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!

Recently news surfaced that one of our main competitors, EKM powershop, have had to dramatically change the way their software works as it was revealed during a PCI audit that some store owners had been storing sensitive credit card information within their store database and then not removing the data after it had been processed via an offline terminal.

Now for quite some time Visa and Mastercard have been pushing the regulatory standards behind PCI compliance for the simple reason it is there to protect cardholder data from fraud and misuse.  In addition, it has been the case for a long while that storing the full card details including the CV2 code for longer than is necessary to complete the transaction was a practice to be avoided at all costs.

The net result of the EKM powershop audit was that their own proprietary gatway allowed store owners to obtain card details and then process the transaction offline through a terminal. They also advised customers to immediately delete card details after they had been processed.

Now there are two separate issues at play here…

Firstly the very fact that the software allowed card details to be stored in the first place is not a great practice to follow.  EKM powershop are not alone in this scenario as there are a number of eCommerce software packages out there which allow store owners to do this.  The crux of the matter is that the practice renders the software users in possible breach of PCI guidelines.

Secondly EKM powershop had to act swiftly to remove this gateway as it had transpired that certain customers were not removing card details after they had been processed.  This is in breach of the PCI guidelines and these merchants were leaving themselves open to fines and possible withdrawal of their merchant service.

Personally I feel that the store owners have been cut a raw deal here. The fact that the software allowed them to store card information in the first place simply should not have been available as an option.  Granted that the merchants were putting themselves in the firing line by not deleting the card details but software vendors such as EKM powershop and ourselves have a responsibility to their users that the software does the job required without raising possible security issues. There has obviously been a failure here…

For the record, our eCommerce software does not nor ever will store any kind of card information within its database or files.  This is simply to protect the cardholder and the store owner from this type of situation. With all this in mind I am willing to make the following offer to any EKM powershop store owner affected by this issue.,..

If you are considering changing to an alternative software provider I am willing to offer a 20% discount on our license fees and design services plus import as much data as possible from your current EKM powershop store.

If anyone wishes to take up this offer I will need clear tangible evidence that you are an EKM powershop store owner. For more information or to claim the discount voucher, please contact us through our support help desk

I don’t normally do this with competitors but on this occasion I personally feel the situation is quite shocking and a lot of people have been let down for a variety of reasons hence the offer of support…

Phil Williams
MD – Open Mind Commerce

Open Minded Solutions Limited are currently in negotiations with a leading UK merchant account & payment gateway provider to supply our eCommerce software to their merchants. At this stage it is anticipated that negotiations will be complete by late June.

Now a new partnership of this size does bring a new set of challenges to an existing, thriving business such as ourselves and a primary area of those challenges is exceeding customer expectations through an unrivalled level of customer support to new and existing clients.

We are therefore seeking tentative applications for a new position that will be based in our Edinburgh office.

The Position
The ideal candidate for this new and exciting position will be an individual who is passionate about providing an extreme level of support to clients in a manner that would exceed expectations. From a technical perspective they will also have:

• A strong working knowledge of Windows and Linux web hosting platforms
• Experience with troubleshooting and resolving network related issues, DNS, FTP, IIS and Apache platforms
• Experience of the technicalities of domain name registration and transfers, SSL certificate provisioning and PCI compliance testing.
• A background of providing superb customer service in an environment containing a mixture of businesses from small SMEs through to multi-million pound corporate clients
• A working knowledge of various server side scripting languages such as ColdFusion MX, PHP, ASP and .NET
• Although a wide programming knowledge is beneficial, the ideal candidate will have a strong background in developing and maintaining ColdFusion MX applications
• Be based in Edinburgh or the surrounding area as they will be required to work from our offices based in Edinburgh South.

The Benefits
Aside from working with an established and rapidly growing company, the chosen candidate can expect:

• An excellent starting salary based on background and experience
• Performance related bonus scheme (after qualifying period)
• Profit sharing scheme (after qualifying period)
• Sick pay and holiday entitlement
• A very friendly and exciting working environment
• Joining the company at ground level but with unlimited opportunity to grow all the way through to director level

At this stage the position is tentative but should negotiations be successful it is anticipated the position will be available from late July 2009.

So does this sound like you? If so please forward a detailed CV of your background and experience to Phil Williams at contact <at> openmindedsolutions.co.uk and we will contact you in due course.

As many of you may be aware, this month we are celebrating our fifth year in business so throughout April we are running a huge promotion right across the board for all hosting plans, dedicated servers, domain names and eCommerce licenses.

