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ASHOP - ONLINE STORE SOFTWARE
As online transactions increase in
popularity in Australia, small to medium sized businesses are finding it
harder to keep up with larger enterprise to secure their slice of the
online shopping market. This is due to a number of reasons, and mainly
the cost of design, coding and online transactions, all of which can
sometimes be the cause of a start up business to go under in short
order.
Features of ashop:
- Hit the ground running –
Free support includes phone, email and online chat,
community forum, user manual, and many other resources and
tools (outlining how to get the most out of your store).
- Access anywhere – No
installation is required - your store and administration
panel is completely web-based.
- You don’t have to be a
design expert – No plug-ins, graphic design skills or HTML
knowledge required. ashop follows a menu-based plan for
altering the look and design of your store. Customise by
importing your own logos and themes or choose from the
templates provided.]
- Flexible payment options –
Your customers can pay by credit card, cheque or bank
deposits.
- Complete control – With
ashop you have everything covered! Every detail is included
in the admin panel: Monitor and track orders, import and
export stock, customise shipping options, receive visitor
statistics, view sales reports ... plus much much more.
- Marketing made easy – Take
advantage of the Smorty $50 credit included with this
purchase and ensure bloggers are advertising your store.
- Store security – ashop
provides hosting, real-time backups on ashop servers, and
advanced security monitoring 24/7 by ashop engineers and
staff (all included in the monthly fee+).
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This is where a solution like Ashop comes in handy. Ashop provides a
sturdy backbone that lets business easily and efficiently create an
online store without any knowledge of how webprogramming works. The
software allows for users to customize the look of their shop quickly
and add items that may be purchased through a secure gateway (a security
portal that protects credit card numbers and the like).
Everything that you can imagine needing to get up and running is
available immediately to make sure that you have a great working site up
and going almost immediately. About the only thing you will need is a
good knowledge of what stock you want to sell and what images you will
have to place online to ensure customers can see all your inventory
clearly. Ashop also comes to the party with a powerful graphics engine
that can resize your images in order to work quickly and effectively
online without any design knowledge on your part.
Benefits of ashop:
- Value for money! One
monthly fee covers support and monitoring as well as ongoing
store maintenance – far more than just a simple store setup.
- No installation required!
ashop’s web-based administration means you can work on your
store anywhere you have access to the internet.
- Make purchasing easy –
ashop is integrated with all major bank and payment
gateways, or set up a PayPal™ account as your web payment
system.
- Further improve your
chances of being found by search engines by signing up with
Smorty blog advertising.
- ashop is search engine
optimised which means your business will receive maximum
exposure and be found more easily by customers searching the
internet.
- Real-time backups and
security monitoring saves you the stress and expense of
outsourcing your technical needs.
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There are a number of templates that can be
used within the program, and this is the only part of the software that
I found to be wanting. Although there are 50 templates, you can with a
keen eye, sort out those that are Ashop sites by the general look of
them but if you wish to customize further and spend just that bit more,
you could have a designer build the pieces and look of the site that you
want and integrate it into the shop you create. Ashop also offer a
design service to help you out if the need arises.
There is far more to this software that meets the eye and Ashop are
confident enough in their product to give you a free test drive of it
from their website www.ashop.com.au so if you are on the market for a
start up shopping solution then it certainly would not hurt to have a
crack at Ashop.
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