Brian | Spiffy Stores Blog

Spiffy Stores AICommerce Platform – AI as Core Infrastructure

Brian — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 06:38:59 +0000

Moving Beyond “Add-On AI”

In 2025, it feels like every e-commerce platform is suddenly “AI-powered”.

Open almost any dashboard and you’ll find a new button labelled “Generate product description” or “Ask our AI assistant”. Behind the scenes, these tools often rely on external APIs or third-party chatbot companies, bolt-on integrations that offer isolated functionality without truly understanding the store, its products or its customers.

These features are usually built as apps or plug-ins, running on separate systems that have limited access to store data. They can create short bursts of convenience, a few lines of copy here, a quick image prompt there, but they don’t fundamentally change how the store operates. They’re like attaching a high-tech gadget to a 10-year-old engine: impressive on the surface, but still disconnected from the machinery that drives real commerce.

The Spiffy Stores Difference — AICommerce by Design

At Spiffy Stores, we’ve taken a completely different approach.

Instead of bolting AI tools onto an existing platform, we’ve rebuilt core parts of the system to integrate artificial intelligence directly into the store’s infrastructure — what we call AICommerce.

AICommerce isn’t just about automating tasks; it’s about transforming how a store thinks and adapts. By embedding AI models into the platform itself, Spiffy Stores enables intelligent decision-making at every layer, from product recommendations and search to SEO optimisation and store analytics.

Where other platforms treat AI as a separate app, Spiffy’s AI lives inside the platform, learning from the same data that powers your sales, inventory and customer interactions. This means better results, faster performance and zero dependency on third-party services that may change terms, pricing or availability without notice.

AI at the Infrastructure Level

Spiffy’s AICommerce platform integrates advanced AI capabilities natively, not through calls to external third-party APIs and services, but through purpose-built infrastructure designed for scalability, privacy and performance.

Examples include:

AI-Driven Product Recommendations:
Instead of relying on manual product tags or rule-based systems, Spiffy’s AI analyses product descriptions, attributes and sales behaviour to generate intelligent product recommendations automatically, unique for each store and constantly improving over time.
Automatic Meta Tag and Description Generation:
Every product and collection can have short, keyword-optimised meta tags generated in seconds, enhancing SEO without requiring manual editing or external copywriting tools.
Context-Aware Store Search:
AICommerce enhances product discovery by understanding meaning and intent, not just keywords. Customers get results that make sense semantically, even if the search terms don’t exactly match product titles.
AI Insights and Optimisation:
With AI built into the store backend, analytics aren’t just reports, they’re insights. The system can highlight trends, predict product performance and recommend actions that improve conversion and engagement.

Why Integration Matters

When AI is built as part of the platform rather than added as an afterthought, the benefits compound:

Speed & Stability: AI operations run directly on Spiffy’s infrastructure, no waiting for third-party APIs to respond or fail.
Privacy & Control: Your store data never leaves Spiffy’s secure environment.
Cost Efficiency: No external subscriptions or hidden “per-use” fees from app marketplaces.
Ease of Use: As a store owner, you don’t need to configure and manage any external services, such as an AI chatbot, trying to ensure that your store data is replicated and current on the external service’s data stores.
Future-Proof: As AI models evolve, the platform evolves with them, no need to install new apps or chase compatibility updates.

This integration-first approach turns AI from a marketing buzzword into a real competitive advantage.

A Local Vision for Global Technology

Just as importantly, Spiffy Stores is Australian-owned and operated, building technology locally to serve the needs of Australian merchants.

While global platforms chase the latest trend, Spiffy focuses on meaningful innovation, creating an ecosystem where store owners benefit directly from the advances in AI without losing control of their data or their independence.

The Future of AICommerce

AICommerce represents the next evolution of e-commerce, a world where the store itself is intelligent, adaptive and continuously improving. Spiffy Stores isn’t simply adding AI features; it’s redefining how online stores are built, managed and grown.

If you’ve ever wanted your store to feel like it runs itself, making smarter product suggestions, writing better descriptions and optimising its own performance — that’s AICommerce.

Spiffy Stores — powering the next generation of intelligent online stores.

Learn more at https://www.spiffystores.com.au

The post Spiffy Stores AICommerce Platform – AI as Core Infrastructure first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Spiffy Stores vs Shopify: Which Works Best for Australian Merchants?

Brian — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 22:31:01 +0000

When you’re setting up or growing your online store in Australia, you’ll come across two very different options: Shopify, the global ecommerce giant, and Spiffy Stores, a local Australian platform built specifically for SMBs.

Both can power your online store — but they approach ecommerce differently. Below we break down the differences feature by feature, so you can decide which platform aligns best with your needs.

1. Setup & Onboarding

Spiffy Stores: Quick-start setup wizard, localised defaults, Australian tax/shipping options out of the box. Ideal for merchants who want to launch quickly with minimal fuss.
Shopify: Polished onboarding flow, lots of setup options (Shopify Payments, Markets, POS), but more complexity. Can feel overwhelming if you just want to start selling locally.

Best for: Speed and simplicity → Spiffy. Flexibility for complex setups → Shopify.

2. Themes & Design Control

Spiffy Stores: Mobile-optimised themes, adjustable settings, built-in editor for HTML/CSS. Developers can customise fully, or Spiffy can perform paid template edits for you.
Shopify: 100+ professional themes, advanced drag-and-drop customiser, huge third-party theme marketplace, strong ecosystem of design agencies.

Best for: Simple, functional sites → Spiffy. High-end design & branding flexibility → Shopify.

3. Payments & Gateways

Spiffy Stores: Strong local support — eWAY, Pin Payments, SecurePay, PayPal, Afterpay, Zip Pay, Square Payments, Stripe, plus bank merchant facilities. No extra transaction fees for using external gateways.
Shopify: Shopify Payments (where supported), PayPal, Afterpay, Klarna, plus 100+ gateways worldwide. If you don’t use Shopify Payments, extra transaction fees apply.

