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How much does it cost?
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This depends on the hosting plan you've
chosen. Please take a look at the hosting plans page on this website. One
point to note is the price you pay gives you all the e-commerce features as
well as the additional hosting fees you might have to pay with other
solutions. We are your one-stop e-commerce shop and the price covers
everything.
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How secure is it?
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Totally. We use industry standard SSL
security which means data is encrypted at every stage.
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How can I control my site once its running?
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The easiest way is with the Shoprunner
Assistant. This program runs on your Windows PC and allows you to
manage your catalogue and orders offline. You then connect to your
Shoprunner site and run the Assistants synchronise function.
When online you still have considerable
control over the layout and appearance of your site. You will receive a
username and password which allows you to change, independantly, the
layout, graphical profile and colour/font scheme of your site. You may have
already seen examples of this in our e-commerce nursery - but they were all
chosen randomly. You will have absolute control over your sites appearance
from our huge repository of profiles. When you make these changes to your
site nothing is lost whatsoever - you can easily undo any changes at any
time.
You can also make instant changes to your
catalogue data when online without the Shoprunner Assistant. This is
useful for anyone with access to the web from any other browser, for
example if you are out of the office. It is also very useful for making
on-the-move changes from a moblie device : you can change your catalogue
prices from your phone.
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I already know about managing websites - can I
customise my site totally but still use your e-commerce facilities?
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Absolutely. If you want to download your site
locally to add custom graphics or other features go right ahead. Your site
will behave exactly like a regular hosted site you can manage via ftp. We
produce a guide for this showing the various controls you might want to
retain in your webpages in order to use our e-commerce facilities properly.
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What other features will I
get?
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Basically, all the features you'd expect from
a conventional web host company plus the Shoprunner e-commerce system. As standard you will get a minimum of 10Mb
webspace and 5 POP3 email addresses plus a high-availability server with
backups, fault-tolerance and technical support.
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Anything special my site users
need to know?
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Your users should use an internet browser
version of 4 or above. Recent versions of popular browsers such as ones
from Microsoft and Netscape are fine. By default, these browsers enable all
the options required by your site. If your users have disabled cookies they
cannot use the shopping basket at all and if they have disabled javascript
they will experience reduced functionality.
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Can I keep a nursery
site I created?
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Contact us within 72 hours of creation if you
need to keep a nursery site otherwise it will be taken offline.
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Can I import my catalogue data
from my existing system?
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Your catalogue can be populated from
"csv" files. This is a standard method many systems use to export
data. There is a simple procedure to describe the format of your export file
to the system which can then import it. You can perform total or partial
file imports. If you need to do this first establish how your existing
system creates these files then contact us for the one-off import script
you'll be able to use from then on.
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Can I license the Shoprunner
Server and host the system myself?
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Yes. You need a Shoprunner Enterprise license
for this. This is the only way the system can integrate with your live data
- the other hosting plans use copies of your catalogue. Contact us for more
information.
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What if I want a totally
custom site building and maintaining?
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Yes, this can be arranged through either ourselves or a website design house. Please get in touch
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Is it possible for me to
have more than one site with another being for my account holders?
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Yes, we have customers who do this. One site
is for the public and another password-protected one is for account
holders. The password is changed monthly. You must purchase as many hosting
plans as sites you operate. You don't necessarily need a separate domain
for this, for example your main site may be http://www.mymainsite.co.uk
with the private one at http://www.mymainsite.co.uk/trade.
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I see its British! Tell
me more...
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Thats right - we are catering specifically
for the UK e-commerce market. We have been with the internet from the
start and know UK businesses prefer to deal with UK internet companies
There are several companies behind it all of whom have been in the computer
business for many years dating back to 1987.
Shoprunner is based around Greater Manchester
in the North-West of England.
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Can it handle the Euro?
What
about dealing with other currencies?
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No problem - the Euro and any other currency
are treated the same way. Shoprunners sites are never tied to one
specific currency - the sites can switch currencies on demand. In fact it
can change much more than just the currency as the whole
internationalisation setting can be changed at any time.
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What support does
it offer for mobile devices?
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You can run as many sites as you want, each
of which share the same catalogue. The format of each site can be very
different but changes to the shared catalogue appear correctly in all of
them. Mobile devices would use a mobile site format such as condensed HTML
or WML (the WAP protocol).
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How about future web
developments?
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The back end system is written entirely in
java - the programming language of the web. Users do not need to concern
themselves with this though as the web sites do not use java or java
applets - regular version 4 or later browsers are fine. There is no legacy
code to support and all the techniques the first-generation e-commerce
systems used such as cgi-scripting are gone forever. As the system is
totally object-oriented it can be quickly extended in ways which were
previously extremely difficult if not impossible. The catalogue data is
totally separate from how it is presented to the web. Future methods of
presentation can be implemented without affecting the rest of the system at
all. Planned areas of interest include WML (the WAP protocol), WebTV and whatever other formats arise.
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