The Antropy Ecommerce Blog

Missing Orders Mysteries

A comprehensive guide on OpenCart's 'Missing Orders' - what they are, their causes, and how to solve.

How to Add Reward Points to Customers Within OpenCart

Keeping customers happy and making them feel valued is very important. One way to go about this is by rewarding them with Reward Points. In this blog, I highlight how to go about rewarding customers with reward points within OpenCart.

How to Enable or Disable Payment Methods in OpenCart

What payment methods you want to use on your OpenCart store is a very important decision to make. It is very easy to select which payment methods you would like to use and below I have listed the steps to do this.

How to Redirect to WWW and HTTPS

I've mentioned before that you should always use WWW, and I've also blogged that it's time to switch to HTTPS. Here's how to set up the redirects in .htaccess (applies to all sites, OpenCart or not) and also make sure OpenCart is configured correctly for it in its 2 config.php files.

How to Enable or Disable Reviews on Your Site

This may sound like something you should know how to do but if I am perfectly honest I had to squirrel around the admin to find where you enable or disable reviews on your site. You can choose whether you only want reviews from customers who are logged in or for guests as well or you may choose to...

We Have Updated Our EU VAT Extension

VAT and especially VAT not being applied in Europe from the UK is a hot topic at the moment. We have already written a blog on this as we have had a lot of clients asking us questions around this subject.

How to Add a New Voucher Theme in Opencart

Themes/ pictures on vouchers are important when sending a voucher or when a client purchases a gift voucher. The default themes are Birthday, Christmas and General. The below blog highlights how you can add a new theme.

Antropy Hourly Rate Review 2020-12

Setting one's rate has always been tricky. Too high and you'll price yourself out of the market, too low and you'll find yourself unable to deliver your best work.

Our New Technical Audit Service Now Available

We have been undertaking our Design and SEO audit for quite some time now and it really helps clients understand what the website is like from a customers perspective as it includes checklisted items like speed, usability, functionality and Google ranking. Although this audit is very useful it does...

How to Add a New Weight and Length Class in OpenCart

Adding a new weight or length class is a useful exercise to know within OpenCart. It could be that you notice that in correspondences with customers they keep referring to a specific weight or length metric that you feel could be useful to add to your website.

Dropbox Sync Takes Ages and Seems to be Stuck on Ubuntu

I had to reinstall the OS on one of my main computers recently, I was switching from Linux Neon KDE to Linux Mint XFCE for various reasons (including enjoying "DistroHopping" from time to time).

New VAT Rules Now We Have Left the EU

Now that we have left the EU as part of Brexit, it has been mentioned a few times in the News over the last few years, you will need to alter your VAT statuses to comply with this. This is the Government advice on VAT between the UK and the EU and long story EU countries do not have to pay VAT when...

KDE Neon Boots to Black Screen with Mouse Cursor

If you love open source like we do at Antropy, you may be using Linux and if you love KDE like I do, you may use its official distribution, KDE Neon.

How to add an IP for an extension that uses the OpenCart API

Sometimes a 3rd party extension or developer will need to access your OpenCart API, for this to happen they will need to get their IP added. I have highlighted below how you undertake this:

How To Speed Up OpenCart (and/or Fix Speed Issues)

Speed is one of the most important things when it comes to how enjoyable a website is to use for a customer and these days Google considers it a ranking factor - faster sites appear higher up in the results and therefore get sent more traffic.

4 Sensible Risks To Take With Your Ecommerce Store In 2021

Calculated risk lies at the heart of business growth. If you play things too safe, you’ll never reap any significant rewards — just watch as more adventurous rivals accelerate past you. And if you get too cavalier with your strategy, you’ll end up tipping your entire business into failure. To...

Our Most Viewed Blogs of 2020

Just like in last year's blog, we go through the most viewed blogs written this year according to Google Analytics. This year we have really tried to focus on blogs that will help you as OpenCart users and giving you more 'how to' guides.

