EKM Powershop and PCI compliance

Posted on June 3, 2009 by Phil Williams

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

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Would you like to join our company?

Posted on May 23, 2009 by Phil Williams

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.

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20% Discount on all licenses plus win an iPod Touch!

Posted on April 15, 2009 by Phil Williams

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!

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v1.3.1 hits the (virtual) streets!

Posted on January 2, 2009 by Phil Williams

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…

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v1.3.0 is launched with more features than you shake a stick at!

Posted on October 10, 2008 by Phil Williams

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.

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Free eCommerce Q&A Webcast session!

Posted on August 15, 2008 by Phil Williams

Just a quick reminder that we will be holding a free Q&A webcast session today at Midday.

The session will allow you to ask any eCommerce related questions about trading online and will be completely free of charge!

There I no registration required and you can join the webcast here:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/open-mind-tv

Please do come along at Midday to what we hope will be the first of many webcast sessions!

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KashFlow API Integration now free!

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Phil Williams

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….

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Phone Number or not?

Posted on July 16, 2008 by Phil Williams

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.

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Monthly eCommerce Software License!

Posted on June 1, 2008 by Phil Williams

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!

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Online Spending on the Rise

Posted on May 28, 2008 by Phil Williams

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.

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