Best for: Australian merchants who want choice without fees → Spiffy. Global merchants needing multiple currencies → Shopify.

4. Shipping & Taxes

Spiffy Stores: Integrated Australia Post, Sendle and Aramex rates, local tax handling, GST-friendly settings.
Shopify: Wide carrier integrations, third-party shipping apps, sophisticated international tax and duties handling.

Best for: Domestic-focused sellers → Spiffy. Cross-border/multi-country sellers → Shopify.

5. Apps & Extensions

Spiffy Stores: Lean ecosystem — many everyday features are built-in (discounts, gift certificates, bundles, infinite options, blogging, reviews, analytics). Advanced needs often handled by Spiffy developers via template edits.
Shopify: 8,000+ apps in the App Store (subscriptions, loyalty, wholesale portals, advanced marketing). Adds cost but unmatched breadth.

Best for: Simplicity without app overload → Spiffy. Cutting-edge integrations → Shopify.

6. Marketing & SEO

Spiffy Stores: Built-in blogging, SEO fields, Google Analytics/GA4 integration, Klavio, Facebook/Instagram shop integration.
Shopify: More advanced SEO tools, large ecosystem of marketing apps, powerful multi-channel selling (TikTok, YouTube, Amazon, eBay, POS).

Best for: Core SEO + social media → Spiffy. Full omnichannel selling → Shopify.

7. Support

Spiffy Stores: Australian-based support team, available via email and phone, with remote screen-sharing (TeamViewer) if needed. AI Chatbot to assist with technical questions. Practical, personal, and in your timezone.
Shopify: 24/7 global support via chat only. No more phone or email support. Large help centre, and a huge global partner network.

Best for: Personal, local, SMB-focused support → Spiffy. Scalable, global network → Shopify.

8. Pricing

Spiffy Stores: Lower, predictable monthly fees in Australian dollars. Many features included by default. Fewer add-on costs. Starts at $25 per month, incluuding GST.
Shopify: Tiered monthly pricing. Many core features require apps, which adds to costs. Extra transaction fees if not using Shopify Payments. Starts at $61.60 per month, including GST.

Best for: Budget-conscious SMBs → Spiffy. Merchants who can justify app costs for growth → Shopify.

9. Scalability

Spiffy Stores: Best fit for small-to-medium businesses focused on the Australian market.
Shopify: Can scale from startup to enterprise (Shopify Plus), with multi-currency, headless commerce, APIs, and complex integrations.

Best for: Local growth → Spiffy. International expansion → Shopify.

10. Philosophy & Roadmap

Spiffy Stores: Keeps things lean and merchant-friendly, with local integrations and hands-on help.
Shopify: Fast-moving roadmap with advanced commerce features, and global market expansion.

Best for: Stability and simplicity → Spiffy. Access to cutting-edge ecommerce innovations → Shopify.

Summary: Which Should You Choose?

Choose Spiffy Stores if… you’re a small-to-medium Australian business, want personal support, predictable costs, and built-in tools without a big learning curve.
Choose Shopify if… you plan to scale internationally, need advanced integrations, or want access to the largest app ecosystem in ecommerce.

Supporting Spiffy Stores also means supporting a local Australian business, keeping your subscription dollars in the country, and working with a support team who understands the local market first-hand.

The post Spiffy Stores vs Shopify: Which Works Best for Australian Merchants? first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Announcing PayPal Checkout with One-Click Onboarding

Brian — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 04:22:46 +0000

We’re excited to announce that PayPal Checkout is now available on Spiffy Stores — with a streamlined, one-click onboarding process that makes it faster and easier than ever to start accepting payments.

Why PayPal Checkout?

PayPal Checkout gives your customers more ways to pay securely, without leaving your store. When a shopper chooses PayPal at checkout, a secure PayPal window opens where they can:

Log in and pay with their PayPal account
Pay by credit or debit card as a guest (no account required)
Choose Pay in 4 (where available) to split their purchase into four interest-free payments

As soon as the payment is confirmed, the window closes, the order is created and marked as paid, and your customer receives their confirmation email.

This smooth process is a big improvement over older PayPal integrations like Website Payments Standard, which could leave unpaid or abandoned orders in your system. With PayPal Checkout, only confirmed payments create orders — keeping your records clean and accurate.

Benefits at a Glance

Seamless checkout – Customers stay in your store without being redirected off-site
More payment choices – PayPal, debit/credit card (guest checkout), or Pay in 4 installments
Free Pay in 4 – No extra fees for customers to use installments
No unpaid orders – Orders only appear after confirmed payment
One-click setup – Automatic onboarding, no manual credentials needed
Detailed orders – Includes a full line-item breakdown in PayPal
Tracking updates – Order tracking info syncs to PayPal for dispute protection
Future-ready – Replaces legacy methods like Website Payments Standard and Express

One-Click Onboarding

As an official PayPal partner, Spiffy Stores now supports automatic onboarding. This means you can connect your PayPal account to your store with just a single click — no technical knowledge or manual credential setup required.

All you need is a PayPal Business account. If you don’t have one yet, you can sign up during the onboarding flow. If you’re using a personal PayPal account, you’ll be prompted to upgrade by adding your business details.

Migrating from Older PayPal Integrations

If you’re currently using PayPal Website Payments Standard, PayPal Express, or even a manually configured PayPal Checkout, we strongly recommend migrating to the new version. You’ll unlock all of the benefits above while creating a faster, simpler checkout for your customers.

The migration is straightforward:

Note down your current PayPal settings.
Deactivate your existing PayPal integration.
Enable the new PayPal Checkout in your Spiffy Store Toolbox.
Follow the one-click connection process to link your PayPal account.

