Announcements | 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.

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.

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.

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.

Expanded Payment Surcharge Options Now Available for Australian Merchants

Brian — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 00:20:38 +0000

Surcharges for payments by credit card are now fairly common in the Australian market place, and came about from an RBA review into the payments system, which recommended greater transparency for consumers.

These sort of regulations, however, do not exist overseas… especially in the US. This means that support for adding surcharge payments to orders is basically non-existent, and is not really likely to be added in the near future by US-dominated ecommerce platforms.

In case you hadn’t realised, Spiffy Stores is 100% Australia owned, so of course we’re more concerned with meeting the needs of our Australia based merchants. Today’s announcement demonstrates this point.

So we’re happy to announce that our payment surcharge options now include the ability to add a percentage surcharge to all PayPal transactions, in addition to our existing credit card based surcharge options, which allow differing surcharges based on the credit card brand.

Perhaps one of the important lessons we’ve learnt from the global pandemic is that maybe there are some things we don’t really want to get from overseas! It’s been a reminder that there are benefits in looking at local solutions for many of our needs.

Shouldn’t this also be true when you are considering what platform you choose as the basis for your own business?

I guess the bottom line is that with Spiffy Stores, you’re going to get a platform for your online business that is aligned with your needs as a business owner. The same can probably not be said for the US-based platforms that you may be considering.

The post Expanded Payment Surcharge Options Now Available for Australian Merchants first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Creating content just got a bit easier.

Brian — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 03:39:12 +0000

Hope everyone is doing well in these “interesting” times. Has anyone else noticed that Netflix seems to have fewer decent movies than ever? Are they taking advantage of the fact that some of us are trapped in our homes?

Netflix bitching aside, I should get to the real purpose of this article… which is to let everyone know that we’ve added a new wysiwyg text editor to stores that allows you easily lay out your text, make text bold, italic, different colours etc.

That’s not it though… you can change alignment, add bullets, add links in, and do pretty much all of the other stuff you can do in common desktop editors.

Oh… and you can also add in images and rotate & crop them inline… as well as adjust the size, brightness, contrast, and a bunch of other stuff.

Just to make sure the new editor doesn’t break stuff that you’ve created using the old editor, it only shows up on new products, pages, and articles that you’ve created in the last week or so.

We know this feature has been around for ages, and it may seem that we’re a bit slow bringing it to our software. Conversations about the editor usually ended with someone screaming “x#$%&* no way! it makes the code too messy!”… which is exactly why we have delayed this release.

The text that you add for your products can be used in many ways… such as when you connect your store’s product catalogue to Facebook, Instagram, or one of the shopping portals we support. They don’t want to deal with messy code, and neither do we. The great news is that we’ve almost perfected cleaning up this code so products aren’t rejected.

The editor is still a work in progress, so please let us know if you run into any issues with your product feeds, or with the editor in general.

The post Creating content just got a bit easier. first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Simple Ecommerce Theme

Brian — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 01:26:53 +0000

Over the past months, the Spiffy Stores team have been flexing our creative and technical muscles hard to bring store owners and developers a simple but full featured new Spiffy Stores theme.

Now, we’re excited to introduce you to the result of all that hard work — and open up a whole new set of possibilities to stretch your creativity.

It’s called Simple – and it’s the newest premium Spiffy Stores theme available for free on all Spiffy Stores plans.

Simple is designed to be exactly what it sounds like – super simple.

Simple represents years of feedback from store owners and developers of all types who want more flexibility and control when it comes to themes, as well as keeping the overall look as clean as possible… but still containing the features built in to our other themes.

That’s a delicate balancing act!

Feature overview

The real power of Simple becomes obvious once you apply the theme and see the options available in your Theme Editor.

Here’s a roundup of some of the highlights of the Simple theme:

Advanced mega menus without an app: We know that mega menus are a key way to not only to “show” your shoppers around the store but also get out your marketing messages — so we’ve expanded the mega menu functionality in our other themes to create our most flexible setup yet.
A beautiful slideshow, with customisable size, colours, transitions, and fonts.
Customisable Instagram feed to show off a gallery of your product images
Customisable parallax banners on all pages including collection pages, product pages, blog articles etc.
Customisable tabs on product pages. You can break up your product pages into section for displaying different kinds of info, such as videos, size charts, shipping info, reviews etc.
Customisable popups, which are far more effective than just having a subscribe form in your footer.
Display featured products, featured collections, and blog articles on your home page…. along with welcome text, a slideshow, and your Instagram feed. We’ll also soon provide a tutorial on how to re-order and customise sections.
Integration with Yotpo to provide product reviews
Customisable announcement bars to provide important info
Choose from over 50 included fonts, or add your own custom Google font.
Colour options so you can recolour everything in the theme, or choose from built-in colour schemes.
Product sorting, list view, grid view, and unlimited scrolling options
Google reCAPTCHA to protect you from spammers
All the other features, in other themes, such as wishlists, mobile responsiveness, social media integration, image galleries etc.