How to Change an Order if the Customer Has Made a Mistake

If a customer places an order but makes a mistake in the checkout, such as putting in the wrong delivery address, then it is important to know how to edit an order. This is a simple step by step guide as to how you do that:

How to Add a Custom Stock Status

If you want to add more stock statuses on top of the default OpenCart offerings then this is a simple guide as to how you do this:

How to Add a New Currency

If you get asked by a customer or whether you feel it would be beneficial to add a new currency to your store, this is how you do it.

How to put your OpenCart 3 site in Maintenance Mode?

If your site is undergoing development work or having a major update and needs to be temporarily put into maintenance mode, this is a useful guide as to how you achieve this in your OpenCart 3 store.

How to Manually Make an Order Through OpenCart

Sometimes customers prefer to order over the phone or are having issues purchasing good on the site. This may sounds very obvious but if you are new to OpenCart and using the platform, it is important to be able to put manually put an order through the website. Below I have highlighted how you can...

Why do we ask Clients to Buy Extensions?

When we are putting together a proposal or talking to clients about projects, one questions always crops up when talking about extensions… ‘Why do we have to buy the extension’? Then the subsequent follow up question ‘Can you not buy the extension and just add it to the final price’? Well...

Products Reports within OpenCart

It is imperative that you know which products are being regularly viewed and thus being converted into sales. Now maybe people use Google Analytics to gather this information but you can also use OpenCart. I am always surprised how many people are not aware that OpenCart stores information on page...

How to Add a New Admin User

Knowing what people can and cannot see on your admin can be very important and there is information that is very personal to you and your company. If you are adding new person to able to view the admin section, then you can determine which parts they see and what parts they do not see with relative...

How to Add a New Return Reason in OpenCart

If you notice a product is being return for a specific reason on multiple occasions then there is a quick way to add or modify a new or existing ‘Reason for Return’ on the standard OpenCart Returns Page.

How to Send Out a Marketing Message or Update to Your Customers Through Opencart

Sending out marketing content such as blogs or offers is always important to keep your customers up to date with what is going on within your business and sector. Some of you may or may not know that this is a feature that you can actually make the most of within OpenCart.

How to Send a Gift Voucher to a Customer through OpenCart?

Loyal clients are what makes companies tick and keeps them going. Making sure they are happy is imperative and something that is a nice little gesture to show your appreciation is sending them a gift voucher either on their birth or at Christmas. Luckily OpenCart has a function in the Admin section...

Updated Error Log Trimmer Extension

Three years ago we built an extension that trims your error log so that it doesn’t build up over time and potentially crash your site. This was originally built to be compatible for version 1.5 but we have now updated this to be compatible with version 3.

How to Change the Images on a Rolling Banner Within OpenCart?

If you have a rolling banner on your OpenCart store then it is important to know how to either change the pictures on the banners or delete it outright if you don’t want it there anymore. So how do you go about this:

Our New Theme Build Package

If you are looking for an upgrade with a simple CCS only theme then look no further than our iStore and Multipurpose themes. We are now doing upgrades and rebuilds with these themes as a package for between £1k and £2k. With this you will get some colour and design chances to the theme (within...

Astra Free Trial for Antropy Customers

Our long terms security partners Astra are offering a free trial to our customers. We have worked alongside Astra for a number of years now and they have helped secure many of our client's websites by overcoming hacks that have occurred and prevent any further attacks from happening.

3 Key Reasons to Upgrade from OpenCart Version 1.5

We get this question a lot - 'Why should I upgrade from 1.5 to the latest OpenCart version'? Many clients have the age-old attitude of ‘if it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it’. However, delaying an upgrade can have serious consequences for your website. Below I have highlighted the main 3...

Watch out for scam attacking OpenCart sites!

We have had a spate of OpenCart customers contact us about a scam whereby they have received an email purporting to be from a customer that akes you to a spoof Opencart log in page.

Our recent website build for the Scottish Association of Marine Science

Our journey with the Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS) starts back in December 2018 when we were asked to put together a document for redeveloping their website. This then proceeded to being asked to tender for the redevelopment and thus ended with getting the contract.