That’s it — your store will be ready to accept payments through the new PayPal Checkout.

Ready to Get Started?

Log in to your Spiffy Store Toolbox, head to Preferences → Checkout & Payment, and select PayPal Checkout to begin.

With PayPal Checkout, you’ll be giving your customers a smoother, more flexible payment experience — and you’ll enjoy easier setup, cleaner order management, and better dispute protection.

The post Announcing PayPal Checkout with One-Click Onboarding first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Newsletter Aug 2025 – We’ve been working hard for you!

Brian — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 23:50:28 +0000

Here are the latest updates from Spiffy Stores…

Shipping Rates Insurance Cover

First up, we have a great new addition to our shipping rates, automatic insurance cover for weight-based rates.

For example, if you need to ship similar items, one worth $5 and the other $500, then using the traditional methods used by every other ecommerce platform, your going to charge your customer exactly the same shipping rate.

Bad luck if your carrier loses the $500 item!

But no more. Our new Insurance Cover feature lets you define an amount for included cover, extra cover and the fee for extra cover. This means that when the value of the items you are shipping together in a parcel exceeds the included cover, the shipping rate will be increased automatically by adding the fee required to provide the amount of extra cover needed.

This new feature is included in all plans and is available on all weight-based shipping rates. Read more about Insurance Cover in our Knowledge Base.

Australia Post Extra Small Satchels

While on the topic of shipping, our Australia Post shipping calculator has been updated to support the new Extra Small satchels.

Meet Carter, our new Chatbot

It’s all the rage, and AI has come to Spiffy Stores. We have a new chatbot available, both on the website and in the admin interface, and he’s been trained on our entire Knowledge Base and blog articles from the past 15 years, so he’s really a bit of an expert now. Want some advice on how to do something new? Just run it by Carter and see if he can help.

That’s it for the moment, but we’ve got a lot more to let you know about, including some exciting new features that we’re putting the final touches on.

The post Newsletter Aug 2025 – We’ve been working hard for you! first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

See how Spiffy Stores Delivers for you in 2025

Brian — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 02:04:41 +0000

2025 is here and you’re going to see even more ways that Spiffy Stores is delivering real solutions that you need to run a successful ecommerce business.

One of our main focuses this year is Shipping – one of the most difficult things to get right in ecommerce.

To start with, let’s have a look at Local Delivery.

Delivering to your Local Community

You’re a small business, just starting out, and you might want to encourage sales in your local community. What better way to introduce yourself than by offering free or low-cost local delivery? So how is this done?

Using Checkout Rules for Local Delivery

You may not be aware of it, but Spiffy Stores has a very advanced rules-based feature that allows you to control various aspects of the checkout process. This feature is called “Checkout Rules” and is included in our Pro plan, but everyone else can add it to their existing plans for just $5.00 extra per month.

Amongst its features is the ability to control what shipping rates are made available to a customer when they checkout. You have a wide range of options available, such as being able to offer special discount shipping to your VIP customers or, in this case, offer free or low-cost local delivery to anyone who lives within a certain distance of your store location.

Getting the Distance Right

Now local delivery is not really such a unique feature – you’ll find something similar in most ecommerce platforms, but they’re all going to work much the same way by calculating the distance in a straight line.

Where Spiffy Stores stands out is that we now offer a distance calculation that calculates the distance based on the actual route needed to drive between the two points.

Here’s why this is important. If you want to cover a reasonably large area to offer local delivery, then you’re bound to run into situations where the straight-line distance is far less than the actual distance needed to drive to that location. This often happens in the fringe areas of a locality where there may not be a direct route to a particular location.

If you happen to get an order from one of these remote locations, then you’re probably going to make a loss on delivering the item to that location, and that’s something that you need to avoid if possible.

More Possibilities

Once you open up the idea of measuring the actual distance between your store location and the customer’s shipping location, some new possibilties can be considered.

For example, we’re currently looking at the idea of adding distance based shipping rates. This means that you’ll be able to create a shipping rate that is calculated using a fixed rate per kilometer using the actual driving distance between your store location and the customer.

If you think this is something that would be a benefit to your store, please let us know.

The post See how Spiffy Stores Delivers for you in 2025 first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Limited Use Coupon Code Discounts

Brian — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 00:07:16 +0000

Coupon Code Discounts are one of the best marketing tools around for your Spiffy Store. Customers love using coupon codes to get a special deal on their next purchase.

We’ve just added some new options to our Coupon Code Discounts that we know will help you increase your sales and gain new customers.

Firstly, you can now create a coupon code that is limited in its use based on the email address of the customer. In other words, you can now create a coupon code that can be used only once for each customer. You might be having a promotional sale on a new line of products, and you want to be able to offer a 10% introductory discount to your customers when they purchase these new products.

The new limited-use coupon code allows you to do exactly this. Any customer can use the coupon code for their first purchase of these items, and get the discount, but on subsequent orders, the discount offer will no longer be available.

Our second update to the Coupon Code Discounts is similar, except that it limits the use of the coupon code discount to only new customers. This is a great way to attract new customers. You’re able to offer them a discount or free shipping on their very first purchase, which introduces them to your store, and hopefully leads to repeat purchases in the future!

These new options are now available on all plans that include the Discounts and Coupon Codes feature, and for other plans, it is included as part of the associated add-on.

For more information and a step-by-step, check out the documentation on setting up Coupon Codes in our knowledge base.

The post Limited Use Coupon Code Discounts first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

PayPal Checkout is Here!

Brian — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 03:54:48 +0000

We’re happy to announce that PayPal’s new payments platform, PayPal Checkout, is now available on all Spiffy Stores.

This new platform brings a raft of improvements, both for you, as a merchant, and for your customers.