How to get it

Like our other themes, the Simple theme is available exclusively to Spiffy Stores, and can be applied in the Theme Gallery section of your store’s admin. If you’re switching from another theme, you may want to ensure you download a backup of your current theme first.

You might want to read The Simple Theme Guide, as the theme has a lot of customisation options in the Theme editor, and a lot of the functionality is disabled until you enable it.

The future of Simple

We’re planning on adding a bunch more features to this theme, so stay tuned. Planned enhancements include;

Quick shop popup windows
Create unlimited custom fields on your products
Video in product images
Video in the home page slideshow
More enhanced responsive images

This is only the beginning

Finally, as you start using Simple, don’t forget that this is version 1.0 only — so you might say we’re only in the warm-up phase of pushing Spiffy Stores theme flexibility.

We’re already hard at work on a series of updates that will be released to bring even more features and functionality to this theme.

The post Simple Ecommerce Theme first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Love a Bargain? Customers Love Product Bundles.

Brian — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 23:28:56 +0000

We love adding new features to Spiffy Stores, especially when they add heaps of value for our customers. Our newest addition to the family is the Product Bundle.

You might already be familiar with the concept of selling products in convenient bundles or related products. It’s great way to encourage your customers to buy a few extra items by offering them a bargain when they purchase a product bundle. Studies have shown that customers are drawn to product bundles if they see them as providing good value. Why buy the items separately when you can save money by buying them together in a bundle?

Product Bundles are such a great idea that we’re kicking ourselves for taking so long to add them to our set of core features. The Spiffy Stores core features are all included as part of our base software, and there’s no need to mess around with 3rd-party apps to get access to something that’s essential to running your business.

Product Bundles are also such a great addition to your Spiffy Store that we include them free of charge in all of our plans except for the entry-level Startup plan, where they are also available as an Add-On.

Product Bundles also have other uses. They are great for managing your inventory when you want to sell build-to-order products such as Gift Hampers. A Gift Hamper is going to be made up of lots of different products, which you may or may not sell individually. The Gift Hampers are likely to contain some products in common, but it would be crazy (and bad business) to build your hampers ahead of time, as you really don’t know how many of each type are going to be sold.

Building your Gift Hamper products using Product Bundles allows you to track the inventory levels of all of the individual products, so no matter what hamper sells the most, you’ll always know that you’re not overselling your products and ending up with disappointed customers.

Finally, Product Bundles are an easy way to offer bulk-purchase discounts for a single product. Just create a Product Bundle for the product, and then add additional variations to the bundle for the multiple quantities that you want to sell, such as a “Pack of 5” or a “Pack of 10”. Adjust the bundle quantities and prices of the packs and you’re done. Bulk-Purchase discounts done in a few simple steps.

If you’re not using Product Bundles now, then maybe it’s time to start adding them to your product line-up. If you’re not using Spiffy Stores as your ecommerce provider, then maybe it’s time to make the switch to save money, support an Australian business and get access to all our great features.

More info about Product Bundles can be found in the Product Bundles Tutorial in our Knowledge Base.

The post Love a Bargain? Customers Love Product Bundles. first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Zip Pay Payments Now Available

Brian — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 23:29:59 +0000

Buy Now, Pay Later systems are really shaking up the world of ecommerce, and this month we’ve launched our integration with Australian payment system Zip Pay to do just that.

In November 2016 we launched our integration with Australian buy now pay later platform Afterpay and for Spiffy Stores merchants that have started offering layby-type payments, they’ve seen really good uplifts in average order value. It’s early days for our integration with Zip, but we’re hoping to see similar results for our merchants and Zip reports that the average increase is a 30% increase in sales.

How does Zip Pay work for buyers?

With Zip, you enter your credit card details once at account creation, then you have a digital wallet with capacity for buying up to $1000 total accumulated from any of the stores you choose to use Zip Pay with.

You can then buy at a store that accepts Zip without having to enter your credit card details and without your card being charged. Your credit card won’t be charged until you start making your first repayment.

Repayments are a minimum of $40 per month but you can split that $40 across fortnightly or weekly payments until the balance reaches $0. If you miss a repayment, there’s no interest to pay, just a flat $6 payment for that month.

