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Minimize Shipping Costs with the Spiffy Stores Advanced Packing Algorithm

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“How do I save money by minimizing my shipping costs?”

That’s a question we hear all too often as our store owners stuggle with the problems of shipping their goods to customers.

Setting your shipping costs is one of the most important aspects to running an online ecommerce business. If you charge too little, then you may lose money on each order and if you charge too much, you may lose sales as customers go elsewhere.

Other Shopping Cart Software Fails to Deliver

As incredible as it sounds, the popular ecommerce software packages available today are of little help, with most offering no more than simple flat-rate shipping schemes. If you find a service offering real-time carrier calculated shipping rates, such as from Australia Post or New Zealand Post, then the chances are that if your customers order more than 20kg of items, they’re out of luck as that’s the maximum weight that you can send using these services.

This means that you could lose customers or risk going out of business because you’re not making enough profit. What’s worse is that you may be losing valuable orders where your customer wants to purchase a large number of items and your shopping cart software says: “Sorry! I don’t know how to handle that many items. It’s all too complicated for me. Please take your business elsewhere.”

Large shipping companies pay $100,000s for software to help them optimize their parcel packing because it saves them money. It’s expensive because it’s a very complicated problem and requires a lot of advanced mathematics to solve.

Spiffy Stores Advanced Packing Algorithm Software Solution

At Spiffy Stores, we’ve solved the packing problem and we’ve added our advanced parcel packing algorithm to all stores at no extra cost. Every Spiffy Stores plan includes real-time carrier calculated shipping rates, and all orders are processed by our advanced packing software.  This means that the cost of shipping every package is minimized, and that means you save money!

Our Advanced Packing Algorithm software is unique to Spiffy Stores and you won’t find it anywhere else. Our range of shipping options is unmatched by any other vendor, and every one of our shipping features is freely available to every store on every plan. Other providers charge extra for basic carrier shipping apps, plugins and add-ons that we provide for free!

There’s simply no competition. Have a look at what the others offer and you’ll see the advantage in choosing to build your business with Spiffy Stores.

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Card Access Services payment gateway now available

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We’re always on the lookout for more options for our store owners to accept payments online.  Last week we integrated the Fat Zebra payment gateway into Spiffy Stores, which is now available to all online stores in Australia.

This week, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve joined forces with the Card Access Services payment gateway to provide real-time payment processing.

This means that you now have even more options for accepting credit card payments directly in your online store.

Our current direct payment gateways available to e-commerce stores in Australia are:

  • Advam
  • ANZ eGate
  • Bendigo Bank
  • Camtech
  • Card Access Services
  • Commonwealth Bank CommWeb
  • eWay
  • Fat Zebra
  • NAB Transact
  • NetRegistry
  • PaySecure
  • PaymentExpress (Australia and New Zealand)
  • SecurePay
  • Suncorp Bank
  • Westpac PayWay

These are in addition to our support for PayPal Website Payments Standard, PayPal Express, and the ability to accept credit card payments manually using your own credit card processing facilities.

More information about Card Access Services, and instructions for activating the gateway can be found in our knowledge base.

Easy theme editing using WebDAV

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We’ve always believed in pushing the technical envelope to provide advanced technical solutions to make life easier for our store owners.  This is way more important to us than the hype and gloss that you may find in the rest of the industry.

Over the past year, we’ve been talking to loads of web designers who use Spiffy Stores to create online stores for their customers. Although they love creating new e-commerce shops using our software, the resounding feedback we’ve been getting is that whilst the current Theme Editor in the Toolbox is great for small changes, it get’s a bit more difficult when designing an entire theme for a store.

For larger theme updates it’s really necessary to download the theme files to your computer, edit them and then upload the new files to the server. Using the Theme Editor to do this is a bit cumbersome, and makes the design process more difficult than it should be.

We’ve listened to these concerns, and have spent considerable time and effort working on a solution… so today we’re very proud to announce a major new capability which allows all your theme files and assets to be edited directly from your computer using WebDAV enabled editors such as Adobe’s Dreamweaver, and Panic’s Coda.  If you’re on a Mac, you’re even luckier, as WebDAV is built right into OSX, and can be used in conjunction with TextMate and Taco.

To use this new feature in Windows, all you need is a WebDAV enabled editor or a utility such as NetDrive which allows WebDAV files to be mounted on your computer as a local folder. This means that you can use your favourite editor to edit your store’s theme files directly from your computer.

If you’re using a WebDAV enabled editor such as Dreamweaver, you also have access to some advanced features such a file checkout and locking so that you can work in a team without having to worry about whether someone else overwrites your changes.

If you’re a web designer and your current e-commerce software doesn’t support WebDAV, then you should seriously consider Spiffy Stores for this feature alone, as you’ll find your theme development time slashed significantly.