Your customers are going to be pleased that the new PayPal Pay in 4 payments option is now available to eligible customers, allowing them to split their payment into 4 separate payments, so that they can spread out the cost of their purchases to suit their budgets. As a merchant, you’ll receive the full payment up front, with PayPal managing the remaining payments.

You’ll be also happy to know that all the confusion between PayPal Express and PayPal Website Payments Standard has gone away. Now there’s just a single payment option that the customer can choose at payment time. What’s better is that the customer doesn’t leave the checkout page to be redirected to the PayPal site for payment. The whole payment process takes place within a pop-up window on the checkout page. This will eliminate a lot of confusion for your customers, and will hopefully improve your sales as a result.

Another terrific improvement for you, as a merchant, is that abandoned orders are a thing of the past. Under the new PayPal Checkout platform, if a customer has a change of mind, and doesn’t proceed with the payment, then an order is not created. This means that you won’t see a lot of unpaid orders popping up as customers get redirected to PayPal, and then confused by the process, and abandon their purchase, leaving you with an unpaid order to deal with. Of course, if a customer does not go through with the purchase, you still have the option of following them up with a reminder email using our Abandoned Checkouts feature.

If there’s a problem with the order, and you need to process a refund, you’ll be happy to know that the refund process is now fully integrated with PayPal. If you process a refund for a PayPal Checkout order through your Spiffy Store admin interface, then that refund will also be passed through to PayPal for processing automatically.

Finally, when you ship an order, if you add a tracking number to the order, this will automatically be added to the PayPal order as well. This will greatly improve your chances of winning any dispute with the customer, as PayPal will have a record of the tracking number and will generally find in your favour as a result.

PayPal Checkout is fairly straightforward to add to your Spiffy Store. If you are currently using the older legacy PayPal integrations, then you will need to disable them first. You can then follow our instructions in our Knowledge Base for adding PayPal Checkout to your store.

https://www.spiffystores.com.au/kb/Enabling_PayPal_Checkout

The post PayPal Checkout is Here! first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Get in synch with Square Point of Sale systems

Brian — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 23:20:35 +0000

Square is a well-known and trusted solution for many small business owners who need a Point of Sale solution. Their software and hardware options make the management of physical inventory a breeze, which is why they are a popular choice.

If your business starts to grow and you want to branch out and add an ecommerce option for sales, or vice versa, then you need to look at how you’re going to manage inventory and make sure that it all stays in synchronization between what your online store has for sale, versus what you have on the shelves in your physical store.

Here’s where Spiffy Stores can help.

We know that lots of Square POS users love their systems, but it can be difficult to find an ecommerce platform that is going to share the love. That’s why we have integrated the Square Point of Sale within our platform, to make your life as easy as possible.

It’s a simple as connecting your Square POS account to your Spiffy Stores account, selecting which products to synchronize and performing an initial synchronization. Products are then synched across to Square POS with their images and information seamlessly. Everything’s built in. There are no extra 3rd-party apps to buy and install and it’s all done in real time.

Once you’re up and running, every sale from your online store will update available inventory in your in-store POS system so that you can’t ever find yourself out of stock. Similarly, a sale in your physical store updates the inventory in your online store. A product can’t be oversold, so you now have a drama-free experience fulfilling your orders.

With Spiffy Stores and Square POS, you have the best of both worlds.

Don’t forget we’ve already integrated Square payments, so you can also accept credit card payments using your Square account in your online store.

Our Square POS integration is now available to all stores. It’s included in our Pro Plan, and is available as an add-on to all stores on other plans.

The post Get in synch with Square Point of Sale systems first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Spiffy Stores partners with Sendle to provide 100% carbon neutral delivery

Brian — Thu, 08 Dec 2022 23:31:13 +0000

Spiffy Stores partners with Sendle to provide 100% carbon neutral delivery

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Parcel delivery for small business, but better!

Hot on the heels of our integrations with Fastway and Australia Post, we’re delighted to announce our integration with Sendle… who have just recently announced they are now Climate Neutral Certified!

Sendle is the sustainable shipper specifically designed for small business. As the first 100% carbon neutral shipping service in Australia (and now the US and Canada, too), they work hard to reduce shipping’s harm on the planet. Sendle, like us, thinks that everyone, everywhere should have the opportunity and tools to build their dream business.

Each year 1 billion parcels are sent across Australia alone. And, each one of those parcels has an impact on the environment. In addition to a heap of packaging waste, tons of CO₂ are emitted into the atmosphere with every delivery. It’s a huge problem.

By shipping with Sendle, you’re part of the solution. Every time you send a parcel, Sendle offsets the carbon emissions by investing in environmental projects. So far, they’ve helped preserve pockets of native forests in Tasmania’s Central Highlands, helped protect the Australian Long-nosed Potoroo, and are helping restore wetlands and native forests in Australia.

For us at Spiffy Stores, efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to shipping. Relying on manual processes to fulfil orders can be a recipe for disaster when things get busy.

Using shipping tools, such as our fulfilment integrations enables you to book a courier and print shipping labels automatically as part of a streamlined workflow. By simply doing this, you could get parcels out of the door 200% faster than you could by manually entering information for each parcel.

Like our other integrations, when you ship an order, your customer is automatically notified with the tracking information, you can print out all of your labels in one batch…and you’ll also be able to check on the status of each parcel until it is successfully delivered.

The difference with Sendle though, is that you can get discounted rates with a free upgrade to Sendle Premium, providing great discounted rates… as well as the peace of mind that your deliveries are 100% carbon neutral. You can take advantage of their 250g options for small or light items, Sendle Express is guaranteed cheaper than Express post, and you buy compostable satchels from them that break down in home compost (worms love them!). Plus, they’ve got dedicated customer support available 24-hours a day, 5 days a week if you need a hand.