5 E-commerce Trends to Follow in 2020

With the general change in online shopping behavior, staying competitive is key. The number of people who make purchases from their mobile devices keeps growing. Buyers become more and more demanding: they hate wasting their time, they anticipate store navigation to be intuitive, they want to have...

How Better Inventory Management Brings in Higher Sales

Selling products doesn’t just require a clever marketing plan. Every element of a business can be optimized to increase profits. This includes inventory management.

Setting up Different Shipping Rates

If you start to ship to other countries, territories or specific states then you will need to add these on your OpenCart store with the correct shipping rate and to where this applies. For example you may want/ need a different shipping rate when a shipment is made to the East Coast of American as...

How to Change Your Address and Other Contact Details on Your Opencart Contact Form

Some things you know you should know and appear to be very simple but if you don’t know where to look then that simply isn’t the case. When you get a new OpenCart site it can be quite overwhelming knowing how to do even the most simplest tasks. In this blog this should shed some light on how...

Breakdown of OpenCart Versions by Downloads

When building extensions we often get asked which versions of OpenCart are most popular and which versions are in use. Unfortunately it's not really possible to get hold of these numbers as OpenCart doesn't spy on its users by sending data back to OpenCart.com about the version in use and the type...

Kate Hadfield Gallery

So first of all a bit of background about what Kate Hadfield and her team does. In her own words ‘High resolution, hand-drawn products for digital scrapbookers, hybrid crafters & teachers. Add a touch of hand-drawn whimsy to your scrapbook pages, craft projects and teaching resources with these...

OpenCart Spam Types and Their Protection Methods

The e-commerce industry is battling a number of cyber-threats including spam. Spam issues are quite common to e-commerce websites and OpenCart is no exception. If you head over to the OpenCart forum you’ll find many OpenCart users complaining about spam on their websites.

5 Key Reasons Why Your Site Should Be Mobile Friendly?

Over 50% of sales come from mobile or tablet device, so from this alone why would you not make the site mobile friendly? We are still amazed that every year we get 4-5 companies that either come to us or we pick up that the sites are not mobile friendly. Some do something about it straight away,...

How to Set Up Google Analytics Tracking in OpenCart

Google Analytics is a key component to any business as it gives you helpful data regarding the comings and goings of your website. Being able to sync this with your OpenCart store is key so that this data can be viewed and analysed. So how is this achieved?

How to Find Good Quality OpenCart Extensions

We love OpenCart, it's a great platform and has a thriving and active community who support users on the forums and develop great extensions ... most of the time. OpenCart has always welcomed extension and theme developers and had a very low bar to entry - if you can create an extension you can...

Why It's OK to Split Projects into Phases

It is a common myth that if you have a lot of work to complete that this will mean that it has to be done all together in one large project. If you have a list of requirements that can be broken down, then it makes sense to put these into a Phase 1 & Phase 2. So what should this consist of?

Linnworks Partner Event: Amazon Shipping Meetup, London

On Wednesday 29th January, I made my way to London for the Linnworks Partner Event at the Amazon Fashion Studio. This was a unique experience whereby I, along with around 20 other people, got to see the inner workings of the Fashion Studio which included seeing how the processed the incoming &...

Error Messages not showing up and how you can check these in OpenCart

Blank white pages or 500 Internal Server Errors are a PHP error. For some reason the error messages do not appear due to the server not being setup to display the errors. So how do you go about rectifying this? Well it is actually a relatively simple process.

How to Check your OpenCart Site for Hacks

Sometimes you can experience unusual behaviour on your website such as it not sending emails to customers properly and even the whole site being blocked or dropped on certain search engines but it can appear to work perfectly for you.

How to Switch Hosting Providers

Most of our clients have the hosting and web development under the same banner (attach blog) with us. However, it is an industry myth that switching hosting providers means a long arduous process involving lots of back and forth and downtime. Whilst in reality the downtime of the website during the...

