One often overlooked area of your eCommerce store is the use of images. Shoppers will visit your store expecting to see high quality images of your products supplemented by good quality descriptions in order to make a buying decision. Here’s some top tips for making sure your products have the impact they deserve…

1. Image Quality – Low resolution or fuzzy images do nothing for you so make sure you start off by obtaining high resolution images of your products before optimising and cropping them.
2. Optimisation – Now you have your high quality product shots, use a commercial application such as Photoshop or an open source alternative like GIMP to optimise the images. Slow loading pages caused by un-optimised images are a big turn off for shoppers
3. Galleries – Most eCommerce software solutions offer some kind of gallery option, Open Mind Commerce allows unlimited numbers of images in the gallery system and even allows you to auto-create thumbnail images expanding to a full size picture
4. SEO – An often overlooked area is the search engine optimisation of images.  Make sure your eCommerce software gives you complete control over the alt tag for the images as well as the actual image name.

So there you are, it may only be only be a part of your eCommerce store strategy but shoppers appreciate high quality images just as much as low prices!

What do you use for image optimisation for your eCommerce software? Add your comments and let us know…

eCommerce fraud is on the up, it’s a fact.  As more and more retailers turn to the web to complement traditional bricks and mortar stores, online fraud is becoming a real issue but luckily there are ways to fight back.

For some time now, Mastercard and Visa have had the 3D secure validation system in place to carry out a password challenge for shoppers paying online.  This system has i5t’s critics as many argue that it leads to more dropped baskets when shoppers cannot remember their password or become unsure of what is happening.

Our eComerce software handles these issues by ensuring that the 3D validation is carried out inline with the site meaning the shopper is not forced off site to complete this step.  So many eCommerce stores carry out the validation off site yet take the card payment onsite begging the question why?  A simple change to the process decreases the chance of the customer leaving the store before completing payment.

It is also a fact that 3D secure will protect the merchants from unnecessary charge backs.

Another method that we will be launching in v1.4.1 of our eCommerce software is a partnership with MaxMind who are the leaders in online fraud detection.  The way it works is before the customer even enters their credit card details, MaxMind will carry out a series of tests on the order details to determine the likelihood of the order being fraudulent.

The store owner can then set thresholds on the order, either declining it straight away if there is a high chance of fraud or placing the order on hold for manual verification after payment is made.

The store owner receives a wealth of information about the order to pre-empt attempts to place fraudulent orders thus saving time and money.  What’s more, as a result of our partnership with MaxMind we are able to not only offer the basic minFraud service free of charge but also offer a 20% discount on upgrades to the standard and premium services.

Online fraud is not going to go away, it will increase in it’s attempts and sophistication so retailers need tools such as these to combat this tide.

Have you experienced fraudulent orders ion the past from your cart? What extra checks do you do to make sure the order is genuine?  Tell us below by adding a comment…

OK another sneak peek into the Novus Project…

A key decision when designing the next release of our eCommerce software was to increase the flexibility of design and layout for the stores.  The Novus Project will have the ability to support unlimited themes or designs but it goes way beyond just changing the colours…

It will be possible to apply a default theme for the store but then have a different scheme or layout for not just each indivdual department but also indivdual product pages. This will give huge flexibility in changing the design as users move through the store to suit the department they are looking at.

You will also be able to prepare new themes and test them without shoppers seeing the change through the built in theme editor so you can prepare for seasonal changes such as Christmas and Easter promotiuons.

This on top of being able to skin the admin area for our whitelabel ecommerce resellers, we believe this is one of the mostr flexible eCommerce solutions around that will suit everyone form small stores to larger retailers.

We have received a few bug reports for v1.4.0 of the OMC system and so we are today releasing a patch to resolve these issues.

If you have paid for the upgrade service since the launch of v1.4.0 then there is nothing to do as we have applied the patch for you.

If you have already upgraded to v1.4.0 then you need to download the following file:

http://www.openmindcommerce.co.uk/_downloads/v1.4.0patch.zip

Unzip and upload the content of this zip file to your store root overwriting the files on the server.

If you have NOT yet upgraded to v1.4.0 then the upgrade instructions sent on the release of v1.4.0 apply and there is no need to apply the patch file.

If you are unsure what to do then please do not hesitate to contact us.

Facebook has reached deep into online communities in an incredibly short space of time primarily down to it’s ease of use and open structure allowing developers to easily add new applications to share amongst users.

Recently though, multiple malicious applications have started appearing which are very cleverly disguised phishing sites often compromising user’s accounts without their knowledge or consent. A recent report from the Web Hacking Incidents Database has shown that 19% of hacking incidents occurred on social networking sites in the first six months of 2009.

This when coupled with the news that Facebook will shortly allow application developers to take payments for products and services raises serious concerns at both the viability of such a service and also security as a whole as hackers will undoubtedly increase their attention if they know they are able to syphon payment information through a malicious application.

The problem is that users treat Facebook as a convenience site.  If a product appears for sale at the right price at the right time, it is highly likely that the user will make a purchase through Facebook without seriously considering the implications.

Our view is that it’s not a bad thing that Facebook is developing their own eCommerce platform, opening a service such as this to developers will encourage online spending after all, but with the increase in phishing attacks and malicious applications; this move could open up a huge can of worms.