Why offer Zip Pay to your customers?

Zip have generated over $100 million in sales and have seen an average 80% increase in order value, 3 times the repeat transactions and a 30% increase in sales. With Zip you get paid straight away for the full order amount but your clients can pay the order off over time.

Zip wear all the risk, both fraud and credit and once a transaction is approved, you’re guaranteed payment. Zip settles daily, direct to your bank account.

Zip 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.

What is the sign up process for buyers?

Simply select Zip at checkout
Sign-up on your mobile, tablet, or computer
Complete your order – We pay on your behalf, so you have nothing to pay today. It’s that easy!
Full payment flexibility – You pay us over time weekly, fortnightly or monthly, whichever suits you best.

What is the sign up process for online merchants?

Complete Zip Pay’s online merchant application form
Connect your Zip account with Spiffy Stores – view help guide.
Start taking payments for the full order amount, while customers pay Zip over time.

What is Zip Money?

Spiffy Stores has also just integrated with Zip Money, an affiliate company of Zip Pay. Like Zip Pay, Zip Money allows customers to buy now and pay later, all interest free. The key difference is that Zip Pay is designed for smaller purchases under $1000 whereas Zip Money is aimed at merchants who sell more expensive products. Zip Money purchases can be up to a value of $10,000.

To qualify as a Zip Money merchant you are required to have had a revenue of $500,000 or more for the last financial year and have been trading for 12 months or more.

Visit https://zipmoney.com.au/ to learn more about becoming a ZipMoney merchant.

The post Zip Pay Payments Now Available first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

eCommerce accounting made easy with our QuickBooks app.

Brian — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 04:41:15 +0000

Whether you’re new to eCommerce, or if it’s something you’ve done for years, it’s worth taking the time to streamline your systems and automating the drudgery wherever you can. This allows you to free up time to spend on building your business by working on your marketing so you can maximise the return on your eCommerce investment.

We’re constantly coming up with new ways to assist our merchants with this process, so we’re pleased to announce that our new QuickBooks integration is now available. QuickBooks completes our accounting integrations for now, as we’ve so far integrated with Xero, Saasu, and MYOB AccountRight to simplify the accounting side of things.

We’re also pleased to announce that our new QuickBooks integration is now available to all Spiffy Stores merchants at no extra cost. Other eCommerce providers can charge upwards of $30 USD per month to sync order data from your online store to your accounting app.

While QuickBooks may have been around for some time now, they are always working on improving their range of eCommerce bookkeeping and accounting software. QuickBooks Online provides a reliable and cost-effective eCommerce accounting system. It also has the benefit of being based on the robust framework of their globally successful tried and tested PC based bookkeeping system.

Features of our QuickBooks integration include:

Real-time instant sync! – Once an order has been paid, it is instantly added to QuickBooks.
Automatic daily sync – Quickly and easily import all your orders from your Spiffy Store into QuickBooks Online. You can choose to automatically sync order data and also export historical data from your store.
Full order details – Each order you export from your store into QuickBooks will automatically include all line items, shipping and taxes.
Flexibility – Select an existing account or create a new one to import your order information into. You can also put all of your Spiffy Stores sales into a single account if you choose.
Beautiful reporting – Sync your orders to QuickBooks and take advantage of their powerful and beautiful reports.
Inventory updates – Set up your products with inventory in QuickBooks using an SKU that matches the SKU in your store, and we’ll update the inventory in QuickBooks when an order is placed in your store.

Features of the QuickBooks system include:

Easy-to-use navigation
Common accounting tasks at the push of a button
A range of advanced tools
Full sales recording with credit and debit card friendly invoices and payment notifications
Downloadable bank transactions
Categorises and reviews deposits and expenses
Full mobile integration

The system has a comprehensive online support facility and pricing is based on three scalable ongoing subscription levels (starting at $10 a month) that will scale with your business.

Integration is simple and easy!

Well it is if you choose a solution like Spiffy Stores, as we now have a shiny new app for QuickBooks! It’s simple and intuitive to implement and use, and it brings with it a variety of benefits:

Improved efficiency – With access to detailed customer information and sales, you are better equipped to efficiently place orders and easily answer customer questions.
Seamless syncing – Real-time syncing with QuickBooks, updating reports and transactions as well as key customer and product inventory information.
Easy configuration – Our QuickBooks app configuration is simple, and fast to set up quickly and easily. We’ve provided step-by-step instructions in our knowledge base.