How To Lock Down Your OpenCart Site in Case of a Hack

It is hard to find viable answers to pressing questions like, what steps to take to minimize the damage to your OpenCart site on the web. Before you can even begin to clean your hacked OpenCart site, it is vital that you lock it down from further damage. Locking your site properly also helps in...

Our Most Viewed Blogs of 2019

Having a rundown of our most viewed blog of this year through Google Analytics made for some intriguing reading. So below we run down what blogs you were most interested in:

Our New Antropy Multipurpose Theme

So as promised a couple of months ago, this is our second theme that is now available exclusively on the OpenCart Theme Store. In the same way we built the iStore Theme, our new Antropy Multipurpose Theme is styled using CSS only and no core files have been overridden.

How To Scale Your Ecom Business Via Multi-Channel Inventory Management

Though the startup costs are low, ecommerce businesses are capable of incredible growth. The retail world is littered with examples of online-only retailers that started small and expanded massively to become bigger than brick-and-mortar companies could have.

How to add a new tax rate within OpenCart

Changing tax rates or tax names on products is always a useful exercise to know as it is a little hidden away within the OpenCart admin. Some products may have a specific tax rate that you need to apply to being able to set this correctly is important to know.

Remotely Debugging PHP with Xdebug

PHP is one of the most popular programming languages in use today and is the language that powers the majority of websites. Although it's free and open source, it is of course very actively developed, with version 7.4 having been recently released and updates being very regularly released.

OpenCart Demo site

We have had a number of inquiries over the last few months asking us what OpenCart is like as a platform and whether it would be best for the said persons site. There is a really good way to see whether OpenCart is for you or not and that is by having a go on the demo site -...

The downfall of Thomas Cook highlights the shift from high street to online retail

In a similar vein to when Monarch went out of business in 2017, there is sadness and a tinge of anger around the Thomas Cook collapse that has been hanging around the company for the last couple of months but as of Monday was officially confirmed. The sadness is for a business that was founded in...

Changing URL Structure - is it a good idea yes or no?

It is a common question we get asked as to whether it is ok to change URL’s and whether this will affect SEO rating’s in anyway. The answer in short is no (if done correctly). Why would you look to change URL’s in the first place?

Welcome Cameron

We are pleased to welcome Cameron McDermid to our team this month. Cameron is joining us as a Web Developer having recently graduated from the Universal of Brighton where he graduated with a 2:1 in Digital Games Production. He already has a strong background in coding with the work he did at...

One simple way to speed up your OpenCart Store

The speed of your site is one of the key components to the successful running of your site. The general rule of thumb is that a site should load within 5 seconds (at least) of a customer clicking on the link. It is also said that between 5-10 seconds a customer will exit your site if it has not...

Hobby Mounts Quick Checkout

One of our key clients gave us the briefing of replicating the quick checkout process that you can have in Shopify onto OpenCart. This would allow customers to use PayPal and skip past the filling all the details needed. This makes life a lot easier for customers when checking out and for the...

How to utilise coupons on OpenCart 2 & 3

Using coupons on your website is a good way to promote and push projects. These coupons can be sent out either in a monthly newsletter or after purchasing another product. It is useful to be able to know how to create and operate the coupons and this blog will run you through step-by-step how to do...

Why have your hosting and development work under the same roof?

We are in the lucky position of having the majority of our key clients hosting with us, as well as doing their development work. This makes getting work done a lot easier and quicker because as we host the site any questions that may arise with regards to the server we can resolve straight away...

How To Build A Profitable Multi-Channel Retailing Strategy For Your Online Store

Outperforming your ecommerce competition is about more than just having the best products, prices and/or service: it’s also about ensuring that your brand (and your items) appear in the right places at the right times. Today, that calls for a multi-channel strategy. After all, the average online...

How To Get Good Support on the OpenCart Forum

The OpenCart 3.0 General Support Forum is a great place to get free help and support with your OpenCart issues. Experienced OpenCart developers like myself and many others will usually scan the forum topics daily to see if there are any issues we can help with. Unfortunately we're often not given...

