

Take responsibility

There’s lots of advice available to start-ups and it’s a good idea to gather as much info as you can before risking your life savings. But accept that in the end, you are in charge and nobody else can make your business a success. You need to be very clear what you want sell how and have the vision to follow it through. Listen to advice given, evaluate it, but feel confident enough to defend your own ideas if you feel it’s the right way for your business. For encouragement try a book by Richard Branson – he’s a great example of how perceived wisdom isn’t always right.

Start small, then keep developing

Start-ups often struggle to draw up a spec for their first site. Starting with a blank canvas, although a great opportunity, is usually a very hard thing to do. But don’t be tempted to base your site spec on the competition. For starters, don’t assume that their site works well for them – for all you know, they might hate it and be busy on planning a redesign. Equally, young businesses like to “look proper” but having a shop which looks like all the others can make you look bland and be counter-productive. For start-ups it’s often a good strategy to start with a basic site with a view to develop/redesign after the first 12 months. Successful sites tend to be under ongoing development, so view your site as an ongoing process – start small, then develop your site as your business grows.

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

1. Have a business plan

Established businesses will already have this, but start-ups and especially anyone exploring the idea of selling online may start out with a hazy desire to sell online. The days though of just having a shop are history and if you want to survive online, you must be clear on what you sell (products), whom you sell it to (customer group) and how you’re going to sell it (marketing). So if you haven’t yet got a business plan, now’s the time to write one.

2. Put together a list of requirements

Now that you know what your shop is all about, write down what you need your online shop to do. If you e.g. sell clothing then tracking attribute stock (sizes, colours) is important. If you sell B2B having the ability to differentiate prices based on customer group can be vital. If you want to sell overseas, multiple currencies and/or languages are required. You can also capture design requirements e.g. fashion shops will need a different feel to discount office products. [see end of post for some suggestions]

3. Research payment systems

Taking money online is the heart of your shop. Some payment systems such as PayPal have wide support, but others may not be available with your chosen cart. Getting a payment integration written for you usually requires a decent budget (e.g. paying a week’s development time), so if you have a specific payment system in mind, make sure there’s an existing payment integration available.

4. Decide on who does what

Have a think about who will be doing the build of the shop, the design and the maintenance. If you are intending to do it yourself, then an easy to use design templating system could save lots of time. If you intend to outsource to a design/development agency, then research going market rates to see how it fits with your budget. If you employ staff, consider whether you need role-based permissions and training for using the admin area.

5. Look into the future

Software doesn’t stand still. Currently most shops/servers are run on PHP5/MySQL5 but PHP6 and MySQL6 are both in development and will impact on shopping cart scripts. Same goes for security vulnerabilities. It therefore pays to choose a cart which is actively maintained so you can upgrade your shop when needed. Forums and past release schedules can give you a good feel for the activity around a cart.

6. Make your choice

Now that you’ve got your list, you can do an evaluation of the shopping carts you’ve had in mind and see how they measure up. A simple tick list system usually does the trick. Ignore features which may sound interesting but are not on your list. If you don’t need widget ABC, then having widget ABC won’t help even if it’s a really cool widget. [ we're currently working on a comparison of popular open source shopping carts which we'll publish in this blog soon!]

7. Test, test and test again

Before committing to a cart, give it a test run. Open source software can be downloaded for free and run e.g. with XAMPP on your PC. Paid software may have a free trial period. Try using the shop with a few categories, products and test orders – this will give you a feel for the admin and test how easy it will be to run the shop. Switching carts can be a hassle once you’ve got customer/order/product data so you’re likely to be using this cart for the next years.

And if you’ve followed this process, you should now have the confident to launch the shop with the shopping cart which is right for you!

——————————–

Suggestions for requirements:

Stock Control
Attribute Stock Tracking (variations of a product e.g. size)
Payment integrations
Shipping methods
Currency
Languages
Integration with accounting software
Integration with drop ship suppliers
Reports and CSV export of data
CSV import of products
Manually entering orders in admin
Managing refunds/returns
Multiple product images
Cross Sell
Product Bundles
WYISWYG editor support
CMS for adding/deleting/editing pages
Newsletter management
SSL handling (shared vs full SSLs)
URL rewriting
Metatags (description, keywords)
Discount Coupons
Selling virtual products / downloads
Customer group based pricing
Multiple shop frontends