E-COMMERCE

E-commerce (electronic commerce) is a term that refers to websites that allow customers to purchase products or services online.

The main advantages of using e-commerce on your website are:

• your customers can shop at their convenience from home or work
• you reach a wider customer base then a conventional store or shop
• you can fulfill orders outside the 9-5 working hours if it's more convenient for you
• you build up a database of customers for email and postal newsletters, flyers or special offers
• you can reduce overhead on shop front over the long term
• you establish loyalty among customers by providing a service your competitors might not
• you can run a second "online only" business from your home in your spare time

Gopher Systems can help to expand your website from a purely information dispensing site into a powerful selling tool.

To keep costs down, we use several off-the-shelf e-commerce software packages to run the shopping cart system on your site. The software package we recommend will be geared towards what type of site you have, how you want to present your products or services, and what level of sophistication you require in the software. We can then customise the way the software presents your information so that you can have a seamless transition between the non-shopping portion of your site, and the shopping portion.

We have used e-commerce solutions for a variety of products and services, including:

• selling online training courses
• selling user customised paraphernalia
• selling computer equipment, sport accessories, medical supplies & supplies to the entertainment industry

To see what we might be able to do for you, please review one of our e-commerce projects:

www.mcsummerschool.org.uk

Marlborough College Summer School

Online booking for Summer School courses, accommodation, and entertainment. Bespoke 'shopping basket' system, with credit card details collected securely by SASSPAY for offline manual processing.

www.harperspace.com

Nick Harper

Full shopping cart system using PHP based X-Cart, complete will online payment processing using Protx.

www.make-a-sign.co.uk

Make-A-Sign

Online sales for customised signs and labels using an ASP based shopping cart called CactuShop.

www.smoke-machine-store.co.uk

The Smoke Machine Store

Online shop for smoke, fog & haze machines. Shopping basket system provided by Shop Assistant, with credit card details collected securely by SASSPAY for offline manual processing.

www.hygienetraining.co.uk

Eversley Training

Online shop for purchasing & taking hygiene training courses & tests. Shopping cart is an ASP based shopping cart called CactuShop.