5 Ways Enterprise Resource Planning Will Streamline Your Ecommerce Business

Enterprise resource planning, or ERP, is a vital part of running a competitive enterprise-level business — particularly in the digital world. It essentially involves using versatile software to bring together business processes that would traditionally have been distinct, making them parts of a...

Nauticalia Website Rebuild

In September 2018 we were approached by our long-term clients Nauticalia to rebuild and update their OpenCart website. Nauticalia are an eCommerce company who specialise in nautical collectables, clothing and gifts. Despite having four physical stores, they rely on their website on a day to day...

Online Shopping Secrets: How to Get the Most Out of Amazon

Multi-channel selling is one of the best ways to expand the reach of your products and boost sales, but knowing which platforms to utilise can often be a bit of a minefield… to say the least! Having overtaken Microsoft as the world’s biggest company, Amazon is often one of the first...

7 Podcasts Every Ecommerce Entrepreneur Should Subscribe To (And Why)

Self-education is crucial for any ecommerce entrepreneur hoping to achieve success. As an ecommerce entrepreneur, it’s important to keep your finger on the pulse in your industry, evolve as your business grows, and learn from the success of others around you.

Our Newly Created Custom Themes Are Now Available to Purchase

This has been a project which has been quietly running in the background for a number of months now. The idea came to us as a number of clients approached us over the last 6 months asking whether we had any themes we could provide? Of course we didn’t so this got us thinking about whether we...

Handy PHP Snippets

Just a little page for some regularly used useful PHP snippets:

Why do we ask for login details?

We get asked this around 3-4 times a day so I thought I would clarify why we require a websites login details when we need to look into an issue. The best way to describe it is comparing it to looking at a fault in a car. If you explain to a car mechanic that your car's brakes are making a funny...

Open Office Cannot Remove Page Break Before Table

If you use the excellent OpenOffice (now called LibreOffice) word processor instead of Microsoft Word, you may come across the issue where you insert a Page Break by pressing Ctrl + Enter, inside a table only to find you cannot delete it again!

How to create Product Specials within your OpenCart Store

Setting up a special price for a product either for a holiday season or a specific time period is very important for your ecommerce business in order to push product sales. Therefore knowing how to do this within your OpenCart store is vitally important. So in this short blog I will show you how to...

Updates on our Advanced Captcha & Next Day Delivery Countdown timer extensions

Advanced Captcha: Due to popular demand we have now made our Advanced Captcha code into an extension that can now be purchased on the OpenCart extension store. As you would have seen from my previous blog we noticed that spammers were finding ways around the default OpenCart Captcha which...

Ecommerce Inspiration: Examples Of Successful Businesses Using OpenCart

In any industry you care to mention, learning from those who’ve already achieved what you’re trying to do is one of the best ways to improve. By seeing how they go about their business — what they do and don’t do — you can figure out how you’re going to reach your own goals.

WooCommerce vs Shopify vs OpenCart — Which One Suits Your Business?

If you’re looking for a great ecommerce CMS, you’re not lacking for options, because the standard has gone up enormously since the early days of online retail. There’s currently a rock-solid set of popular choices that are all capable of supporting thriving businesses — so how do you choose...

How to Create an OpenCart 3 Theme

Creating a new theme for OpenCart 1.5 used to be pretty easy - make a folder in the theme directory and copy only the files from the default theme that you want to change. And that was about it. OpenCart 3 brings new features, but creating a theme is a little more difficult. Luckily if you follow...

Using Windows File Explorer to Manage Images in OpenCart

Unbeknown to a lot of OpenCart users you can use File Explorer to put images from your computer in to the OpenCart image manager. This is very useful if you would like to add or delete a large amount of images to or from your OpenCart store.

How to prevent spamming on your OpenCart store

This section is split into three sections whereby I will go into more details with regards to why you should enable CAPTCHA & Google reCAPTCHA, what is advanced CAPTCHA and how do all of these prevent spamming?

