E-commerce, bespoke web shops and Actinic based web shops...

The Surf Interactive team have been working with e-commerce systems since the first commercial transactions began to take place on the Internet. Fortunately, since those early days the costs involved with achieving and running online shopping facilities have vastly reduced, opening up this potential market to small and medium operators. Nowadays, it is quite possible and indeed usual for sole traders and small cottage industries to be fully web and e-commerce enabled. For medium and enterprise operators it is likely to be a necessity.

We'll advise our ecommerce clients on any legality issues, standard practice or requirements that need to be in place, particularly where sensitive elements are concerned. For example, online payment providers often require specifics from a business bank account in order to take internet based orders, such as an internet merchant account or MOTO license (Mail Order Telephone Order License).

Security is paramount with any web-shop or ecommerce application – particularly when live payments are being transacted and so particular attention is paid towards good and solid infrastructure, both from website code and web hosting standpoints.

Contents of e-commerce section:

• Small Business e-commerce, web shops and online trading

• Medium Business e-commerce, web shops and online trading

• Large & Enterprise Business e-commerce, web shops and online trading

• Ecommerce website navigation

• Ecommerce and SEO/SEM, social media marketing and RSS feed/email marketing

• Ecommerce and web shop hosting

• Managed options for ecommerce

Small Business e-commerce, web shops and online trading

Taking orders & payments online via your website should be an easy and painless process. For small business there are a number of flavours to choose from:

• Off the shelf ecommerce and web shop systems, such as Actinic.

• Configured for manual download and processing of payments, often known as 'offline payments'. This removes the necessity of an automated payment provider such as World Pay or Sage Pay and the associated fees, but does increase administration tasks for the client and means the transaction has to be processed through a local PDQ machine or similar and hence, won't be a live transaction.

• Off the shelf ecommerce and web shop systems, such as Actinic.

• Configured with an automated payment provider such as World Pay or Sage Pay to enable live payments, with standard fraud prevention tools and mail order transaction facilities. Online payment providers (also known as online payment gateways and 3rd party payment providers) charge a fee for processing the transaction for you, removing these administration tasks away from the client.

• Bespoke shopping basket systems written to the client's specification, using either offline or automated transactions. Bespoke systems are programmed exactly to the client's specification and often satisfy a unique or distinct requirement unattainable with off the shelf ecommerce and web shop systems.

Medium Business e-commerce, web shops and online trading

Taking orders & payments online via your website should be an easy and painless process. For small business there are a number of flavours to choose from:

• Off the shelf ecommerce and web shop systems, such as Actinic Business. Actinic Business provides more sophisticated ecommerce functionality, such as multi channel order processing, marketing functions, customer management and integration with other applications.

• Configured with an automated payment providers such as World Pay or Sage Pay to enable live payments, with standard fraud prevention tools and mail order transaction facilities. Online payment providers (also known as online payment gateways and 3rd party payment providers) charge a fee for processing the transaction for you, removing these administration tasks away from the client.

• Bespoke shopping basket systems written to the client's specification. Automated transactions configured to the client's exact requirement and integrating with applications and hardware of their choice. Bespoke systems are programmed exactly to the client's specification and often satisfy a unique or distinct requirement unattainable with off the shelf ecommerce and web shop systems.

Large and Enterprise Business e-commerce, web shops and online trading

Taking orders & payments online via your website should be an easy and painless process. For small business there are a number of flavours to choose from:

• Bespoke shopping and online trading websites written to the client's specification. Automated transactions configured to the client's exact requirement and integrating with applications and hardware of their choice. Bespoke Enterprise based systems are required to cope with high volumes of traffic, integrate with marketing tasks and other applications, have multi-user accessibility, customer account modules and data export modules and often run across multiple physical locations. Enterprise based ecommerce websites usually run from their own dedicated server(s).

Ecommerce functionality and navigation

Any professional website has a requirement to be easily navigable, but web shops and ecommerce based websites need special attention to this, as there are often thousands of products and/or options to navigate through. We don't want to lose visitors to another site which is easier to navigate around, therefore special attention is applied to the navigation and categorisation of sale items.

E-commerce and SEO/SEM, social media marketing and RSS feed/email marketing

It goes without saying that clients not only require an ecommerce or web shop application which is secure, robust and feature packed, but also performs from a marketing perspective. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are services that Surf Interactive have been involved with for many years, and so we have a vast experience achieving online marketing & lead generation goals for our clients. Equally, more recent social website marketing opportunities, RSS feed and direct email marketing can all be used to good effect.

Ecommerce and web shop hosting

Our web hosting platforms are configured and managed by us, 100%. We collocate high end servers for both shared hosting and dedicated hosting client. This means that the best hardware is used, we have total control over the operating system and applications running on the servers. This translates into ecommerce and hosting solutions which are tailored to the client's needs, 100% - we are not reliant on a 3rd party to manage our hosting for us.

Our in-house team operate at a highly professional level and are capable of achieving the most complex and intricate server set ups. Bespoke and individual requirements are catered for on both a shared hosting and dedicated hosting level.

Managed options for ecommerce applications and web shops

Every ecommerce client is different and has unique requirements to some degree. Of course there are common variables which we've listed below, but essentially we can operate any managed task on behalf of a client, such as:

• Payment provider/gateway support

• Software updates and patches

• Security monitoring and patching

• Online and search engine marketing initiatives

• System specific backups

• Offline payment as a backup option

• General maintenance

• Content uploads and data input