Hi All
I have finally got the site up and running. I would greatly appreciate some feedback. Be as scathing as you like!
Following are some of the problems that I experienced and how I got around them (if at all).
Dealing with multiple currencies
We wanted to sell our products in both Pounds Sterling and US Dollars initially and possibly add additional currencies at a later date.
Because Actinic cannot support more than two currencies on a single site and we did did not like the look and feel of displaying more than one currency on a singel site anyway we decided to create a seperate catalog for each currency with the following paths www.picchumaternity.com/uk/acatalog for the UK site and www.picchumaternity.com/us/acatalog for the US site. I then created a script that runs when on the Picchu Maternity Wear home page that checks for a cookie called "site". If the cookie is not set then the user is directed to a page that prompts them for their country location when they try to access the online store. The cookie is then set to either "uk" or "us" and the user is redirected to the relevant catalog depending on their location. The next time the user visits the store the cookie is read and the hyperlinks to the catalog and brochure pages are dynamically changed so the the user will be taken to the correct catalog without having to choose their location again.
The only problem with this method is that it increases the administrative burden in that you have to create maintain seperate catalogs for each currency. This isn't too much of a problem for use as our collection only changes twice a year but it would have a greater impact on a a site that changes frequently. Having said that, I found that by getting one of the sites absolutely right and then exporting it and importing it into the other site as an update that it is fairly painless after a few trial runs.
Using Actinic Link
We are using Sage as our accounting package. We were intending to use Actinic Link to link Actinic and Sage. Unfortunately we found that it lacked the functionality to deal with an Actinic website that is using a different default currency from Sage. Further details of this can be found at this thread. We are now having to manually enter our orders from Actinic into Sage for processing. This is not a big problem for us because we have a relatively high value low volume trade. We now use Actinic Link only to update stock quantities on Actinic from Sage.
Having said this, Actinic Link is a good product for a 'normal' setup where you are linking between a site and a set of accounts using the same currency.
Gift Vouchers
This is quite difficult to explain properly, have a look at this page if you found the above hard to follow.
Limiting Payments by Location
We wanted to take payments by cheque or money order from the UK only, but credit card payments from anywhere. I set the payment methods up as above but found the when the shopper checked out that they were given a choice between 'United Kingdom' and 'None of the above' for invoice location so that Actinic can decide what type of payment methods are valid. Almost everyone that I spoke to agreed that this would give a lot of shoppers the impression that we only sell to UK customers and abandon their purchase. In the end we decided to leave cheque payment open to all locations and change the the description to 'Cheque or Money order (UK only)' and hope that people comply. If anyone hase any suggestions on this it would be greatly appreciated
Hosting Service Provider
Finding the right hosting service provider was quite difficult because they all seem to offer different packages, making it very diffficult to compare like with like. In the end I wrote up a required and desirable feature set and a list of question regarding pricing , upgrading etc and sent it to 20 odd of the most frequently recommended service providers on this forum and other. I judged the replies them on the following criteria:
1. Can they provide the full feature set
2. Price
3. How many of the desirable features could they offer?
4. How quickly did they answer our sales enquiry?
5. Did they answer all our questions?
Firstly I discounted any that took more than one day to answer my enquirey on the basis that most companies will give sales their #1 priority so if they cannot answer a sales enquiry within one day then there is little chance that they will answer a support query any quicker.
I also discounted any that did not make a reasonable effort to answer my list of questions but simply referred me to their product packages page in their website, or similar. A number of them tried that and none of their web sites provided all the information that I required. I feel that if they can't be bothered to make the effort then they don't get the business.
Of the remainder 4surehosing.com came up tops and we are now using them. Although we have just launched so I don't know how their servers will perform under a heavier load, I have been very happy with them up to now. They have answered all my queries and implmented any changes very quickly and not a meantion of any surcharge for any of the slighlty non-standard features that I have requested.
Payment Service Provider
We went for WorldPay on the basis they they seem to be the biggest and support the largest number of credit/debit cards. Our thinking was that for every sale lost because the PSPs servers are down or they do not take the customers card we would need to make 200 equivalent sales through a PSP that charges 1/2% less than WorldPay to cover the cost of the lost sale.
Generally I have been pretty happy with Actinic. It does what it says on the tin and you couldn't really expect much more without forking out for a bespoke application. Following are features that I would like to see incoporated:
Anyway, I have had some help from this forum so hopefully this will give something back. Please fell free to make any suggestion or point out any erros etc in our site. I you would like any more detail about how I have implemented anything just ask and I will provide what info I can
I have finally got the site up and running. I would greatly appreciate some feedback. Be as scathing as you like!
Following are some of the problems that I experienced and how I got around them (if at all).