How to view and create a new product review within OpenCart

Reviews are crucial to the stability and growth of a product range for a company. Being able to view the reviews that you are receiving and being able to add new ones in that may have come through an email is a good exercise for any OpenCart user.

Our Christmas do and why they are important for a company's growth

On the 22nd December we embarked on our annual curry to the lovely Taj Mahal restaurant in Crawley. For us we work very very hard 5 days a week, 9-5 and whilst we love our work, it was a nice change to be able to sit down and enjoy each others company. Over the Christmas period I spoke to a number...

How the admin can place an order as a customer

This is a very useful exercise that enables you to see the store from a customers perspective when they are logged into their account. I have below described a step by step guide to help you run this exercise

Antropy MD Paul Feakins Gets Certified in Machine Learning

I've just completed Andrew Ng's excellent Machine Learning course from Stanford University. Machine Learning (ML) is not a new field in computer science but recent advances in computing power and an explosion in the amount of data available have made some unbelievable things possible!

Xmas 2018 Antropy Opening Hours

Thanks everyone for your support this year, it's been a very exciting year for us! Here are some Xmas dates ...

Here's a Proven Way to Make More Online Sales

All eCommerce and “bricks & mortar” shops would like to increase sales and revenues. eCommerce in the UK continues to grow between 13% and 15% per annum but there are some significant challenges facing these business whether on-line or on the high street.

5 step process to make sure your Ecommerce Store ready for Christmas!

Ho Ho Ho Merry Ecommercemas (I have been waiting months to release this pun)! We know it will be a very stressful few weeks in the lead up to Christmas and it will be the last push to get products sold and delivered in time for the 25th December! Now here are 6 quick steps that will help to...

Abandoned Orders Extension

We recently helped to install an extension for a client that has helped them show missing or abandoned orders. It has helped them to get more sales as it chases orders that might otherwise have been swept under the carpet. In the clients own words ‘Thank you, it works perfectly. We have already...

How to Add Relative Links in OpenCart with Sub Stores

If you use the excellent sub-store functionality in OpenCart that allows you to have one database of products and display these on two totally different websites, you may have come across the issue of adding internal links in the product and category descriptions where they have to go to either one...

[SOLVED] OpenCart 1.5 Site Search Very Slow

We came across a problem recently where an OpenCart 1.5 site with no extensions and the default theme was often running very slowly for no apparently reason. Most of the time it was running super-fast (0.1 second page loads) but every 5-10 minutes it would slow right down and pages would take 20+...

[Case Study] Hobby Mounts Monthly Competition

Hobby Mounts are the UK's largest DJI, Yuneex and Action Camera Specialist and one-stop shop for your Drones and accessories. They are based in Cornwall and have a showroom based just off the A30.

The big question- Amazon vs eBay

Now I am big into my sport so I will use this analogy for the Amazon vs eBay showdown! In sporting terms this is Mayweather vs Pacquiao, McGregor vs Khabib, Rangers vs Celtic, Leinster V Munster, you get the idea. To sort this debate once and for all I have detailed the pros and cons of each site...

Move to PHP 7 before Jan 2019 or Risk Getting Hacked!

We were all quite excited here at Antropy back in 2015 when PHP 7 was released because it included improvements all round as well as a massive 70% speed increase. PHP had received a turbocharger!

OpenCart 3.1: What Does the Recent Alpha Tell Us About the Next Full Update?

OpenCart first hit public release way back in 1999, and it’s come an incredibly long way since then, keeping pace with newer, better-funded and paid rivals. However, it hasn’t seen a real update for over a year at this point, with version 3.0.2.0 being released in July 2017.

Top 5 free OpenCart Extensions

There are many different OpenCart extensions that range from $20 to $120 that cover a wide range of scenarios that can help your business. If OpenCart does not have an extension that suits your business needs then you can always get an OpenCart development company, such as ourselves, to build a...

