We were approached by Design Distillery, a design agency based in Chichester who asked us to develop this new eCommerce website for leading marine, auto and hotel refrigeration supplier Penguin Refrigeration.

They had an existing eCommerce website, however it looked out-of-date and needed to look more professional. We also suggested developing a customised system builder which would let end-users select core system pieces and design their own refrigeration system that they could then order online.

We developed the website on our StrawberrySystem bespoke CMS and developed numerous modules that fitted around their existing business processes. The end result is a beautiful looking website, a powerful CMS and a platform that will help Penguin Refrigeration increase their online sales and improve their business image.

If you would like to view the website live or find out more about Penguin Frigo, click here.

Being a graphic and web design agency, we love design. Dennis and McGregor is a new business that we decided to start, selling “design-led products for living” online.

The concept behind the website was simple – we wanted a well designed and usable eCommerce website to sell design-led products. We also wanted a platform that we could use to showcase our eCommerce platform – to show potential customers what it can do.

We had many discussions within the team about the functionality that the website should offer both us and our end users. We use various other web-based applications, and the main requirement was to link to these as well as add value through new functionality.

As a result, the new Dennis and McGregor website links automatically to eBay, Amazon, XERO and 37Signal’s Highrise – which helps maintain the accounts and fulfilment process. From an end user perspective, we wanted to give users a range of value add services, including wish-lists, reviews and the ability to follow our blog/news – which we aim to keep up to date weekly.

We are really proud of this new website. Not only from a design perspective, but from comments that we have had from customers to date. They find the website simple to navigate, easy to purchase and enjoy the fact that we love the products as much as they do!

If your business focuses around selling products to consumers, you will no doubt be looking forward to the festive period. Even during these tough economic times, consumers love nothing more than braving the cold and splashing their cash on their loved ones.

Over the past few years, eCommerce has jumped in leaps and bounds and now more and more of us are shopping online in the comfort of our own homes. But how can we ensure we are making the most out of our online business?

This article aims to describe the tools and techniques that you can use on the run up to Christmas to bolster your sales and take advantage of increased spending.

Create a Blog

A blog is a great (and free) way of describing, reviewing and publicising the products that you stock. Use each post as a showcase for your favourite products. By creating a blog and consistently adding new content, this content will be distributed around the blogging networks.

You can download WordPress for free and install it within 5 minutes if you know what you are doing. There are also thousands of different themes available to choose from to make sure your blog suits your branding and looks unique.

If you don’t know how to install a blog, you can always use WordPress.org and signup for free. They will host your blog, but they are designed for non-commercial use, so be careful as they could get removed without warning if they become overly commercial.

As your blog gains momentum in the number of posts and subscribers that it has, you will find that you start gaining some great search engine rankings for individual products. An product/lifestyle blog that has been created for this purpose can be found on Dennis & McGregor. Within each blog post, you can create a simple button to direct users to your product page if you wish.

Signup to Google Base

Google loves creating free services and their Base service is no exception. All you need to do is get your web developer to create an XML file (a simple text based file) containing your product information such as title, condition and price. The XML file can be uploaded to Google Base or automatically retrieved every day by Google from your website.

Once you have this file up and running, register with Google Base and within a couple of hours your products will be displayed on Googles “shopping” tab for everyone to see!

This tool is a great way of increasing traffic/sales on your website for specific products and comes with a suite of reports to use.

Setup an eBay store

eBay is a great way of selling your new products online. As well as the well-known auction style listings, you can setup your very own eBay store for £15 per month plus listing/sale fees.

The process is really simple and a product can be added by either using the list functionality on the website, or by using software created by external vendors such as iSale (for Mac) or Blackthorne (for Windows). eBay will give you a wide range of product options to select, the ability to host your images, add a description and choose a price.

Payment can be made in various forms too including cheque, cash on delivery or BACS. The most popular option is PayPal – a free to signup service that charges you a percentage fee each time you receive money.

Another benefit of using eBay to promote and sell your products is that eBay gets some great search engine rankings. You will regularly see your eBay listings popping up in the search engine results when searching for your products in Google, Yahoo or BING.

Register with Etsy

Etsy is a fantastic way of selling products that you make. This obviously won’t be relevant to every retail business, but if you make your own posters, jewellery, clothing or home products, Etsy will be perfect.

Etsy basically works by you uploading your handmade products to the website, choosing a relevant category and adding your product information. End users can then search, browse and view your products online.

It costs just 20 cents to list an item on Etsy for 4 months plus a 3.5% transaction fee when a sale is made, so its a great way to increase your online sales.

Use Google Adwords

This is a great tool to use in short bursts over Christmas. As well as your natural search engine rankings that you have obtained through your website, blog and eBay store, Google Adwords can be used to promote even more.