Learn more about how to enable our Sendle integration here, and how to use it here.

The post Spiffy Stores partners with Sendle to provide 100% carbon neutral delivery first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Streamline your shipping processes with our new Aramex integration

Brian — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 23:24:20 +0000

We’ve just integrated with Aramex/Fastway, to help you automate your shipping processes.

Aramex (formerly Fastway) is a popular carrier for many businesses, as they offer an affordable and reliable courier service that operates all over Australia and New Zealand.

Previously with Aramex, you would need to manually book a pickup, and manually add in all of the address details. This manual process can be quite time consuming.

We’re always on the hunt for way to save our merchants time and money, so we’ve now developed a direct integration with the Fastway/Aramex system.

If you already have an account with Fastway/Aramex, you can then easily enable this integration in your store’s admin, you can directly submit your orders to Fastway with the click of a button. Your customer is automatically notified with the tracking information, you can print out all of your labels in one batch… and you’ll also be able to check on the status of each parcel until it is successfully delivered.

Of course, this new integration will save you a lot of time, and we hope that new free time will be spent marketing your store. It’s the difference between a successful store and an er… not so successful one.

We already have merchants using the new integration, and so far the feedback seems very positive. If you’re using it and encounter any problems, just let us know by emailing us at support@spiffystores.com.au or calling us on 1300 727 334 to discuss.

To make this feature accessible to everyone, the Fastway/Aramex integration is available to all stores. It’s included in our Pro plan, and available as an add-on on all other plans in the Accounts -> Add-ons section of your store’s admin. It can be enabled in the Preferences -> Fulfilment Services section of your store’s admin.

Instructions on how to enable our Aramex/Fastway integration, and how to use it can be found in our knowledge base.

The post Streamline your shipping processes with our new Aramex integration first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Product Reviews Now Available

Brian — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 03:24:57 +0000

We’re excited to announce that we have now released product reviews, and they are available and included in every Spiffy Stores plan at no additional cost!

We have been working away updating themes to include a way for your customers to add reviews, and for them to be displayed beautifully in your store… and most themes are finished! The last theme we’ll be updating (the Adelaide theme) should be available next week.

With the addition of the built-in mail after purchase email, you should be able to generate a ton of product reviews. These reviews are also indexed by Google and can be a great way for you to generate some buzz around your store and your products.

Reviews and the mail after purchase email function are included in all plans and it takes just a few minutes to set up.

To activate reviews in your store, you’ll need to firstly ensure you have updated your theme to the latest version. We have instructions on how to do that here.

If your store has a custom design, or updating your theme seems a bit difficult… it’s likely you’ll want us to do this for you for a small fee. Please email support@spiffystores.com.au requesting that we update your theme to include product reviews, and we’ll let you know when we can book you in.

Once your theme is up to date, you can then enable product reviews in the Products section of your store’s admin.

You can enable the mail after purchase function in the Preferences -> General Settings section of your store’s admin.

You can add a logo or edit the automated mail after purchase email in the Design & Assets -> Email Templates section of your store’s admin.

We’ve made product reviews available to all stores for many reasons… but the main one is that they can make a huge difference to your store’s performance. How? You may ask…

8 reasons why you need Product Reviews in your store now!

Reviews can help your store increase sales, and can help you to convince customers to leave more of them. Read on to get started.

1. Product reviews help create more informed customers

Product reviews can contain a lot of extra information that can’t be found anywhere else. Reviews can mention things like durability, colour, sizing, and so much more.

It’s personal insights such as “a little narrow for my wide feet” that help customers to be informed and find products that they will love.

2. Valuable insight helps you to improve

Reviews can also help you better understand your products. You can spend hours using a product, but chances are your customers are going to notice things you never would. That means your customers can give you ideas for improvements, or even excellent ideas on how to market your products.

3. Increased transparency

It can be scary allowing customers to openly review you, but showcasing feedback – good or bad, shows you have nothing to hide, and value your customers opinion. The ability to reply to a review also allows you to acknowledge that you’re not perfect, or your products may not be perfect for everyone. Replying to a review can also show that you have faith in your product range.

And you needn’t worry about those odd negative product reviews – 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both bad and good review scores.

4. Increased trust

The immediate benefit of reviews is that they can make your future customers feel that much more confident. The more reviews you have, the more convinced a shopper will be that they’re making the right decision.

5. Social proof your products

We all want one everyone else has, right? That’s how trends work.

Product reviews can make every one of the items you sell super desirable. Instead of seeing every positive product review as a great piece of feedback, see it as a vote in a popularity contest.

Additionally, if customers share products they’ve reviewed across their social networks, it’s more exposure for those products and your brand.

6. SEO benefits

User-generated content provides Google with the thing it loves most: content, and lots more of it than mast store owners can generate themselves. Product reviews are usually full of really relevant, rich keywords, to help further build context around your eCommerce store. This can dramatically improve your Google rankings.

Plus… not sure if you’ve ever seen them, but you will see stars displayed under product listings in organic search results. These result in an increase in click-through rates. This is also one of Google’s ranking factors, so – yes… this will also help you reach the top spots in search ranking.

7. Increased Visibility in Google Shopping

Google Shopping is extremely competitive, and the addition of stars to your product listings can make all the difference when it comes to attracting the attention of potential customers.

8. More conversions and bigger baskets

As a result of your customers being more informed, more confident, and more trusting they’ll be more likely to convert. Not only that, but they’ll probably also buy more. We’re talking more, bigger sales.

According to statistics, reviews produce an average of 18% uplift in sales, and customers who visit a site and interact with reviews spend 11% longer on the site than those who don’t.

Trying to compete online without product reviews can be an uphill battle. Customers are beginning to expect reviews as standard. So take advantage of our new feature, and you’ll see a whole host of amazing benefits that will help you continuously adapt and improve.