Dealing with multiple currencies
We wanted to sell our products in both Pounds Sterling and US Dollars initially and possibly add additional currencies at a later date.
Because Actinic cannot support more than two currencies on a single site and we did did not like the look and feel of displaying more than one currency on a singel site anyway we decided to create a seperate catalog for each currency with the following paths www.picchumaternity.com/uk/acatalog for the UK site and www.picchumaternity.com/us/acatalog for the US site. I then created a script that runs when on the Picchu Maternity Wear home page that checks for a cookie called "site". If the cookie is not set then the user is directed to a page that prompts them for their country location when they try to access the online store. The cookie is then set to either "uk" or "us" and the user is redirected to the relevant catalog depending on their location. The next time the user visits the store the cookie is read and the hyperlinks to the catalog and brochure pages are dynamically changed so the the user will be taken to the correct catalog without having to choose their location again.
The only problem with this method is that it increases the administrative burden in that you have to create maintain seperate catalogs for each currency. This isn't too much of a problem for use as our collection only changes twice a year but it would have a greater impact on a a site that changes frequently. Having said that, I found that by getting one of the sites absolutely right and then exporting it and importing it into the other site as an update that it is fairly painless after a few trial runs.
Using Actinic Link
We are using Sage as our accounting package. We were intending to use Actinic Link to link Actinic and Sage. Unfortunately we found that it lacked the functionality to deal with an Actinic website that is using a different default currency from Sage. Further details of this can be found at this thread. We are now having to manually enter our orders from Actinic into Sage for processing. This is not a big problem for us because we have a relatively high value low volume trade. We now use Actinic Link only to update stock quantities on Actinic from Sage.
Having said this, Actinic Link is a good product for a 'normal' setup where you are linking between a site and a set of accounts using the same currency.
Gift Vouchers
- Create a new product called Gift Voucher and give it a value of £1
- Create a new layour based on act_productline.html but remove the product price and chnage the quantity tag to read "Value of Gift Voucher"
- Set the Gift Voucher product to use the new layout template
This is quite difficult to explain properly, have a look at this page if you found the above hard to follow.
Limiting Payments by Location
We wanted to take payments by cheque or money order from the UK only, but credit card payments from anywhere. I set the payment methods up as above but found the when the shopper checked out that they were given a choice between 'United Kingdom' and 'None of the above' for invoice location so that Actinic can decide what type of payment methods are valid. Almost everyone that I spoke to agreed that this would give a lot of shoppers the impression that we only sell to UK customers and abandon their purchase. In the end we decided to leave cheque payment open to all locations and change the the description to 'Cheque or Money order (UK only)' and hope that people comply. If anyone hase any suggestions on this it would be greatly appreciated
Hosting Service Provider
Finding the right hosting service provider was quite difficult because they all seem to offer different packages, making it very diffficult to compare like with like. In the end I wrote up a required and desirable feature set and a list of question regarding pricing , upgrading etc and sent it to 20 odd of the most frequently recommended service providers on this forum and other. I judged the replies them on the following criteria:
1. Can they provide the full feature set
2. Price
3. How many of the desirable features could they offer?
4. How quickly did they answer our sales enquiry?
5. Did they answer all our questions?
Firstly I discounted any that took more than one day to answer my enquirey on the basis that most companies will give sales their #1 priority so if they cannot answer a sales enquiry within one day then there is little chance that they will answer a support query any quicker.
I also discounted any that did not make a reasonable effort to answer my list of questions but simply referred me to their product packages page in their website, or similar. A number of them tried that and none of their web sites provided all the information that I required. I feel that if they can't be bothered to make the effort then they don't get the business.
Of the remainder 4surehosing.com came up tops and we are now using them. Although we have just launched so I don't know how their servers will perform under a heavier load, I have been very happy with them up to now. They have answered all my queries and implmented any changes very quickly and not a meantion of any surcharge for any of the slighlty non-standard features that I have requested.
Payment Service Provider
We went for WorldPay on the basis they they seem to be the biggest and support the largest number of credit/debit cards. Our thinking was that for every sale lost because the PSPs servers are down or they do not take the customers card we would need to make 200 equivalent sales through a PSP that charges 1/2% less than WorldPay to cover the cost of the lost sale.
Generally I have been pretty happy with Actinic. It does what it says on the tin and you couldn't really expect much more without forking out for a bespoke application. Following are features that I would like to see incoporated:
- Gift Vouchers!!!
- Greater functonality in Actinic Link to deal with different currencies
- A better user guide/documentation
Anyway, I have had some help from this forum so hopefully this will give something back. Please fell free to make any suggestion or point out any erros etc in our site. I you would like any more detail about how I have implemented anything just ask and I will provide what info I can
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