We use PayPal as a secondary processor on some of our sites and many of our store owners also use it to take payment from customers and one of the things that has bugged me for a number of years has been the inability to automate the withdrawal process.

You had to login to PayPal, go to the withdrawal section, enter the amount you wanted to take out, submit and confirm, spin round three times, sing a song, etc. all very time consuming.

Now when withdrawing my PayPal balance this morning I noticed an interesting link and description under the withdrawal section:

Settlement Withdrawal

Instantly transfer the money in your PayPal account to your local banks accounts with Automatic Settlement Withdrawal. It supports different accounts, and two transfer speeds so you have the quickest and most convenient access to your money when and where you want it. Edit your preferences to activate or modify Automatic Settlement Withdrawal.

Could this be the missing piece of the jigsaw?!

Following the link to the service I found I could opt to automatically withdraw my PayPal balance each day to one of my nominated bank accounts. I just had to confirm which account I wanted to use and it was all setup.

Time will tell if this actually works but unless I’m missing something startlingly obvious, the days of manually logging in and withdrawing PayPal balances seem to be over…

A study commissioned by Google has found that the internet is currently worth £100bn per year to the UK economy, and the figure is still rising.

The report, called The Connected Kingdom: How the internet is transforming the UK and conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), demonstrated that if the internet was a separate sector, it would be the UK’s fifth largest, accounting for 7.2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

According to the research, the UK exports £2.80 online for every £1 imported. This compares favourably with figures for offline markets, where the UK exports 90p for every £1 imported, according to the report.

The report places the UK sixth out of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries on its ‘e-Intensity Index’. This measurement of the depth and reach of the internet in commerce and society also shows that the UK performs relatively poorly in terms of infrastructure. Areas beyond London and the south-east have lower internet consumption.

The UK is shown in the report at the top of the expenditure sub-index in terms of online sales, and spending on online advertising.

Isn’t it about time you got in on the action with your own eCommerce Software platform?

Open Mind Commerce, an established eCommerce solution provider based in the UK, today announced an aggressive new pricing strategy aimed at the SME marketplace for its popular eCommerce Software package.
The company has taken the decision to drastically reduce the cost of its full eCommerce software license to £89 per store, a reduction of £210 from its previous price point. It has also reduced the cost of ownership for its monthly licenses to £20 per month.

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

For Immediate Release

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

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…

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…

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

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….

I picked up on interesting article this week at e-consultancy.com discussing whether etailers should provide a visible phone number or not on their eCommerce sites.  I’m firmly in the “Yes” camp but others don’t feel the same way.  Read on for more…

I recently worked with a client who runs a relatively small e-commerce operation as a second business.

He lamented the fact that when he provided a phone number on his website, his sales more than doubled but the time required to run the business also more than doubled because of all the phone calls, which was not viable for him.

This situation reflects an interesting reality – even though e-commerce offers customers the convenience of buying something without ever having to interact with another human being, oftentimes customers don’t feel comfortable making a purchase if they can’t pick up the phone to ask a sales question or to place an order with a real person.

As a best practice, I advise all of my clients to provide a phone number on their website if at all possible. Depending on the type of business a client runs, I often advise the client to post the phone number prominently on every page.

But what to do when providing a phone number in that fashion just isn’t possible?

In the case of my recent e-commerce client, here are some of the possible solutions that I recommended:

• Provide limited phone hours. While being able to answer the phone during normal business hours is ideal, if you can only manage to pick up the phone 2 hours a day or 3 days a week, it is probably better than nothing.
• Offer a callback request form. If you’re concerned about receiving calls that are wasteful or not serious, consider allowing visitors to request a callback. This enables you to “filter” out inquiries that clearly aren’t worthwhile. Be careful, however, because if you make a habit of not calling people back, you may build a poor reputation.
• List your phone number in a limited fashion. For instance, if you run an ecommerce website, displaying your phone number only when a visitor has added something to the shopping cart can serve as another “filter.”
• Hire an answering service. There are many answering service companies and thanks to globalization, the price of such a service may be lower than you think. Of course, a key consideration is – do I trust my customers in the hands of a third party “representative”? You never get a second chance to make a first impression and thus the use of an answering service is something to think carefully about.
• Give your phone number to pre-qualified parties only. If you’re available to take calls but are worried about volume, providing your phone number to a select few may be the solution. For instance, try listing your phone number in order confirmation emails, making it easier for people you already know are valuable to your business to get in touch with you.

In the end, my ecommerce client decided to list his phone number only on specific pages and to give his phone number to people who placed an order.

While his sales did not increase to the level that they had been when he provided his phone number freely, they did increase by nearly 50%, proving that for many people, all you need to close a sale is to “reach out and touch someone.”

If you run an online business and you’re not offering phone contact, give some thought to what phone contact you can provide because it may just boost the bottom line quite significantly.

Fresh reports have indicated that people using the Internet to shop online has risen yet again.

The latest report from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index claims that consumers spent a massive £13bn online in the first quarter of 2008, that’s the equivalent to £213 for every person in the country. A massive £850m was spent over the Easter Holiday Weekend alone!

All the major shopping groups of food & drink, clothing and electronics all made a year-on-year rise, with wine, spirits and beer rising an impressive 28% compared to the same period last year.

Capgemini UK Consumer products and retail team VP Anthoula Madden states, “I think this growth will continue, although perhaps not at the rate we have seen, as shoppers get more comfortable with buying a wide range of goods over the internet.”

With more and more people buying our eCommerce Software in order to sell their products online, these year-on-year rises are set to continue.