There are many ways to collect reviews, and we’ll have another article or two on collecting product reviews in the weeks to come.

The post Product Reviews Now Available first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Spiffy Stores Partners with Australia Post MyPost Business.

Brian — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 05:00:44 +0000

We’ve just made it even easier for you to automate your shipping processes.

MyPost Business is used widely by many businesses, as it saves you time by allowing you to submit your parcel information electronically and to generate pre-printed labels and tracking information automatically.

Although there are many advantages to using MyPost Business, it can become a bit of a chore for some. Without a fulfilment service, you still need to export your orders, import them into MyPost Business, mark each order as shipped, and update each order with the tracking number.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could find some way get your orders straight into the MyPost Business system without having to manually export and import them, update tracking numbers, manually print labels etc.?

That’s what we thought! So we now have a direct integration with the MyPost Business system.

Once you have activated your MyPost Business account within your store’s admin, you can directly submit your orders to Australia Post with the click of a button. Your customer is automatically notified with the tracking information, you can print out all of your labels in one batch… and you’ll also be able to check on the status of each parcel until it is successfully delivered.

Our new integration is going to save you so much time that you’ll have oodles left to invest in marketing your store. Our first users are already delighted by the way this improves the way they run their businesses… and makes it so much easier to get the fulfilment side of your business sorted.

To make this feature accessible to everyone, the MyPost Business integration is available to all stores. It’s included in our Pro plan, and available as an add-on on all other plans in the Accounts -> Add-ons section of your store’s admin. It can be enabled in the Preferences -> Fulfilment Services section of your store’s admin.

This is the first of our new fulfilment service integrations. Stay tuned, as there is more to come!

The post Spiffy Stores Partners with Australia Post MyPost Business. first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Australia Post Update

Brian — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 01:27:35 +0000

eParcel Integration

Hey! Just a quick heads-up for anyone using our Australia Post eParcel integration. They have updated their services, and you may need to update your rates in the Fulfilment Services section of your store’s Preferences.

What we can see is that the Express Post service has been given a new product ID and/or renamed. If you get an error when trying to ship, your best bet is to roll back the shipment, update the settings and try shipping the order again.

Note: This only affects stores using our fulfillment integration with eParcel. If you are just using Australia Post’s CSV file then you shouldn’t be affected.

The post Australia Post Update first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Gift Cards Now Available on All Plans

Brian — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 03:23:30 +0000

As part of our efforts to support small businesses (like us) during these difficult times, we’re looking for ways we can help our merchants stay on top of cashflow woes. If you have an idea for a new feature or function that will help you, please let us know by emailing us at support@spiffystores.com.au

To start, we’re announcing new support for Gift Cards, built right into your store. We’re extending this to include our Startup Plan, which means that right now, it’s the best value ecommerce plan available from any ecommerce provider.

We hope this helps our merchants as we and our economy slowly recover from the effects of COVID-19.

Why gift cards?

Sudden declines in sales are difficult to manage when expenses haven’t changed, and still need to be paid. Electricity, rent, utilities, and basic supplies are static costs that we don’t often have control over. This leaves merchants struggling with money going out, and less money coming in. Here are some other benefits to offering Gift Cards…

Gift Cards build brand awareness
Gift Cards are easy, cost-effective advertising that can help keep your business top of mind with your audience. Virtual Gift Cards promote your brand messaging with online customers, and physical Gift Cards offer wallet-sized advertisements to share your business’s messaging.
Gift Cards capture more holiday sales
Gift Cards allow all types of businesses to catch the holiday spirit. From homewares to car wash subscriptions, lawn care, home maintenance and salon services, Gift Card programs can make the holidays brighter for everyone – whatever their interests are.
Gift Cards enable customer engagement
Gift givers are essentially your brand ambassadors, so you want to ensure recipients and givers alike are left feeling uplifted by their experience. Engagement with a customer starts with a Gift Card, but it doesn’t have to end there. Gift Card programs open doors to deeper customer relationships and additional marketing opportunities.
Gift Cards are safe and convenient
Today’s virtual Gift Cards are safer and more accessible than paper certificates that were vulnerable to loss, theft and fraud from duplication. As for convenience, you can accept Gift Cards the same way you accept credit and debit cards: in your own online store’s checkout.
Gift Cards improve cash flow
Selling Gift Cards allows you to generate revenue in advance of providing products or services. As an added bonus, customers who use Gift Cards aren’t as price sensitive. They actually consider them as free money or a discount, which means that they’ll spend more than the value of the card when redeeming the card. In fact, two out of three consumers who pay with a Gift Card will spend 38 percent more than the card’s value.

Using Gift Cards to increase your cash flow

Gift Card products can be created in your Spiffy Store in the Products section of your store’s admin. You can modify their name, image, description, and the denominations that your customers can buy. They’re sent digitally by email and can be redeemed in your store at any time. Make sure you check out our tutorial on creating a Gift Card product.

Once you’ve set up your Gift Card product, make sure you let your customers know. You can do this a number of ways…

Email your customers to let them know. You may even want to offer them a discount on a Gift Card using a coupon code.
Connect with your customers on social media. When we’re all isolating and trying to keep safe, it’s more important for you to connect with your customers. As you ask how they’re doing, let them know how you’re doing as well, and how they can now send a gift card to loved on.
Connect with your local community through online based channels, like chats, groups, and discussions, post on local Facebook pages. Small businesses often have loyal followers and they can help you get the word out.

Issuing Gift Cards

In addition to selling Gift Cards, you can also send Gift Cards yourself. This is often a good way to say thanks to a customer, or to issue a refund… but you can also issue Gift Cards lower in value to promote spending, rather than offering a discount.

You could also issue Gift Cards as part of a giveaway promotion, or competition. Our tutorial on issuing Gift Cards can be found in our knowledge base.