The promotion is very simple, enter the coupon code APRILIPOD when making your purchase and your order will be discounted by a massive 20%!

You will also be entered into a prize draw to win an 8GB iPod Touch…

So if you were considering purchasing an Open Mind Commerce license, now would be the perfect time to save some money!

The offer is open to new users and existing clients of Open Mind, it’s our way of saying thank you for the last five years and here’s looking forward to the future!

Firstly can we wish each and every one of you a very happy 2009 and with a new year comes a new release of Open Mind Commerce!

Version 1.3.1 is now available to purchase from www.openmindcommerce.co.uk and contains some great new modules and features plus a host of tweaks and fixes. Highlights are:

PayPal Pro, Nochex and Telephone Payments Gateways Added
Now you can take payments using both PayPal Direct and PayPal Express checkouts. This was a highly requested addition to the system and provides a seamless link to your PayPal merchant account.

Nochex integration has also been added with both the on-site and merchant account types supported.

Finally we’ve added the ability to take telephone payments. A simple addition that means when a customer hits the checkout screen, you can add a custom message allowing them to call you and make payment over the phone. Perfect for the slightly more nervous consumer who doesn’t like entering their credit card details on a web site.

Custom Order Status Updates
The OMC system already had fixed order statuses for customers such as dispatched and authorised orders. Now you can add an unlimited number of customer statuses into the system and also customise the email response! This makes it perfcet for stores that may have an additional step required before completing an order.

We’ve also tweaked the product layout pages and fixed some spelling mistakes and bugs in 1.3.0. You can find the full changelog here:

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

What’s coming in 1.4?
The new feature set for 1.4 has now been locked in and includes some great new planned features:

Single Page Checkout – Rapid checkout for your customers.
SMS Alerts – Alert your customers to order changes via SMS
Returns Management – Full management of RMAs and returns
New Gateways – Planned support for Securehosting and Moneuybookers gateways
MaxMind Fraud Protection – Advanced anti-fraud protection for your store

Plus many more features! Take a look at the road map here for the full list:

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

As before, all new purchases include twelve months free hosting and twelve months upgrades so purchasing today means you are still setup for the year and you will benefit from software upgrades for a full twelve months!

Already 2009 is shaping up to be a very exciting year for OMC especially as we can reveal that v2 (codename novus) is also under construction and will turn OMC from a great product into a fantastic application!

Thanks one again for your support over the last twelve months and as allways, please do get in touch if you have any questions or comments…

We are very pleased to announce that v1.3.0 of the Open Mind Commerce system is now available for purchase! All license holders have now been contacted and you can upgrade your stores by downloading the upgrade files from your account area.

So what’s new?
Well there are two major changes to the system along with a host of other tweaks and fixes in this release but the two I will highlight here is the new MultiVars systems and changes to the Search Engine friendliness aspects…

Variant, options and add-ons galore…
The revamped variants system in v1.3.0 now gives store owners the ability to completely control how they want to sell products to shoppers. With unlimited variant groups, options and values along with customisable add-ons all on a per product basis, retailers will love the level of control and flexibility the eCommerce software will give them. Let’s take a real world example…

Joe Bloggs Shoe Emporium sells (unsurprisingly) shoes through its web site. Now for each make of shoe they sell three colours and ten sizes. The problem is though they don’t carry all the sizes for all the colours. Traditional eCommerce software cannot cater for this so this is where our MultiVars system takes care of things. All the retailer needs to do first is create two variant groups for colour and size and enter the various values for colours/sizes. He can then create individual products with their own weight, price and stock level and tell the system what the colour and size is for that product.

When the shopper arrives at his store, they will be able to choose the exact product size/colour they need plus will be told instantly if the product line is out of stock.

On top of this, Joe Bloggs can also set-up customisable addons for each product offering say a gift wrapping service which may be chargeable. When coupled with the product personalisation feature, Joe can not only sell exactly the products his customers want but also tailor his store for complete control…

We love search engines…
And so you should! The key to survival online these days is to make your store as search engine friendly as possible. Most eCommerce software packages already have limited SEF features, earlier versions of Open Mind Commerce provided a very stable platform for search engine bots and now, with the release of v1.3.0, we have taken this platform and turned it into one of the most flexible and feature rich search engine friendly store platforms available today!

