If you’re especially observant, you may have noticed the PayPal Express Checkout button in the Showtime Theme demo that we posted yesterday.  I can confirm that yes! PayPal Express Checkout has been added to Spiffy Stores, and can be set up to replace (or along-side) the PayPal option in the checkout.

Enabling Paypal Express Checkout in your store should help decrease the number of abandoned carts/orders that store owners experience who rely on PayPal to process transactions, as it takes the customer directly to the PayPal checkout from the shopping cart page to place their order.

We’ve been hard at work adding a little tag to everyone’s store to support the new feature, and it’s been included in all of the Spiffy Stores e-commerce themes.  If you’ve somehow missed out, and want to add the button to your store, there are instructions on how to do this in our knowledge base.

We’re pleased to announce that the free Showtime theme is now available in your Spiffy Store Toolbox.  It’s taken some time to get the Showtime theme ready for launch, so we wanted to make the wait worthwhile!

Camtech recently contacted us with a great deal that is exclusive to Spiffy Stores owners.

They are offering a low annual fee, and a 40¢ transaction fee.  Comparable services have a higher annual fee and/or transaction fee.

The Camtech Payment Gateway provides an easy and cost-effective way to accept real-time online payments.  Camtech integrates with Australia’s major banks, and is now fully integrated with Spiffy Stores, allowing merchants to process real-time transactions in their checkout.

Camtech have a simple signup process, and can even help with your application for a merchant facility at the bank.  They are undoubtedly the best value payment gateway in Australia, and if you find a better advertised rate they will beat it by 10%.

For more information about Camtech, and to take advantage of the exclusive deal for Spiffy Stores owners, visit the Camtech site at http://www.camtech.com.au

To receive this special pricing offer, make sure you select the ‘Custom Pricing Plan’ option when signing up with them.

In the wake of Sydney’s 2010 Retailer Expo & Conference, an article on the SMH site the other day tells small businesses that if they’ve been putting off starting an online store, they should get cracking.   If you are not are selling your products and services online, you will be left behind.  Our sentiments exactly!  Read more on the SMH site >>

We’ve just updated the minimal theme so that now it can be re-coloured in your theme editor.  You can now easily add your logo, add images to your slideshow, change your store background colour, the colour of your navigation, your links, as well as your text, footer background, and footer text.

The best thing of all is that all of your colour changes are also reflected in your checkout, which also exactly matches the colour scheme you’ve created.

It comes with a few different colour schemes built-in as well, which you can see by clicking on the image to the right.

We’ve just released a bunch of new features, and this is the first of a series of blog entries to let you know about the changes.

As you’re probably aware, email marketing is an important part of  running an ecommerce site. At Spiffy Stores we’re always on the lookout to find new and better ways to help you run and promote your online store.

The first of these changes is a feature to help you create an email marketing mailing list. To recognize the importance of Email marketing, we’ve added a whole new section under “Marketing” in your store toolbox for the subject.

read on »

Everyone loves a bargin or free stuff!

Reward your customers for their loyalty by giving them free shipping. We’ve added a new type of shipping rate that makes this possible for every Spiffy Stores customer.

Until now, shipping rates have been weight-based. We’ve added the capability to define rates based upon the value of the shopping cart. You can define a range of values for the value of the shopping cart and if the cart falls within that range, you can provide a fixed value for the cost of shipping. This value can be $0.00, which is how you specify free shipping.

For example, you can create a rule that provides for free shipping if the customer spends $50 or more.

If no shopping cart value range applies, then the normal weight-based rules will apply.

read on »

We’re pleased to announce that we have a new feature for our theme templates… Theme Settings.

Although the Spiffy Stores Themes have always been highly configurable, this configuration necessarily required some knowledge of HTML and CSS.

Not any more.

The new Theme Settings ability means that theme designers can now create a custom settings form that allows the end-user to simply choose from basic theme configuration options such as colour scheme, custom logo configuration and design layout.

read on »

It’s now been just over a month since we launched Spiffy Stores to the general public.  In our first month, we’ve had an overwhelming response in the number of new signups (a fantastic start!), but haven’t heard much from anyone!  Our goal is to make Spiffy Stores really easy to use, and even faster to set up.  To do this, we need some feedback from everyone that has signed up.

During the past month, we’ve been working on adding new features here and there to improve the functionality.  One of the biggest features we’ve been working on is adding new options to customise our themes.  If you have any ideas about what we could do to improve our theme customisation, or what we could do to make it easier to set up your store… please phone us on 1300 727 334 to discuss, or you can email us at studio@spiffystores.com.au

We know we’ve been teasing you a little too much with the delayed launch of this theme… well the Antiqua theme is now available to all stores in your theme gallery.  Check out the theme preview site at http://antiqua.spiffystores.com

To apply this theme to your store, just navigate to the “Theme gallery” section in your Toolbox (in the Design & assets section). You’ll see the Antiqua theme there.

If you want to try it out on your site, remember to save your current theme by downloading it first. This means that you’ll be able to restore it at a later date if you’d prefer to use your old theme.