Features of the Service

Our Service

one stop shop an all-in-one service for getting a web presence more...

understanding for UK companies, provided by a UK company more...

hosted, managed a hosted, managed and fully supported service more...

future-proof a service for companies now and in the future more...

Our Sitebuilder

built by us we developed it, so we know it more...		client control edit/add content to your site more...		scaleable from 1 to 100s of pages more...		brandable brandable and customisable more...
fast fast website and page loads more...

Our custom version of osCommerce
The open source osCommerce, whilst free, should only be used as a base for developing a professional e-commerce website. Likewise premium osCommerce templates are really just the same as osCommerce base with different eye-candy, the fact remains they should still only be used as a base for developing a professional e-commerce website. Turning the usual osCommerce offerings into professional websites requires professional developers at developer rates, and once people realise this the traditional DIY osCommerce route doesn't sound so free or cheap anymore. That's what makes our managed, hosted, off the shelf, ready to run, professionally customised version of osCommerce so appealing to our clients. We have taken osCommerce v2.2 Milestone 2, and put in the work to develop a professional e-commerce system. This includes installing important contributions for high quality and fast image thumbnailing, for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), for product option level stock control (e.g. we have 3 of these shirts in red size 38, 4 in blue size 40, etc), for improved PayPal integration, for discount codes, and for text user input product options (e.g. names to print on shirts, names for engraving, etc). In each case installing a contribution is not as simple as running a setup program, it requires analysis of the code, improving the code, and getting the code to work with various other contributions... a professional development task. We have added our own improvements to take away the cluttered user interface of typical osCommerce shops, improve the search, improve HTML and accessibility code compliance and validation, to take away the US speak and make it more UK friendly, to allow up to 10 product images per product, to improve on digital downloads, to allow the shop to be embedded as a section within our overall sitebuilder website, and to allow the shop's visuals to be highly customisable to fit in with a client's logo, branding, and colour scheme. With our ecommerce service we only support offsite credit card processing, and so far this is handled solely by PayPal Website Payments Standard, which is a good choice for small businesses who want to accept credit and debit card payments. Used with a PayPal business account (which is free, no PayPal setup cost, no PayPal monthly charge), this allows the online shop to accept cards directly, without customers requiring a PayPal account, and PayPal make their money purely via a cut of the transaction (e.g. 20p transaction fee + 3.4% transaction cut if monthly turnover is 0-£15000, 2.9% transaction cut if monthly turnover is £1500-£6000, etc). We can add other offsite payment processors on an as-needed basis including WorldPay, Protx, NoChex, etc however so far all of our clients are happy to stick with PayPal (going the WorldPay or Protx route can lead to lower transaction cuts than PayPal, but it does incur considerable initial and ongoing costs, not only from the payment processor but also from the bank issuing the internet merchant account, and is therefore more appropriate for larger turnover sites). Offsite processing is where the customer is sent off to the payment processor's site to enter their credit card details, this is a good choice for small businesses since it means that customers only enter their credit card details on a secure website they know and trust (e.g. PayPal, WorldPay, etc).