Adwords is ultimately a method of displaying adverts at the top and right of the Google search results. Users then see these adverts, click on them and are directed straight to a product, category or information about your business.

The service is fully customisable and can work on any scale of budget as the adverts stop showing when your daily budget runs out. As a guideline, your daily budget can start at £5.00 per day to receive a good level of traffic, but this really depends on your market.

To find out more about Google Adwords, there are some great articles and tutorials available online such as Adwords Learning Centre.

Advertise on BuySellAds

BuySellAds is a reasonably new service which lets you display visual adverts on well known websites and blogs. The beauty of the service is that if you know that your potential customers frequent a particular blog or website regularly, you can advert on it!

Budgets are determined by the number of impressions that each website gets, with the higher visitor counts costing more money. You can easily advertise your products or services on websites/blogs that receive thousands of impressions (visits) for relatively little money.

The whole service is fully trackable and you have access to reporting showing you how many people saw your adverts, clicked through to your website and what the effective cost per click was.

From a billing perspective, the traditional model for BuySellAds has been to pay monthly, although they have just launched a pay-per-click model now too.

Summary

As you have read, there are many opportunities to increase your online sales over Christmas. The key to success is preparation as some of the options available take a few months to gain momentum (such as blogging to gain search engine rankings).

Related Links

• WordPress – http://www.wordpress.org or http://www.wordpress.com
• Google Base – http://www.google.com/base
• eBay Stores – http://stores.shop.ebay.co.uk
• Etsy – http://www.etsy.com
• Google Adwords – http://adwords.google.co.uk
• BuySellAds – http://www.buysellads.com

In order to accept payments online, your eCommerce website needs to be linked to a secure payment gateway or payment service provider (PSP).

Show Me The Money!

A secure payment gateway is used to capture an end user’s card details and then send the information to a central banking system whereby the details are checked and confirmed or denied (depending on status of account). All of the details are sent electronically and encrypted (using secure socket layering or SSL) to ensure that it is secure. Most payment gateways and PSP’s send the data using a minimum of 128-bit encryption which has become the industry standard.

After the customer orders a product/service and their card is authorised, the money is collected from the customers debit/credit card and held at the merchant for a few days. After this period, the money is automatically sent directly to your nominated bank account in a ‘settlement’. This means that you will receive bulk payments which relate to more than customer at a time which can get a little confusing, but you will get the hang of it!

Most UK banks offer payment gateways, but some PSP’s require your business to have an Internet merchant account setup (similar to a merchant account for a PDQ machine) with your bank. A couple of examples of these are RBS WorldPay and SagePay or if you do not have a merchant account, you can use other payment gateway’s like PayPal Standard. An important note is to ensure that your website is PCI compliant when accepting online payments.

Keeping Track of Costs

Payment service providers generally charge commission or a standard charge per transaction. As an example, SagePay (previously known as PROTX) offer a service where you pay £20 per month and can get setup online without any more transaction charges at their end (providing you stick below their transaction levels). At the banks end, if you choose to setup an Internet Merchant account your bank is likely to charge you a setup fee,  a recurring monthly fee and/or commission for each transaction for the privilege – so it pays dividends to do your research before commiting to anything.

If you want to try and cut down on costs as much as possible, you can skip the Internet merchant account with it’s initial setup fee and head straight for PayPal Payments Pro. This service will let you to receive payments online with a monthly fee of £20 plus a transactional charge of between 1.9% and 3.4% depending on your sales volumes.

With most PSP’s like SagePay or PayPal, you can choose if you would prefer to use their payment pages and SSL certificates (which follows their branding)  or use your own SSL certificates and take payment on your website. Both are still highly secure, but offer different levels of integration. For Strawberrysoup’s larger traffic eCommerce websites, we always recommend using self-hosted SSL as it looks more professional and can help increase conversion rates as you stay on the same website.

Summary

This article only covers the basics but rest assured, no matter how big or small your business or eCommerce website is, there is a payment service provider that will suit your requirements. The chosen solution should be based on setup costs, fees, value add services like fraud monitoring and make sure you future proof your website. The chosen solution should be able to cope in 2 years time as switching is a long an arduous task – and not recommended.

If you would like to know more about accepting payments online through an eCommerce website, feel free to email us at hello@strawberrysoup.co.uk or call 01243 373444. On a slightly seperate note, if you are looking for some great debit/credit card logos – check out the web design blog who have a beautiful (and free!) collection that you can use.

Dungarees and Daisies have been trading for a number of years within the fabrics and quilting market place. With multiple selling platforms including their own eCommerce website as well as an eBay store, Dungarees and Daisies have grown their reputation and success online and were now in a position to take their online presence to a new level.

