This is a minor release and is likely to be last of the releases for the current v1.x series as all development efforts are now being poured into v2.x as previously notified.  There are a couple of new features in this release as well as bug fixes but as always, the latest change log may be found here (login required):

http://bugs.openmindcommerce.co.uk/index.php?cmd=changelog&project_id=1&version_id=11

Google Analytics
This release includes a new smart tag that can be used to easily track site visitors though services such as Google Analytics. To activate the service you simply add the appropriate tracking code into your admin area and this is then automatically inserted for you into your store pages meaning no more messing around with code!

We have also added support for Googlebase (http://www.google.com/base/) in this release.  No extra configuration for the store is required, just setup a new product feed and point it at http://www.yourstore.com/googlebase.cfm where yourstore.com is your store URL.  This will then take all your existing products and add them into Google base for extra SEO benefits and sales!

Would you like £60???
Well we could like to give you up to £60 just for referring people to us through our new affiliate scheme!  More information and how to signup can be found on our blog here:

http://blog.openmindcommerce.co.uk/ecommerce-software-announcements/we-would-like-to-give-you-60/

Finally we are very pleased to announce a new partnership with e-terms.co.uk and be able to offer you professionally written privacy policies and terms of use for your site at a very reasonable price.  For more information and to place you order, just click the link below:

http://www.e-terms.co.uk/#a_aid=ecommercesoftware

That’s all for now and as ever, if you have any questions then please do not hesitate to get in touch!

The Program
Dead simple this one, we will give you 10% of the excluding VAT value of all sales generated by you referring customers to our site. This could result in up to £60 in commission for customers who purchase a license from us along with our bespoke design service.

At the the very least you would earn £8.90 if they just bought a single license so your commission could quickly add up to quite a bit!

Because we’re lovely people we’ll not only also give you £20 as a thank you for signing up but if you refer a new affiliate to us through your link, you will get 20% of their earnings as well!

The program is completely free of charge to join and you can start adding a range of banners and text links to your site straight away…

So to summarise:

1. You earn 10% for every completed sale
2. We give you £20 just for signing up
3. We also give you 20% of all earnings that your referred affiliates generate

Signing up is very simple, click the link, fill out the form and you’re done…

The Nitty Gritty
Just a couple of points to make things clear…

1. Commissions are based on the ex. VAT value of the sale
2. Payments are made on the 1st of the month via PayPal or cheque as long as you have at least £100 “in the bank”
3. You earn commission on referrals up to 90 days after they click the link even if the customer visits via another affiliate
4. You may not refer yourself for purchases, sorry!

So you’ve read about the program now do something about it. Join today, earn yourself £20 for five minutes work and start driving money out of our pocket and into yours!

This is a minor release and fixes a couple of known bugs as well as a few feature tweaks. The full change log can be viewed here:

http://bugs.openmindcommerce.co.uk/changelog_page.php

One of the features we would like to highlight is that now in addition to being able to quickly update stock levels, you can also mass update pricing for your primary products, variants and addons just as easily!

This is a fantastic time saver for when you need to quickly make pricing adjustments…

In addition, the PayPal Pro gateway has now been updated so that users can carry out full 3D authentication on payments which is now a requirement by PayPal…

License holders may login to their account area to download the latest file. If you don’t yet own a license then you should read on as we have some fantastic news to share!

Licenses reduced in price by over £200!

After a thorough analysis of our competitors and also in a move to drastically increase our market share, we have made the decision to reduce the pricing of our software as follows with immediate effect:

Full License – Was £299, reduced to £89
Monthly License – Was £35/month, reduced to £20/month

It should be noted that with such a large reduction in price, we have withdrawn the inclusive hosting with the full license. This is now available for purchase at just £60 pa bringing the first year cost to just £149 for a fully installed store.

This represents exceptional value for money for a commercial eCommerce system that already leads the way for UK based applications. Design charges and software renewals are unchanged. For more information and to make your purchase, just visit our site:

https://www.openmindcommerce.co.uk/buy-ecommerce-software/full-license.cfm

The Novus Project
===============
For those that follow our blog you will be aware that development of v2.0, the Novus Project, is well underway and we will shortly be releasing alpha versions of the new project. At this stage we will need a group of beta testers to thoroughly test the software and help us iron out any bugs to proceed with the development. The requirements for becoming a beta tester are:

1) You must hold a full or monthly license
2) You must be comfortable using HTML and CSS code
3) Happy to provide extensive feedback and testing
4) Willing to sign a NDA (Non-disclosure Agreement)

If you can meet the above requirements then we want to hear from you! Just fire over your details to omcadmin openmindcommerce.co.uk and we’ll be in touch.

