In case you missed it, Australia Post is now offering flat rate shipping to anywhere in Australia! They now have a new range of satchels and boxes, and you can also use your own packaging. You can now pack up to 5kg in any of their Flat Rate Satchels and boxes.

Before, when you sent something weighing 5kg or under in a Flat Rate Satchel, your postage was based on the weight range for the satchel you chose. If it weighed more than the maximum allowable weight for your satchel size, you were charged at the next weight level.

Now, instead of pricing being based on weight range, it’s based on four satchel sizes – Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large. Each size has its own flat rate. And you can now pack up to 5kg in, no matter which size you choose.

As these new rates are new services, and you can choose to use them or not, they are not instantly available to every store that is using Australia Post. The rates need to be enabled in the Preferences » Shipping & handling » Carrier shipping section of your store.

These rates may not help some. It’s up to you if you would like to use them. If you want to enable them, you just tick the new options and click the Update button.

If you’re not using carrier shipping, my may want to rethink your shipping pricing strategy to take advantage of these rates.

Many store owners are already using other shipping providers, but Australia Post hopes that this new offering will bring some of you back. One thing we’ve noticed is that if you use your own packaging (yay! less discarded plastic!), it’s still a weight based flat rate, which appears to be a more competitive offering than their previous rates.

More information about how their new size-based system for Flat Rate Satchels and Packages compares to the previous weight-based system can be found on the Australia Post website.

Expected Impact: 3-7 hours outage duration
Date: Wednesday 16th October 2019 
Time: 11:00pm – 7:00am (Sydney time)

Dear Store Owners,

This is just a heads up that we’ll be re-locating our servers to an awesome new data centre this week.  Our current data centre is in need of major upgrades, and rather than put everyone through that, we’ll be relocating all of our services.

The new site has more redundancy, connectivity and security than the current facility and has been built to Tier 3 standards providing more connectivity options with carriers, IT Service Providers, Cloud Providers and many more.

This move has been several months in the planning, and will result in massive improvements to our speeds and connectivity.

The move will result in all Spiffy Stores services being offline for the duration of the outage.  Should there be any issues, we will provide any updates on Facebook.


FAQ’s

Will my billing change? 
Absolutely not, there will be no change to any of our pricing. We will simply be providing you with better facilities for no extra charge. 

Will I need to update anything in my store?
No, you won’t. We have been busy working out and planning this to ensure that there will be minimal ongoing impact to stores. 

Do I need to do anything? 
No, you don’t.  The relocation team will manage the entire process during the night, and we should all hopefully wake up on Thursday with everything back to normal.

Will there be any “Temporarily offline” nice message page when someone visits my store? 
No there won’t sorry. All Spiffy Stores services will be offline for the duration of the outage. All servers are being physically relocated by our service provider. This means we cannot manage redirects or show friendly messages. It is an outage that is required to ensure there aren’t future unplanned outages, and we can provide you with better facilities for no extra charge.

If you are concerned that your customers will be affected, you may want to alert them ahead of time as we have done.

If you have any questions about the move, please email us at support@spiffystores.com.au or call us on 1300 727 334.

We’re delighted to announce that all Australian retailers using Spiffy Stores can now offer lay-by type payments in their store using Afterpay… the latest craze in buy now – pay later services.

Afterpay offers simple, flexible instalment plans for online shoppers. Customers can choose how and when they pay for an order. After bursting onto the payments scene in 2015, they were listed this year on the ASX… achieving much in a short time. According to our latest available information, Afterpay now serves over 1500 merchants and over 250,000 consumers.

For consumers, Afterpay offers simple, flexible instalment plans for a period of 6 to 8 weeks. The purchase cost is split to 4 equal instalments paid every 2 weeks (for new customers the first instalment is due at the time of purchase, for existing – after 2 weeks). Late fees are applied to the consumers who don’t pay on schedule.

For merchants, Afterpay assumes the consumer credit and fraud risk. Funds are transferred to a merchant’s bank account within 48 hours.

Now that Afterpay is available, retailers using Spiffy Stores can now provide shoppers the ability to pay for items in fortnightly payments just by enabling Afterpay in their store’s preferences.

Afterpay joins a suite of over 60 payments options already available on the Spiffy Stores commerce platform including PayPal, as well as instant credit card payment gateways such as BPoint, eWay, Fat Zebra, Merchant Warrior, Payment Express, Pin Payments, SecurePay, and Stripe to name a handful. These services are all ready and available for use in all Spiffy Stores, allowing merchants to set them up effortlessly.

If you already have an Afterpay merchant account, it’s easy to set up your store to accept Afterpay payments. Just head over to our knowledge base for step-by-step instructions on setting up Afterpay in your store. For more information about Afterpay, visit their web site at https://www.afterpay.com.au

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Today we’re moving forward with our plans for a more secure, safer Internet for everyone. We’ve decided that it’s time for an upgrade to the security on all Spiffy Stores, so we’re issuing free SSL certificates for every Spiffy Store.

In case you missed that… every page, every image, all content… everything on all ecommerce stores powered by Spiffy Stores can now be accessed using SSL encryption for free!

In the past we’ve used SSL encryption to protect a customer’s personal information in the checkout, and other traffic used unsecured HTTP transfer. This is the way most ecommerce websites work. We’ve decided however that we need to give our store owners a boost to help build customer trust as well as a small boost to their Google ranking.

Why does HTTPS help build trust?

When a potential customer visits your store, they look for visual cues that it’s safe to buy from you. Probably the most powerful indicator that your store is safe is the padlock icon that appears when your ecommerce store is fully encrypted. We’ve also been told they look for it whether they’re in your store’s checkout or not.

How does HTTPS help your Google ranking?

In August 2014, Google made the announcement regarding making HTTPS a ranking signal. So there’s a little boost for being completely HTTPS. Not only are you boosting your rankings with a secured site, but also you’re doing a favour for your customers by providing them a secure environment to view your products and make a purchase.

How can I encrypt my Spiffy Store?

We’ve already done it for you, and made it completely free! It’s super easy to fully encrypt your Spiffy Store, improve your store’s security, increase customer trust, and boost your SEO.

Before enabling SSL, you should also check out our knowledge base article on things you’ll need to take into account when enabling SSL.

All you need to do is log into your store, head over to the DNS & Domains section of your Preferences, and tick the Store-Front SSL Enabled option. If you have any issues, just let us know.