As a small company, the eCommerce solution needed to manage the sale process efficiently. From the automated online sale of products through to order fulfilment process including packing sheets and picking lists, the eCommerce solution gave Dungarees and Daisies the tools required to run their business with minimal resource requirement.

The overall solution has given Dungarees and Daisies a fresh approach to their online campaign and has provided them with a more flexible and stable platform upon which to run their business. The new design has given Dungarees and Daisies a professional visual appeal and the dynamic eCommerce functionality has given them the ability to manage their business their way without restrictions. Our ongoing monthly support package (StrawberrySupport) is going to give Dungarees and Daisies time each month to develop their website further and the newly build website is search engine optimised to assist search engine rankings which will have a direct impact on sales.

Irregular Choice is a well established shoe design company based in Brighton selling shoes, bags, clothing and other accessories. With stores in London and New York and plans for a new store in Brighton this summer, the Irregular Choice brand is on the move and required an online presence to support it’s growing high street activity.

The Irregular Choice brand has a dedicated base of supporters who love both the company and the products they supply. With one signup holding page, Irregular Choice managed to obtain tens of thousands of online subscribers in under 2 months which was a turn measurement of the level of interest in the company across the UK and abroad.

The aesthetics had to follow the “Irregular” look and feel of the brand and it’s products to ensure brand continuity through innovative but brand consistent illustration and design. With the continuing growth of the web on mobile devises, the website was built with remote Internet access in mind. Search engine rankings were also going to be important for the new website not only for increasing sales, but also to reduce risk by lowering the reliance placed on offline traditional marketing methods.

Through the build of a fresh, innovative and well optimised website, Irregular Choice now have the stepping stone required to further develop their brand online.

If you would like to find out more about the Irregular Choice website, why not visit the website?

The Lighting Centre is a Guildford based business supplying unique and individual lighting products to the trade and general public in and around the south east of England. With over 25 years experience in the lighting industry, The Lighting Centre offer a range of product for the home and office including wall lights, outdoor lights, bathroom and bedroom lighting and much more.

With the fall of the economic climate and the strive to continue business growth, The Lighting Centre wanted to extend their product offerings outside of Guildford and the south of England through the design and build of an eCommerce website.

Using our StrawberrySystem bespoke eCommerce platform, we designed and built The Lighting Centre website to not only promote and sell their products, but also to streamline their sales process and increase the awareness of the company across the UK.

If you would like to find out more about The Lighting Centre, why not visit their new website?

Fun Filled Toys is an Aylesbury based business that has 3 core areas and websites. They have Mister Juggles, RC Wonders and Sky High Kites which between them, sell a wide range of gifts, toys, kites and related products all over the world. They also have eBay and Amazon stores for each brand and are very successful.

We created a brand new website for Fun Filled Toys which allows them to manage every aspect of their website including products, categories, images, product options, orders, customers and financial reporting.

The new website has been an immediate success, both internally with the team loving StrawberrySystem’s simplicity and externally – with sales increasing every day, Fun Filled Toys is already on the path to becoming one of the most popular and successful online retailers of toys, gifts and other related products.

Why not check out Fun Filled Toys to see some of their great products and to find out more about the website?

Oasis Overland was formed by Chris Wrede and Steve Crowhurst 11 years ago when they realised that with 18 years of overlanding experience between them the time was right to begin their own venture. Their extensive knowledge of Africa, Middle East and South America had been gained by leading trips for larger more established companies, as well as their own independent traveling adventures.

We were originally approached by Oasis Overland to build a new eCommerce website for their business, however this brief quickly changed into a complete system overhaul – and we were asked to revamp their website, eCommerce functionality and create a new business application.

We developed a brand new business applications from the ground up. It was quite a daunting prospect, as a lot of the calculations that are done by Oasis Overland involving trips, trucks, dates and passengers, it was very important that they system was intuitive as possible.

The website features some great design including a time sensitive background which changes depending on what time of the day you visit at. It also features custom photo galleries, a Flickr account and lots of custom information – all controlled via the central content management system.

If you would like to find out more about this project, why not visit Oasis Overland and check out some of their great overland adventures?

We love to be given the chance to work as creatively as possible, and our newest project win is a great example of such a project.

Irregular Choice is a Brighton based business designing and selling exclusive shoes from their London and New York stores. They have a really dedicated following and we can’t wait to get our teeth stuck into their new eCommerce website.

We were invited to a very competitive pitch against London agencies and after meeting with the Irregular Choice team a few times and showing them our designs in action, we were told that we won the project!

“Strawberrysoup was the most willing to work with us, the most commited to delivering on time and indeed the most flexible. They were like a breath of fresh air.” comments Irregular Choice. The new website is due to launch in June 2009, so watch this space for some serious creativity to match their great shoes.

If you sign up online before the new website is launched, you can even save 10% off your first purchase!