For more info about using WebDAV to edit your store, head over to the WebDAV section of our knowledge base.

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Fat Zebra payment gateway now available

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We’re pleased to announce that Spiffy Stores now supports the Fat Zebra payment gateway for accepting credit cards in your e-commerce shop.

Fat Zebra is easy to set up, and has some of the lowest fees in Australia, at just 40¢ per transaction… dropping down to 18¢ on their larger plans.

Setting up a payment gateway on your website can be time consuming and costly, with some startups spending in excess of $6000 just to have something live… let alone actually covering the costs with sales.

Fat Zebra charge on average around $220 per year, and take a flat rate from each transaction.  This combined with the assistance they will provide you in setting up your account, along with the ease of integrating the gateway into your Spiffy Store makes their payment gateway one of the best value for money solutions available for accepting payments online in Australia.

When it comes to systems like PayPal, one of the major issues a lot of small businesses and startups have is that they are cash flow poor, this means that waiting up to three days for money to land in an account can have a negative impact on the business.  Most payments processed by Fat Zebra will appear in your merchant account by the following business day.

Find out more about Fat Zebra at https://www.fatzebra.com.au

For instructions on integrating the Fat Zebra gateway into your Spiffy Store, go to https://www.spiffystores.com.au/kb/Fat_Zebra_Payment_Gateway

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Store of the moment: The Possible Co.

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The Possible Co. Online Store
At The Possible Co. they believe it is possible to always shop nice – nice for people, nice for animals and nice for the planet.  Shopping nice doesn’t mean sacrificing creativity, adventure or design however…

All of their products have been specifically sourced from companies that work hard to ensure neither animals, humans or the environment are harmed in the making of their products.

Check out their new Spiffy Store at http://www.thepossibleco.com.au

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Google’s “Trusted Stores” E-Commerce Certification Program

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Google recently announced a new e-commerce certification program called “Trusted Stores”, where stores that go through an approval process with Google will be allowed to add a “Google Trusted Store” badge to their online store.

Google intends for the trusted store badge to give consumers a boost of confidence when shopping online, and it comes with a $1,000 guarantee to cover the purchase… which should really help to increase sales in your online store when the program is up and running.

The way it works is when a visitor to your online store hovers their mouse over the trusted stores badge, a live “report card” type tooltip will pop up. Easy to understand grades like A+, A, B and C are awarded for quality of service features like customer service and fast or reliable shipping.

Right now it’s just a pilot program with a limited number of retailers, but all Spiffy Stores owners can apply to participate by filling out this form. There’s no guarantee that Google will accept your application… as it’s currently only in Beta, and you’ll need a great history of reliable shipping and great customer service for them to even consider your application.

Learn more by watching Google’s overview video below, or click here to watch it on YouTube.

Store of the moment: JD Lighting

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JD Lighting are based in Browns Plains, Brisbane, but have brought their great range of lighting solutions to everyone in Australia… 24 hours, 7 days a week with their Spiffy Store.

Their online store is a full custom designed store, which was designed and built by 2plik8 Studios in Brisbane.

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Stripe payment gateway now available

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We’re really pleased to announce that Spiffy Stores now supports the Stripe payment gateway for accepting credit card payments in your online store.

Stripe is super easy to set up, and has some of the lowest fees, bringing the whole process of automating credit card payments within reach of small businesses… without the giant setup fees imposed by many banks.  Their fees are just 2.9% of the transaction plus a 30¢ transaction fee.

Stripe has no setup fees, no monthly fees, no minimum charges, no validation fees, and no card storage fees. There’s also no charge for failed payments.

What’s the catch you ask?  None except that it’s only currently available to ecommerce businesses based in the US.  We’re eagerly awaiting the release of their worldwide service though, and will let you know as soon as it’s available.

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Store of the moment: Soundhub

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Soundhub is based in Brisbane, Queensland. Soundhub stocks a wide variety of headphones that includes earphone/earbud styles, traditional overhead headphones, wireless/bluetooth and noise-cancelling models.  With a growing range they are always on the lookout for headphones that offer listeners more than the generic ‘clonephone’ design.

The Soundhub online store is based on the Minimal ecommerce theme from Spiffy Stores.

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Worldpay payment gateway now available

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We’re happy to announce that Spiffy Stores now supports the Worldpay Direct XML payment gateway, allowing store owners to seamlessly accept credit and debit card payments in their online store.

Worldpay’s Business Gateway Plus is an all in one payment gateway and Internet Merchant Account that includes advanced fraud screening and online management, giving you everything you need to start collecting payments online. With everything under one roof, it really is good value and easy to manage.

Existing store owners who have signed up with Worldpay can enable the Worldpay gateway in the “Preferences -> Checkout & payment” section of their store toolbox.  More information about payment gateways compatible with Spiffy Stores can be found in our knowledge base.

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