The post eCommerce accounting made easy with our QuickBooks app. first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

More accounting love with our new MYOB app

Brian — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 04:49:40 +0000

If you’ve been using MYOB for your accounts, we have a special treat in store for you. Starting today, you can sync your orders directly into MYOB from your store automatically! Yes!… no data input

We’re pleased to announce that our new MYOB AccountRight Live integration is now available to all stores at no extra cost.

Keep your data accurate and make tasks like bank reconciliation a breeze. This eases the pain of doing your accounts… our least favourite part of running a business. As there’s no need for manual data entry, you save loads of time, as one of the major jobs you need to do is already done for you!

MYOB is an established leader in Australia for accounting software, and offer over 50 different business solutions to suit businesses of all shapes and sizes.

MYOB specializes in accounting software but offers a range of business management solutions. MYOB can help simplify your business by doing the following:

Accounting
Payroll
Retail point of sale
CRM

Job management
Professional tax solutions
and more

Getting started is easy

Our MYOB AccountRight app allows you to export your orders automatically to MYOB, and create new invoices or sales without any intervention. You can opt to export your orders automatically each night, or as soon as you’ve received them.

You’ll be surprised how easy it is to get started with the MYOB AccountRight app – with a quick setup process, you’ll be up and running in minutes… and saving yourself hours in future. Our MYOB knowledge base article walks you through the process.

The post More accounting love with our new MYOB app first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Square accepts payments from anywhere, now including Spiffy Stores

Brian — Wed, 06 Jun 2018 02:42:39 +0000

We’re very happy to announce that Spiffy Stores are now accepting payments using the Square ecommerce payments gateway. You can now process your payments instantly in your online store, working alongside your existing mobile or point of sale systems using Square’s card reader.

Using Spiffy Stores and Square’s payment processing APIs, you can sell online and seamlessly integrate your online and offline sales. Track all your reporting and payments in one place using Square’s free app.

Connecting to Square couldn’t be any easier, especially if you don’t know anything about computers. You just select Square as your credit card processing method then decide what credit cards you’d like to support and whether you want to add a surcharge for each card. After a simple click of a button, you’re able to confirm your connection and you’re done. Your Spiffy Store can now process your payments with Square.

Remember too, that only Spiffy Stores allows you to manage your credit card payments exactly the way that you want to, with credit card surcharge payments that can be configured on a card by card basis.

The post Square accepts payments from anywhere, now including Spiffy Stores first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Spiffy Stores Fulfilments and Australia Post eParcel – A new partnership

Brian — Tue, 18 Jul 2017 01:20:29 +0000

We all remember the time we received our first order from our new online store and how we eagerly packed the parcel, wrote out a label and proudly took it down to the post office to be sent on its way.

This was the start of a new adventure, and with time and effort, it’s now grown to the point where packing all those parcels and sending them off can consume a significant part of the day. It’s not that we’re complaining about the success, but it would be really nice if it wasn’t such a chore.

This is a common story, that many new store owners experience as their businesses grow. Once the volume of your sales increases, you can start to take advantage of discount shipping rates by signing up with services such as Australia Post’s eParcel.

eParcel is used widely by many businesses, and it allows you to submit your parcel information electronically and to generate pre-printed labels and tracking information automatically.

Although there are many advantages to using eParcel, it can become a bit of a chore without some sort of direct integration between your online store orders and the eParcel system.

This is where the new Spiffy Stores Fulfilment integration shines. Once you have activated your eParcel account within the Spiffy Stores Toolbox, you can directly submit it to Australia Post with the click of a button. Your customer is automatically notified with the tracking information, and you’ll be able to check on the status of each parcel until it is successfully delivered.

Our new Fulfilment integration is going to save you so much time that you’ll have oodles of time left to invest in marketing your store. Our first users are already delighted and excited by the way this improves the way they run their businesses.

The post Spiffy Stores Fulfilments and Australia Post eParcel – A new partnership first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Automate your accounting with our new Saasu app

Brian — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 03:39:23 +0000

We’ve been hard at work on developing new apps, and we’re pleased to announce that the first app available is our new Saasu app!

Saasu is an easy-to-use, comprehensive online accounting system that gives you real-time access to all of your business’ critical information. With Saasu you can enjoy the freedom of viewing your business data on-the-go, and working where and when it suits you.

With Saasu – an Australian-owned company, you get a complete solution for much better value than other major suppliers. Here are just some of the ways Saasu can help unlock your business’ potential:

• Invoicing, Purchasing, Inventory, Payroll
• Reports, Automated Billing & Expenses, Multi-currency, Bank Account Management
• Time Tracking, Light CRM, Point of Sale, eBay Connector
• Flexible, secure and convenient online access to your data
• Expert support and more.

