| about Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business
What is
Actinic Catalog?
Actinic Catalog is a complete ecommerce solution developed specifically
for the small to medium business, incorporating everything you
need to set up and run an ecommerce site.
What
is Actinic Business?
Actinic Business offers all the features of Actinic Catalog,
with additional functionality designed for business to business
transactions and advanced business to consumer features.
What
makes Actinic products so special?
Actinic software offers all the features of a complete online
catalogue with an easy to use interface and built-in security,
at low cost and with no monthly charges.
How do
Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business work?
Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business each comprise two components:
- An easy-to-use Windows programme that installs on your PC.
This creates your commerce site and downloads and processes
your orders
- A set of scripts which are automatically installed at your
Web site and provide the features of an electronic shopping
cart and ordering system
What do
I need to use Actinic Catalog?
Actinic Catalog requires:
- a Pentium PC.
- Windows 95, 98, 2000 or NT 4.0.
- minimum 32MB of RAM.
- minimum 60MB of free disk space.
- Internet access.
At the web site, Actinic Catalog requires a standard commercial
web package including:
- at least 5MB of web space (depending on the size of the catalogue).
- CGI-bin with Perl 5 or later.
- FTP Access to the CGI-bin.
Check out our Services pages for listings of suitable hosts.
What do
I need to use Actinic Business?
Actinic Business requires:
- a Pentium PC.
- Windows 95, 98, 2000 or NT 4.0.
- minimum 32MB of RAM.
- minimum 60MB of free disk space.
- Internet access.
At the web site, Actinic Business requires a standard commercial
web package including:
- at least 5MB of web space (depending on the size of the catalogue).
- user-writeable CGI-bin with MD5 Perl module.
- FTP Access to the CGI-bin.
Check out our Service Partners pages for listings of suitable
hosts.
How do
I get my product information into my online
catalogue?
Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business are best suited to sites
with between 10 and 20,000 product lines. These can be arranged
in sections and sub-sections, with an unlimited number of levels.
If you already have a list of products in electronic format,
this data can be easily imported via the import wizard. Alternatively,
you can manually enter the information via the Windows user interface.
Entering product information is simple. All that is required
is to enter a part number and name, a description, price and VAT
treatment. You can also link an image file with the product, and
even put a hyperlink in the product description to a page of more
in-depth information.
Can I
link dynamically to an external database or
spreadsheet?
Actinic Business offers dynamic linking to an external data source
as a third option. This allows you to build your product range
in any application and pull your data into Actinic Business to
publish it.
How can
I offer a range of choices with each product?
Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business allow you to configure attributes
and choices for each product in the online catalogue. For instance,
you can have a t-shirt that is available in both a range of sizes
and a range of colours. It is also possible to make each combination
of choices a different price.
You can associate product choices with other products in the
online catalogue. For example, a customer can assemble a PC online
by selecting from a variety of available components such as memory,
monitors and hard disk space.
How is
my online catalogue generated?
Actinic software generates your commerce site as a set of normal
HTML pages. The pages are created from three components:
- Information provided by the vendor about names, description
and prices of products together with information on terms and
conditions in the company. The vendor also provides information
about the colours to be used in the catalogue (eg background
colour, font colour etc)
- Images, such as navigation buttons and product images, which
are used in the catalogue
- Templates which are used to create the layout of each part
of the online catalogue
When you upload your catalogue, the complete HTML pages are generated
on the desktop according to the specifications of the above three
groups of components. These are then automatically sent to the
web site. Once complete, your commerce site is open for business.
Is
Actinic software secure?
Yes. Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business both use 128-bit encryption
to safely encrypt credit card information. This means that only
the purchaser and vendor can read customers' credit card information.
The vendor can process the credit card numbers in the normal way.
Barclays Bank, HSBC and the Royal Bank of Scotland approve Actinic
software for their merchants to use.
Alternatively, Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business can be integrated
with a secure server (SSL) or a number of Payment
Service Providers (who take credit card numbers securely and
carry out the transactions online). These include NetBanx, WorldPay
and Datacash.
For more information about Actinic's security, see our Security
White Paper.
How do
customers place orders at the web site?
Customers can visit and browse through the online catalogue.
If a customer sees a product they wish to purchase then they click
on the 'Add to Shopping Cart' button. The online catalogue then
registers which product this customer has selected and the customer
is shown an electronic 'shopping cart' that contains their product.
This shopping cart is carried with them while they are visiting
the site and it goes with them into the checkout.
How can
I keep an eye on my stock levels?
Actinic's stock monitoring feature allows you to monitor each
product line individually, warning you as product levels run low
and automatically suspending online ordering when necessary. You
are able to print off reports detailing stock levels to help you
with re-ordering stock items in plenty of time to fulfil your
orders.
How can
I change the appearance of Actinic Catalog?