Facebook and the other social networking sites need to get their house in order and put user security to the forefront of their development before opening further avenues for exploitation.

Have you unknowingly been exploited through a Facebook application? What are your views on the Facebook eCommerce Service? Register below and add your comments…

Currently our eCommerce software only supports a single skin or theme. One of the things we though would be really cool was allowing store owners to have multiple themes running through the store.

So on department may have a certain colour scheme and layout and another department may have it’s own unique design so we are introducing the idea of multi-themes into The Novus Project to satisfy this need.

The system will not only allow multiple themes per store section but also allow admins to create, edit and develop new themes in the background so they are ready without shoppers seeing the in-progress design. We will also be releasing an offline tool allowing web designers to develop skins and themes without installing the software offering a great time saver for rapid store deployment…

From Encyclo.co.uk:

Latin, meaning: new, fresh, young, inexperienced, revived, refreshed.

The Novus project is the name we have given to the future release of Open Mind Commerce 2.0.  This version is a complete rewrite of our software from the ground up taking all the elements in our ecommerce software and streamlining/improving them further.

We chose the word Novus since software companies like to have a “buzzword” to describe their future projects and we though the description fitted just right.  We’ll be teasing details out over the next few months about The Novus Project and as soon as we have our first release, our blog readers will be first to know…

I though it was about time to update the Open Mind Commerce latest news and move it to a full featured platform.  I decided on using WordPress simply as:

1. I knew the software well
2. It had all the features I needed SEO wise
3. I don’t have time to write my own blogging tool

The main challenge I faced was not implement WordPress as we all know it’s a five minute installation; I had to re-skin the layout to match exactly the layout for the Open Mind Commerce site.  This is where the fun truly started…

Now by trade I am a ColdFusion developer so although PHP is not a foreign language to me, skinning WordPress from the default template was proving a little complex.  I then found an excellent skin called Naked (of all things) that contained the very bare minimum styling and allowed me to edit the templates/CSS a lot easier than the default skin.

I can heartily recommend this method for anyone wanting to re-skin WordPress, I reckon it saved me a good few hours of work (and swearing) and the end result is what you see so all is good…

I’ll mainly be using the blog to announce latest releases to the eCommerce Software we develop but I’ll also be adding interesting eCommerce industry news as I come across it.

So thanks for visiting and while you’re here, why not subscribe to the feed so you can get the latest updates?

We are very pleased to announce that v1.4.0 of the Open Mind Commerce system is finally available for download!

Despite this being slightly delayed for various reasons, v1.4.0 contains some eagerly anticipated features that many eCommerce software owners have been crying out for! So what’s new?

Single Page Checkout

In pas release of our eCommerce software, shoppers have been asked to login prior to making their purchase. We have now added a rapid checkout system to the software allowing shoppers to checkout in just two stages! Stage one take their email address and checks if they have placed an order before. If they have the software assigns the order to that customers account and displays the invoice, delivery and payment details. Once completed, the next stage proceeds straight to the payment page to complete the order.

Store owners have the ability to switch this feature on or off if they prefer customers to login first but research has shown that shoppers being asked to login to their account will drop their order more often than a no-login system so the choice is their for store owners to choose which method works best for them.

Iridium Gateway Support

We have now included support for the very popular Iridium Corporation gateway. Iridium is quickly becoming one of the industries most popular payment gateways as they not only offer a full featured payment gateway and terminal service but also provide a range of merchant accounts at very competitive rates. For more information about Iridium just visit their site at http://www.iridiumcorp.co.uk/

What’s more, if you currently have an Iridium merchant account, just let us know and we’ll give you a voucher entitling you to 20% off your license purchase!

SMS Alerts

How handy would it be if you could have a SMS alert sent to your phone when your store receives an order? Or be able to let customer know by text when their order has been sent? Well now you can with the SMS text alert service!

We have joined forces with the team at TxtLocal to allow store owners to get alerts and update their customers by text directly from their store. Plus if you sign up for the TxtLocal service through your store admin area you will get a bonus 50 credits free of charge just for opening an account! Normally you would only get 10 free credits by joining TxtLocal so this is a fantastic opportunity for existing store owners and new license holders to get started using this great addon service.

In addition, if you already have a TxtLocal account but you don’t yet use our software for your store, just drop a line to our support team and we’ll give you 20% discount from our store licenses as our way of saying thanks!

Extended Delivery Options

Our eCommerce software already offers advanced control over delivery costs but now we’ve extended this further by giving store owners the ability to upgrade the delivery option for their customers. You may want to offer a next delivery service at an extra charge or even a Saturday delivery service, now you can with additional delivery options. What’s more, you can separate these charges into shipping zones giving you complete control over your costs!

Updates by the bucket load!

These are just highlights of some of our new features and changes. We’ve also added social bookmarking, made improvements to the SEO facilities, added product cloning and anti-spam measures to stop spammers having their evil way!

All these changes and more can be found on our site through the official change log and as always, if you have an idea that you would like to see added to the software then just let us know!

That’s all for now, if you would like a free trial of our software then why not setup a demo store free of charge for thirty days or if you’re ready to purchase, just visit our store to place your order!