The post Gift Cards Now Available on All Plans first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Sass support upgraded for Spiffy Stores Themes

Brian — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 23:55:32 +0000

This is a quick “heads-up” for all our Spiffy Stores web designers and developers out there who are customizing and building fantastic themes for their customers.

As you already know, Spiffy Stores has always supported the use of Sass (Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets) to ease the development of stylesheets in your themes. It’s a great productivity tool and makes the whole job of building and managing your CSS styles a whole lot easier. In fact, at Spiffy Stores, we’ve been using Sass almost from day one, well over ten years ago.

Since it’s such a great productivity tool, we were a bit concerned to learn that our current implementation was being deprecated in favour of a newly developed version called Dart Sass, and that this version would be the basis of all future development going forward.

We’re happy to announce that we’ve just built a bridge to the new Dart Sass that can be used by all existing themes and any new themes without any change, ensuring our long-term commitment to the Sass language and environment.

We’re aware that another ecommerce platform has decided that supporting Sass is too difficult, and has chosen to withdraw support for Sass from their theme platform, requiring instead that all stylesheets be coded using native CSS. Booooo! As web developers ourselves, we’d be pretty unhappy about something like this, so if you know anyone who has been affected by this change, then please let them know that Spiffy Stores is fully behind Sass and it’s continued importance in the web development stack.

If you have any questions about the use of Sass, or developing themes for Spiffy Stores, please let us know at sup port@spiffystores.com.au.

The post Sass support upgraded for Spiffy Stores Themes first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Address Autocompletion. Now included at no extra charge.

Brian — Thu, 30 Sep 2021 22:59:26 +0000

Success as a merchant means getting a million little details right, and Spiffy Stores is continuously working on improving every single one of them for you… one step at a time.

If you’ve ever tried to ship to an invalid address, you know if you get it wrong, it costs you both the time and money to resend the order to your customer. Getting customers to complete the checkout process… let alone enter their address properly is one of the great challenges for web-based sales.

We think we’ve just made that process a little bit easier for all our Spiffy Stores merchants.

From today, we’ve included at no extra charge, an address autocompletion capability during checkout which offers customers a list of verified address suggestions based on what they’ve already entered for the address.

This feature has two great benefits;

Firstly… it makes it easier for the customer, as they don’t need to enter as much information when completing address details. Less effort for the customer means there’s a better chance that they won’t abandon their order, and go through to complete the payment for the order.

Secondly… it means that the addresses are more likely to be correct, and that means that orders are less likely to go astray and get lost because of incorrect or incomplete addressing.

How many times have you seen a customer just enter Sydney or Melbourne as their location, regardless of which suburb they may actually live in? That must be a nightmare for Australia Post and the courier companies to sort out.

So we know that address completion is a really good idea, but why is this Spiffy Stores feature even better value? Not only do you get an address autocompletion feature at no extra cost, but you get a service that is backed by the ultimate source for Australian location data.

Some competitors offer their own address autocompletion features, but you may not know that these services are generally based upon Google’s own mapping services. The problem with this is that the data provided is not always of the highest quality. For example, we checked out our own office address and to our surprise Google located us in the wrong suburb!

Spiffy Stores has been able to leverage Geoscape G-NAF, which is Australia’s authoritative geocoded address file. It is built and maintained by Geoscape Australia using authoritative government data, such as State and Federal authorities and other semi-government bodies such as Australia Post.

What this means is that you’re getting access to the highest quality data, absolutely free. It’s worth noting that this kind of service is also available from a number of 3rd party providers, but you could end up paying hundreds of dollars a month for exactly what your getting included with your Spiffy Store at no additional cost.

Go and add a product to your cart and “checkout” the newest Spiffy Stores feature!

The post Address Autocompletion. Now included at no extra charge. first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Planned Outage Notification

Brian — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 04:08:23 +0000

We’ll be doing some maintenance that will unfortunately involve some downtime for your store.

Our usual maintenance has resulted in little to no downtime for many years, but this maintenance requires that we take stores offline to be able to make necessary updates.

We estimate that this maintenance will take up to 2 hours to complete.

During this time, visitors to your store will be redirected to a generic page saying that your store is undergoing maintenance.

As soon as the maintenance is completed, we’ll switch your store back to live.

If you have any questions, please email us at support@spiffystores.com.au

We’ll update the FAQ below with answers to any questions we receive.

Expected Impact: 2 hours outage duration
Date: Sunday 19th September 2021
Time: 9:00am – 11:00am AEST

Frequently Asked Questions

Q How long is the downtime?
A We estimate the downtime to be 2 hours or less

Q Will visitors see a page stating the site is under maintenance?
A Yes. You can preview the page here

The post Planned Outage Notification first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Create infinitely customisable products with Infinite Options. Now available.

Brian — Fri, 18 Jun 2021 01:44:40 +0000

Our poor tech team has been locked in the dungeon, tasked with coming up with ways to make our software as flexible as possible, but keeping things simple. With this new feature it may be just be time to let them out!

We often have to reach out to our merchants to find out what problems they are facing. We then work on solving those problems by creating new functions or tweaking existing ones.

One of the problems we’ve identified affects merchants who create unique handmade products… so if this affects you… keep on reading!

You may have been struggling with ways to provide your customers with customisation options, so they can customise a product exactly how they want it. Often this has required delving into the code to create custom fields on products to collect all of the info needed. In other cases, you’ve been able to use the Product Variations combined with Custom Options to offer options, but this can cause the product to load very slowly, as every possible combination needs to be loaded.

There is definitely room for improvement there.

To solve this problem, we’ve created a new add-on called Infinite Options. Infinite Options allows you to sell products that are infinitely customisable. You can create drop down, number, radio, checkbox, text, and long text fields with ease, and apply them to a single product or collection of products.