As with all good software, Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business
can be customised, providing a look and feel that meets your company's
requirements and style sheets. The product is shipped with dozens
of pre-designed themes and colour schemes that can be combined
and customised. This give you access to literally thousands of
different design looks at the click of a button.
When your catalogue is ready to be transferred to your web site,
it is generated as a series of 'HTML template' files. These files
are installed in the 'Site 1' (or equivalent) directory and can
be accessed by viewing the 'Template Manager'. By changing these
files you can change the appearance of your catalogue and make
it look just as you wish, while still enabling you to add, change
or delete product and other details through the Actinic application.
Alternatively, many professional web designers can design a custom
site to match your requirements and budget. Please contact Actinic
or look on our web site for further details.
Can I
integrate my online catalogue with my existing
website?
Online catalogues cannot be exclusively maintained using Microsoft
FrontPage, or similar web design applications. However, because
Actinic software creates static HTML pages, any part of your online
catalogue can be easily linked to your FrontPage site using normal
hyperlinks. Actinic's extensive design options allow you to make
sure that the look and feel of your online catalogue is fully
integrated with the rest of your site.
How can
I change all the text in my site?
Using Display Options, you have the ability to change every bit
of text in the website.
This is useful if you wish to change the site to another language.
Use the search facility in the dialogue to locate the precise
piece of text you want to edit.
How
will I know if an order is waiting at my
website?
You will be automatically notified via email that you have an
order waiting.
The orders can then be downloaded at the most convenient time
for you.
How can
I make sure my customers are charged the right amount
for shipping and tax?
Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business have sophisticated shipping
and tax calculation systems built into the program. You can set
up shipping zones and classes to ensure that your customers will
only be offered the most appropriate shipping methods for them.
There is also a location based tax calculator that allows you
to configure multiple tax rates and bands. This ensures that your
customers will be charged correctly.
Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business will allow you to display
tax inclusive prices, tax exclusive prices or both. You also have
the option of choosing a second currency for displaying prices
at your site.
Why not
just email the orders straight to me?
There are several reasons why we think this is a bad idea.
1. Reliability: you will need access to a mail server in order
to receive orders, and then if the server goes down for any reason,
you will lose all record of the order
2. Security: most email travels over the Internet in plain text
and could be read by anyone
3. Convenience: Actinic's method of downloading orders means
that you are in control of how and when orders are received and
processed.
How can
I support multiple currencies on my Actinic site?
Although Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business can use any two
currencies in an online catalogue, there are a number options
available to have multi-currency support on your site.
By using Worldpay as an Online Credit Card Processing service,
a currency converter is provided at the point when people are
transferred to the Worldpay server to make their payments.
There are several online currency converters that can be linked
to at any point in your online catalog. Just do a search for 'currency
converters' on a search engine and you will be presented with
a range to choose from.
Some (such as www.xe.com)
will provide you with the code you need to integrate their currency
converter into your site.
Which
shopping malls can I add my Actinic Catalog shop to for
increased traffic and promotion?
The following shopping portals will accept sites built using
Actinic software, subject to your compliance with their additional
requirements. Simply go to their website and submit your shop.
- www.shopbritain.co.uk
- www.shoppingarcade.co.uk
- www.british-shopping.com
- www.ukshopsearch.com
- www.i-stores.co.uk
- www.we-have-it.com
- www.shopping-village.co.uk
How can I set up customer accounts in Actinic
Business?
With Actinic Business you can set up customer accounts that allow
your regular customers to log into your online catalogue with
a username and password. Your customers will be presented with
a personalised online shopping experience which features their
own prices, depending on what price schedule they belong to, and
Actinic Business will also remember their name and address information.
When setting up a customer account you can specify a range of
address information, create credit limits for different buyers
and choose whether you want the account administrator to be informed
via email of every purchase made by their buyers on the site.
How does Actinic Business handle different
pricing structures?
Actinic Business allows you to set up a range of price schedules
and then choose which customer accounts you wish to belong to
which price schedules. Also, Actinic Business can allow you to
create quantity-based discounts on each product line, allowing
a lower unit price if a customer orders a higher quantity.
Will my Actinic ecommerce site be search
engine friendly?
Actinic's software differs from ecommerce solutions which generate
web pages on the fly from an underlying database. Actinic's strategy
is to generate the entire shop site on the merchant's PC, and
then upload it to the web server in the form of static HTML pages.
In this way all the text on every page in the site, including
product names and descriptions, is made visible to the search
engines.
What this means is that a web search for, say, Reebok trainers,
will find an Actinic site which is selling them, whereas a site
based on a dynamic database is unlikely to show up.
Unique meta tag descriptions and keywords can be easily entered
for every page on the site, making it easy to produce a search
engine friendly site without without the risk of accidental spamming.
Addition of home page links on every page, the inclusion of contact
information, and support for Alt tags for images are other features
which are liked by search engines and directories. Good ecommerce
software such as Actinic provides support for them all.
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