Now is the time to invest in your ecommerce website.

This is the advice given by Gerry McGovern (authority on managing web content as a business asset) He assertains that for businesses, doing business online is so much cheaper than over the phone or face to face - and I agree. According to McGovern “It is 14 times cheaper to allow a customer to complete a task on a website than to have the customer complete the same task over the phone. The Web is 35 times cheaper for completing such a task than a face-to-face interaction.”

Consumers are looking for bargains, and it is much easier to window shop online than using petrol and shoe leather!

While retail face to face sale figures are down, ecommerce sales have grown. Figures from The Office for National Statistics (ONS) state that “e-commerce sales in the UK rose by 30 per cent to reach £163 billion last year.”

If you have a website with ecommerce - now is the time to invest in your site This investment has to be done correctly though, it is useless to have an ecommerce site that has a poor layout or poor ecommerce design - your customers will just go somewhere else.

According to Socitm (Society of Information Technology Management) research:
The aveage costs per tinteraction is shown below.

• Web interaction is £0.27p GBP Sterling,
• Phone interaction is £3.76 Sterling,
• Face-to-face interaction is £9.34 Sterling.

Businesses need to spend as much time and effort in their online presence as their high street presence. Customers these days are more web savvy than they used to be. To convert website window shoppers to customers - website shops need to be accessible, usable - and offer the right product at the right price.

If you are responsible for a company or public sector website you will be all too aware of the term ‘accessibility’.

BS 8878:2009 Web accessibility is the British Standard Code of practice that covers building accessible experiences for disabled people.

So how exactly do you go about building a website with a very limited budget, that looks good, is accessible by the visually impaired.

The first place to start is The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) publishes three sets of guidelines which, when harmonized, increase the likelihood that web content will be accessible to and usable by disabled people.
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): [http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG]
• Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG): [http://www.w3.org/TR/ATAG]
• User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG): [http://www.w3.org/TR/UAAG]

BS 8878 code of practice is written for managers, web designers and web developers to follow and understand exactly how to conform their website. However it is important to understand that the documentation covers several important areas relating to accessibility.

• Involving disabled people in the planning, development and testing of a business’ or organization’s website
• Usability testing with disabled people
• Testing with assistive technology
• Expert review

Contact Microedge to see how we can perform usability testing involving disabled people covering different disabilities and assistive technology.

If you are based in the UK and looking for a shopping cart, no doubt you have seen that most ‘off the shelf’ solutions are in US dollars. This can be a big problem for UK traders wanting to trade in pounds sterling as most shopping carts do not allow total flexibility.

We build ecommerce web sites. We provide attractive, easy to use ecommerce design that allows our clients to enhance their customer experience, be proactive with marketing and streamline ecommerce operations. To see the many different ecommerce sites we have worked on please review our website designers portfolio.

We can integrate our shopping cart with any of the following popular payment process providers.

• Google Checkout (UK pounds.)
• WorldPay (UK pounds.)
• Secure Hosting (UK pounds.)
• Secpay (UK pounds.)
• Barclays ePDQ (UK pounds.)
• NOCHEX (UK pounds.)
• PayPal (UK pounds.)
• Protx (UK pounds.)
• Offline credit card processing

 For more information on how we produce our ecommerce website please contact us direct or call us on 0151 324 1056 to see ho we can help set you up for trading online.

You may also be interested to read our article on What makes a good ecommerce website.

 

Update your shopping cart with the change in VAT.

As a business you are aware no doubt that as of 1st December 2008 VAT in the UK is being reduced from 17.5% to 15% (confirmed by HM Revenue & Customs).

What impact does this have on your business?
Not all companies will be VAT registered. Some companies trading will be VAT exempt. For  example Childrens Clothing. However most are commercial VAT registered companies.  If you display VAT in your terms and conditions or as a seperate value in your shopping cart it will need changing straight away.

• Your shopping cart will need to display the new VAT rate of 15%
• Some prices are VAT included and will need to be reduced by 2.5%
• The new VAT rate will need to be shown to your customers.
• Email confirmations and delivery notes may also need changing.

You do not need to go through every individual product in your database to implement the changes. Microedge are experts in ecommerce design in both PHP and ASP written online shopping carts and can write a bespoke solution to solve your problem.

To ensure your business is correct and up to date when displaying and calculating VAT in your online shop to your customers, Microedge can make all the relevant changes to your website with prices starting at just £99. We support all shopping carts written in PHP or ASP, including off the shelf shopping carts. 

If your ecommerce website (Shopping Cart) is designed and set up correctly then the VAT element will be set in a seperate field or element and may even be something that you can quickly and easily change yourself. This is how we set up ecommerce websites and shopping carts here at Microedge. If you can not change the VAT rate in your control panel / administration  this is where problems can occur and we can rewrite your shopping cart to take into effect the new rate.

Please Contact us to see how we can solve the VAT on your shopping cart quickly and easily.

For more details on the Pre Budget Report and VAT changes please visit the  HM Revenue & Customs website.

 

Online shoppers will not have to pay customs duty on items they have bought for less than £105 from outside the EU.

New laws introduced on 1st of December 2008 by HM Revenue and Customs extends the duty-free limit for goods bought online. The move will benefit thousands of consumers who buy items online which have a 14% duty rate. However VAT will still be charged on most items that cost more than £18.

ecommerce website designers will neeed to be up to date with current legislation to be able to pass this help and support onto their clients.

If you are buying goods from countries outside the EU, it is in your interests to know what the rules are. For example, items such as books and mobile phones are already free from import duty charges set by the EU.

When your upgrading your ecommerce cart or ecommerce design it is important if you are trading online to deal with a company that understands the complexities involved with online shopping to a worldwide audience.

For more details visit HM Revenue & Customs