Getting started is easy

Our Saasu app allows you to export your orders automatically to Saasu, and create new invoices without any intervention. This takes the pain out of doing your accounts, as one of the major jobs you need to do is already done for you!

You’ll be surprised how easy it is to get started with the Saasu app – with a few clicks, you’ll be up and running in as just a few minutes. Our Saasu knowledge base article walks you through the process.

The post Automate your accounting with our new Saasu app first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Bitcoin payments now available.

Brian — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 02:37:38 +0000

We’re pleased to announce that starting today, all of our merchants can start accepting Bitcoin payments in their online store.

Our new Bitcoin integration is available through BitPay and CoinBase, and can be used alongside other payment services, like Afterpay and PayPal.

We’ve had a lot of demand from our merchants to incorporate support for Bitcoin and we’re happy that we can make this integration available during this year’s holiday shopping season.

Why accept Bitcoin payments with Spiffy Stores?

The main features are:

Ease of accepting international payments. Small online retailers and independent consultants often don’t sell their wares and services internationally because of expensive cross-border transaction fees. Bitcoin relieves the steep cost of going global, making cross-border payments easier, faster and cheaper.
Lower transaction fees. Per transaction fees for accepting Bitcoin are generally significantly lower than those charged for credit and debit card purchases. This is the biggest reason smaller merchants are latching onto Bitcoin payments.
Fraud prevention. Because people can pay businesses in Bitcoin without divulging personally identifiable information (names, billing addresses, etc.), they enjoy a level of identity-theft protection that credit cards simply can’t offer.
The ability to get paid quickly. Having cash on hand is often critical to survival for small businesses. Accepting Bitcoin payments can put cash within your reach faster than it does when you accept credit card payments.
No chargebacks. Bitcoin purchases are final, so there are no chargebacks and no returns, like those rife in credit card dealings, yet another way transacting in the virtual currency saves merchants money.

Wait… So what is Bitcoin?

Many people can find the concept of Bitcoin somewhat confusing. Quite simply, Bitcoin is an online financial network that people use to send payments from one person to another and it’s also a digital currency (also called Bitcoin!).

The bitcoin network functions without a central authority. The managing of transactions and the issuing of Bitcoins is carried out collectively by the network.

Here is an excellent article about all things Bitcoin, and here’s a video that sums up what bitcoin is very nicely…

Still have questions? Learn more about Bitcoin.

Ready to get started? Accept Bitcoin with Spiffy Stores now.

The post Bitcoin payments now available. first appeared on Spiffy Stores Blog.

Announcements | Spiffy Stores Blog

Announcing PayPal Checkout with One-Click Onboarding

Why PayPal Checkout?

Benefits at a Glance

One-Click Onboarding

Migrating from Older PayPal Integrations

Ready to Get Started?

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

See how Spiffy Stores Delivers for you in 2025

Delivering to your Local Community

Using Checkout Rules for Local Delivery

Getting the Distance Right

More Possibilities

Limited Use Coupon Code Discounts

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

Parcel delivery for small business, but better!

Streamline your shipping processes with our new Aramex integration

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

Product Reviews Now Available

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

1. Product reviews help create more informed customers

2. Valuable insight helps you to improve

3. Increased transparency

4. Increased trust

5. Social proof your products

6. SEO benefits

7. Increased Visibility in Google Shopping

8. More conversions and bigger baskets

Address Autocompletion. Now included at no extra charge.

Create infinitely customisable products with Infinite Options. Now available.

Why offer customisable products?

How do I get it?

Expanded Payment Surcharge Options Now Available for Australian Merchants

Creating content just got a bit easier.

Simple Ecommerce Theme

Feature overview

How to get it

The future of Simple

This is only the beginning

Love a Bargain? Customers Love Product Bundles.

Zip Pay Payments Now Available

How does Zip Pay work for buyers?

Why offer Zip Pay to your customers?

What is the sign up process for buyers?

What is the sign up process for online merchants?

Further reading about Zip

What is Zip Money?

eCommerce accounting made easy with our QuickBooks app.

Features of our QuickBooks integration include:

Features of the QuickBooks system include:

Integration is simple and easy!

More accounting love with our new MYOB app

Getting started is easy

Square accepts payments from anywhere, now including Spiffy Stores

Spiffy Stores Fulfilments and Australia Post eParcel – A new partnership

Automate your accounting with our new Saasu app

Getting started is easy

Bitcoin payments now available.

Why accept Bitcoin payments with Spiffy Stores?

Wait… So what is Bitcoin?