Infinite Options works on any device (desktop, laptop, mobile device iOS or Android or tablet). Every Infinite Option is purely descriptive. If you offer a customer a choice of options using an Infinite Option selection, the option choice becomes part of the order and is added to the product description in the cart, but it does not affect the price of the product, nor does it affect inventory management. If you want to create fields that do affect the product price then you’ll want to create Product Variations or Custom Options in addition or instead of using Infinite Options.

If you need stock tracking on the option, then you’ll need to create those options using Product Variations.

Why offer customisable products?

Customisation of products enhances the user experience by providing them with the ability to personalise your products. It usually leads to more conversions for the ecommerce business providing personalisation options to their customers.

When you allow your customer to personalise a product, they are turning from passive buyers to active partners. They are contributing to the product development process. The mere conscious effort of helping to create the product can prompt a customer to buy it.

How do I get it?

Infinite Options is available for free on our Plus and Pro Plans, and can also be added as an add-on to our Startup Plan for a small monthly fee. Again you’ll find that our fees are substantially lower than the competition. It can be found in the Preferences -> Infinite Options section of every store today.

Documentation can be found in the Spiffy Stores Knowledge Base.

To make Infinite Options work elegantly in a storefront, we’ve made some changes to our popular themes. We’ve released updates to our Simple, Adelaide, Melbourne, Darwin, Sydney, Bendigo, and Vintage themes to support the new fields… so they should all display beautifully in the latest versions of these themes. If you’re using an older version of one of these themes, you’ll need to update your theme. If your store is using a different theme, you’ll need to contact us for assistance if the fields aren’t displaying correctly.

The post Create infinitely customisable products with Infinite Options. Now available. first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Credit Card Surcharges can be your Secret Sauce

Brian — Thu, 20 May 2021 02:29:00 +0000

Getting your business online involves choosing an ecommerce platform like Spiffy Stores, but there are large number of features to consider when trying to make a choice between different platforms.

In fact, for Australian merchants, there’s pretty much only one feature that really makes any difference!

Does your chosen platform fully support surcharges for credit cards and other payment methods?

I’ll explain why this is pretty important. Let’s say you accept payment by credit card or PayPal. For PayPal, you could be looking at having to pay up to 2.6% of the transaction as a merchant fee. Now this means that your net profit on the sale of an item is cut by this amount. If your ecommerce platform doesn’t support surcharges, then you need to increase the advertised price of the item by 2.6% to maintain your profit margin.

Now, considering that credit card surcharges are pretty well accepted as a normal cost for payment processing in Australia, there’s no real disadvantage to adding a surcharge at checkout time. This means that if you’re adding a surcharge, then you can decrease the advertised price of the item without suffering any loss in profits.

This turns out to be a secret advantage that you will have over your competitors. If all your competitors are using Shopify, then they don’t have the option of adding credit card surcharges. Shopify’s platform has been built for and is largely driven by the US market, where surcharges are often illegal. This means your competitors must increase their prices to cover the merchant fees, or suffer a loss in profits.

So for a Spiffy Stores platform merchant, the difference is clear. You can advertise the same item at a lower price than your competitor, without having to sacrifice any profit margin. As we all know, shopping on online has made it very easy to do price comparisons, so for the same item, the store that has the lowest advertised price will most likely pick up the sale.

And that’s it. By choosing Spiffy Stores your online business gets a head start on all your Shopify competitors without any loss of profits.

Spiffy Stores offers the ability to set credit card surcharge rates for individual credit card brands, and also for PayPal payments. It’s fairly likely that at some stage surcharges will be allowed for Buy Now, Pay Later schemes such as Afterpay, and we’ll be able to implement support for that almost immediately.

Spiffy Stores is an Australian-built and owned ecommerce platform that aims to fully support Australian merchants in a way that is lacking in most of the major global platforms. We’ll be adding new articles on a host of other features that can help you, as an Australian merchant, improve your sales and cut down the time and effort required to keep your store up and running. If you have any questions on how we support credit card surcharges, please contact us at support@spiffystores.com.au

The post Credit Card Surcharges can be your Secret Sauce first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Adding jQuery to Webpacker 6 under Rails 6

Brian — Tue, 11 May 2021 04:14:10 +0000

From time to time we post some notes about technical issues that we’ve encountered during our development work on Spiffy Stores. There are a lot of moving parts to manage, and sometimes we come across some tips or techniques that can help others to build their projects.

In this case, we’ve been looking at how to configure Webpacker 6 (currently Beta 7) under Rails 6.1, which acts as a wrapper to the latest version of Webpack 5. Now, as anyone who’s used Webpack since it was introduced as an option in Rails 5 will attest to, it’s not an easy package to get working properly.

The new versions of Webpacker and Webpack bring around some changes to the way things are configured, and unfortunately, some of the documentation is lacking, or indeed, wrong.

For our environment, we need jQuery as a starter. The trick with Webpack is to get the code loaded and assigned to the global variables, $ and jQuery. The trick with jQuery is to realize that the node modules version provides both a distributed module and also the source code which can be used to build the module with Webpack. If you just

require("jquery")

then you’ll get the pre-built module. It turns out that it’s better to build it from source instead.

If you’ve followed the migration documentation, you should have a custom.js under your webpack directory.

module.exports = {
   resolve: {
     alias: {
       jquery: 'jquery/src/jquery'
     }
   }
 }

Requiring jquery now, pulls in the source files instead, and this will build jQuery with the appropriate global references.

Another important “gotcha” with Webpacker 6 is that when you include the javascript_pack_tag in your layout, you MUST include it only once.

<%= javascript_pack_tag('application', 'common', 'customer', data: { turbolinks_track: :reload }) %>

Webpack builds a number of different file chunks for each entry point, and this means that the javascript_pack_tag will generate a number of