That’s all for now and if you have any problems, questions or comments then please do not hesitate to get in touch!

Kind Regards,
Open Mind Commerce
http://www.openmindcommerce.co.uk
Tel: 08456 445 789

Commenting on the reduction, Managing Director Phil Williams said:

“After a careful analysis of our competitors and the eCommerce software marketplace, we felt the time was right to heavily reduce the cost of ownership for our eCommerce software. This reduction will not only allow SME businesses to quickly start trading online but will also help increase our established market share”

The company have coincided this announcement with the release today of v1.4.2 of their software and are also inviting applications for beta testers for v2.0 due for release this year.

About Open Mind Commerce
Open Mind Commerce is a trading division of Open Minded Solutions Limited. We are a full service ISP established since 2004 and we are based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Open Mind Commerce is our flagship product and allows SMEs to quickly and easily trade online.

Web: http://www.openmindcommerce.co.uk
Tel: 08456 445 789

Open Mind Commerce, an established eCommerce solution provider based in the UK, today announced that the product has been featured as “Cart of the Week” by Practical eCommerce. (http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1449-Cart-of-the-Week-Open-Mind-Commerce)

During an in-depth interview, MD Phil Williams gives an insight into the system as well as describes plans for the future of the software.

Phil Williams commented “Being featured on Practical eCommerce is big news for us as they are a highly respected organisation and it gave us a perfect platform to talk about our product as well as spread the word about the system.”

In addition, the company also announced that v1.4.1 of it’s software is released today and advanced development is in place for v2.0, codenamed The Novus Project, which will feature a complete rewrite of the system making it one of the most flexible and powerful commercial eCommerce platforms on the market.

About Open Mind Commerce
Open Mind Commerce is a trading division of Open Minded Solutions Limited. We are a full service ISP established since 2004 and we are based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Open Mind Commerce is our flagship product and allows SMEs to quickly and easily trade online.

Web: http://www.openmindcommerce.co.uk
Tel: 08456 445 789

About Practical eCommerce
Practical eCommerce was launched in July 2005 by Kerry and Joy Murdock in Grand Junction, Colorado, USA. Its mission from the start has been to provide down-to-earth articles and advice to help smaller businesses succeed online.

Web: http://www.practicalecommerce.com

This release fixes a number of known bugs as well as introducing brand new features.  Upload and new installation instructions may be found here:

http://www.openmindcommerce.co.uk/ecommerce-software/documentation.cfm

Release Notes
——————

MaxMind MinFraud Service
This release includes a new anti-fraud service in partnership with www.maxmind.com.  The service is completely free (for the basic service) and we are also able to offer a 20% discount for upgrades to the premium service.  To activate the MaxMind service just login to your admin area after upgrading and select the MaxMind configuration option for your store configuration area.

Mass Updates
We have now added the ability to mass update both products and orders.  For products, you can now quickly show or hide products within departments or update stock levels en-masse.  For orders, you can update order statuses and also mass print invoices and packing slips.

Miscellaneous Features
We’ve also added the ability to login as a customer on your store, introduced custom maintenance mode and 404 error pages and print friendly versions of store and CMS sections plus a raft of minor changes to existing features.  The full change log may be found here:

http://bugs.openmindcommerce.co.uk/changelog_page.php

End of Life Announcement
——————————–
This release marks the end of new feature development for the 1.x series and further releases for v1.x will be bug/security fixes only.  The reason for this is that v2.0 (The Novus Project) development is well underway and we need to ensure all available resources are available for its release next year.  We hope to have an early alpha/beta ready in Jan/Feb. 2010 at which point we will contact selected store owners for beta testing so watch this space or subscribe to our blog.

And finally, we have completely re-designed the Open Mind Commerce site to fully display all the features our software offers.  It also allows us to simplify order tracking and licensing issues. And one last note, we have been selected as cart of the week by Practical eCommerce (http://www.practicalecommerce.com/) and the interview will be added later today so please take a look and feel free to leave your comments!

That’s all for now and may we wish you and your families a very happy Christmas and prosperous New Year!

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…

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.

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?

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!