In this section

Online Shop

The Business Case

As more and more consumers turn to the Internet for their purchases, the world of online trading provides a whole host of advantages and opportunities that simply did not exist before the advent of the web.

Along with choice and convenience, the purchase of niche products represents a major opportunity for a multitude of businesses. Products and merchandise related to your destination are unique to you, and therefore not generally available outside of the geographic locality. In using our eCommerce system for the sale of destination-specific merchandise you are able to reach a wider audience and capitalise on an affordable modern global distribution network.

Features and Functionality

Our eCommerce solution uses robust SQL Server and .Net technology and is currently in use by companies with £million+ online turnover, the system has been designed to minimise downtime and maximise functionality.

The eCommerce system is more than just a shopping cart. It manages all of the processes of running an online store – from product and customer management through to order processing and fulfilment.

All of the products that you wish to sell on the site will be stored in an online catalogue.You are able to create/amend and delete all aspects of these products via a browser based, easy to use backend control panel meaning the information is kept fresh and up-to-date and the addition of new product is easy.

When a person wishes to make a purchase, they will register their contact details with the site. This will go into the customer database along with their order details. This system speeds up the process for repeat orders. The credit card transaction will be handled by a 3rd party payment provider such as Secure Trading. Your customers’ credit card details will never be stored on the web server or database therefore ensuring security and minimising your liability.

The eCommerce system also incorporates some advanced cross-selling and up-selling functionality. This allows the store to offer alternatives or cross-promote other products in a range etc. The amazon.com idea of providing direction to other products – e.g. “you may also be interested in…” can have a profound effect both on user experience and order value, encouraging customers to spend more per order.

In summary, the features of the ecommerce system include:

Core Functionality

Customer Management – create/edit customer details
Product Management – add/modify/delete product information and cross sell
Order Management – process orders throughout lifecycle – manage invoicing and customer messaging
Order Wizard – for telephone orders
Shipping Methods – allowing the user to specify regions and rates by weight or value
Reporting – stock and sales reporting
Grouped Products – creation and sale of ‘compound’ products
Customer Discounts – by value or percentage on whole basket value

Content Management Functionality

Content Managed Pages - create content rich pages for your customers benefit.
Exchange Rates - allow customers to convert product prices into their local currency
FAQs - inform customers - create and manage Product FAQs by category
News – Publish product news articles to the ecommerce site

Marketing Functionality