We worked very closely with leading SEO companies and talked to them to find out what the biggest mistakes people make are when choosing an eCommerce software platform and what the vast majority of our competitors lack. We then took this feedback and re-worked the SEF features of Open Mind Commerce to take it to the next level…

Now with v1.3.0 you can:

• Set page titles, description and keyword meta tags
• Set the URL for internal links
• Set the link text for internal links
• Define the H1 tag content for each page
• Apply “nofollow” links to avoid duplicate content when selling products through cross-departments

All from the comfort of your admin area with no coding required! This applies to all the department pages, manufacturers, products, CMS categories and CMS articles, all controlled on a per-page basis! We can now honestly say that we are not aware of any eCommerce software platform on the market that can offer this level of control out of the box without some serious hard work and coding!

So what’s next?
Well work has already commenced on the next release of Open Mind Commerce, feature requests continue to pour into our tracker and we will be looking to release a new version every 4-6 weeks making Open Mind Commerce the best value eCommerce software platform on the market!

Thanks for reading and if you have any questions at all about the software then don’t hesitate to get in touch.

KashFlow, the online accounting package, today has announced that use of their API is now free of charge instead of an annual fee of £99 + vat!

KashFlow integrates seamlessly into Open Mind Commerce meaning  that new customers, orders and payments are automatically inserted into your KashFlow application.  This saves a tremendous amount of time and improves accuracy by not having to double enter orders.

In addition we are still offering a discounted rate on new signups to the KashFlow system.  Just look here at the savings you could make!

Annual Subscription
Normal price: £149.00 per year
Our Price: £129.00 per year

Monthly Subscription
Normal price: £13.99 per month
Our Price: £11.99 per month

As you can see there has never been a better time to integrate our eCommerce software with KashFlow!  Start saving time and money today….

As a direct result of feedback from our customers, we are very pleased to announce the immediate launch of our monthly eCommerce software license!

This license will allow you to run up to three stores dependent on your chosen plan from just £35.00 per month. The monthly charge includes a full eCommerce license, hosting and continuous support and upgrades whilst you continue to pay the monthly charge.

Note however that you do not own the license, you are leasing it from us. Saying that though it is a great alternative for those that may not want to pay for a full license just yet and you can always upgrade your license at any time.

For more information, just visit our hosting site and sign up!

We are very pleased to announce the launch of Open Mind Commerce v1.1.1, our second major release in just six weeks of being live!

This release brings two major enhancements to the system, a host of minor upgrades and some essential tweaks and fixes to the core files. So what’s new?

KashFlow Integration
KashFlow is a award winning web based accounting package designed specifically for UK businesses to help control their cashflow as well as manage their accounts. As it is web based, it offers a considerable saving over traditional accounting packages and has the added benefit that you can access it from any computer in the world!

We have worked closely with KashFlow over the last couple of months and have tightly integrated the Open Mind Commerce system into their accounting package. Not only will our system automatically insert customers and new orders but it will even mark those orders as paid once an authorised order is completed!

This represents a significant time saving for any web retailer in that they don’t have to worry about entering data twice. A quick check of the orders being added is all that is required as we’ve the done the leg work for you…

For more details about KashFlow, take a look at their site and we’ve also negotiated a special discount of 20% just for OMC users!

Multi-currency Options
This has been a major request from our users and now its here. The OMC system now checks over ten major currencies including USD and Euros every day and stores the rates within the system. Shoppers can then choose to display the prices in the favourite currency for convenience…

Store owners can even elect to check out the orders in that currency saving money through transaction fees due to no conversions and offering their customers even greater choice!

Other Enhancements
We’ve been beavering away adding extra newsletter sign up options, shortened and improved search engine friendly URLs and various other tweaks to make sure the OMC becomes the leading weapon of choice for web retailers.

Existing users can upgrade their installation free of charge through their account area downloads. If you were thinking about buying into the system, now is the time to make that choice as we have an even bigger upgrade planned before the end of the year with masses of new features! Just take a look at our development roadmap and see where we’re going…
http://www.openmindedsolutions.co.uk…newpost&t=1012

Don’t forget that every license includes 12 months free hosting, 12 months free upgrades and support and a twelve month SSL secure certificate for just £299 inc vat so there has never been a better time to launch your own online store…

As always if you have any questions, comments or concerns then don’t hesitate to get in touch…

Well it’s certainly been a long time coming but we are finally live and ready to start selling Open Mind Commerce licenses!

At this stage we should really thank all of the beta team for all their hard work and effort in preparing the system for live usage and also thanks all the subscribers who have been patiently waiting the final release!

Talking of which we have a fantastic offer to get things moving along…

From today until October 31st 2007 you will receive a one year’s hosting plan and a one year’s SSL certificate worth in total £85 when you purchase your license!

Now there’s no reason not to buy today!

Many thanks and if you have any questions then don’t hesitate to get in touch..