OpenCart Checkout Hack Authorize.net

We have recently been contacted by several different companies who have noticed extra payment gateways or errors on the checkout. This unfortunately is a tell tale sign that the site has been hacked. In almost all of these cases the attacker has modified either the authorize.net (aim) or PayPal Pro...

Antropy Pricing Structure

Unlike most web companies we have decided to buck the trend and put our pricing scheme on our website. The pricing of a new website or the cost of hosting with a company has always been shrouded in secrecy until the company really has to give a figure. This is something we have been keen to break...

What Impact Could A No Deal Brexit Have On The UK Ecommerce Industry?

Brexit has been the UK’s defining topic since 24 June 2016. Whatever your Brexit stance, the conversation around the deal the UK will get from the EU has shifted substantially in the last two years.

10 Years Since the Financial Crash

There seem to be a lot of articles in the news this week about the Financial Crash that began in 2008, often also called Credit Crunch or Credit Crisis amongst other things. Speaking to some of my younger staff in the office who were still in education at the time, it was strange to think that they...

Always on hand when you need us

Having recently joined Antropy I have had to not only move into a completely different industry but also a different sector entirely. That being said the team have been very supportive as I have got up and running within the company.

How to clear all caches in OpenCart 3.0.2.0

Caches can be the absolute bain of a developer's life, but what exactly are they, why can they be annoying, and how can we make them less annoying?

Why You Would Benefit from a Collection Account Abroad

If you are selling overseas via the internet, you are likely to deal with foreign currency exchange with your buyers, and if you are paying the fees charged by the likes of Amazon or PayPal, you are going to be diminishing your profits, so why make them even lower than they need to be?Is Paypal and...

PHP Script Keeps Timing Out Despite ini_set

Occasionally when programming you may need a script to run for quite a long time and unfortunately without changing some settings, the script may timeout before it's finished.

Antropy's Best Email Productivity Hacks

Love it or hate it, email as a method of business communication is here to stay. Most business-people send and receive hundreds or even thousands of emails per week which of course becomes thousands or hundreds of thousands a year, so time savings of even a few seconds per email become a...

Please Use "Reply All" in Group Emails

Ahh, email. You probably either love it, or hate it. Or both. Or neither! But anyway my point is that it's a double-edged sword. Elon Musk (the Tesla CEO) himself has talked about how he finds the asynchronous nature of email very productive - sure enough you send an email whenever you want and the...

Will e-commerce continue to help the finance sector grow?

The e-commerce explosion has been huge and far-reaching and shows no signs of slowing down. While the big players like Amazon continue to refine their model and move into new markets, there's still plenty of room for smaller online shopping and service ventures, particularly in relatively...

GDPR TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

There's a lot of talk lately of the new EU GDPR rules that come in to force in May 2018, and we've been asked by several clients for advice. Unfortunately (or fortunately) Antropy is a web agency, not a law firm and aren't able to give legal advice. That being said, I have tried to simplify some of...

Automatic OpenCart Website Backups

Everyone knows that backups are very important, but how many online sellers could quickly and easily get you a recent backup of their ecommerce website if something went wrong? How many just hope that nothing will go wrong?

6 Ways To Mix Up & Manage Your Product Inventory For 2018

Product inventory. The mere mention is enough to send shivers down your spine. It conjures images of clipboards and long hours jotting down products, and it’s certainly not as exciting as new developments like AI in ecommerce. But it’s essential to the success of your business.

Efficient Learning for New OpenCart Developers

A programming language like PHP has a fairly large number of built-in functions (600+) and in my experience (in teams and online) it seems to be the case that a lot of developers get by knowing just a small subset of the functions that are available to them - which is why so many articles like...

How to Write a Really Good Web Project Brief

Why should you go to the effort of writing a good web project brief? Surely that's the job of your web agency and all you have to do is ask for one of their best websties! Well sure they should work with you and use their experience to guide you but it's likely that you'll know what you want and...

Freetrade: Trade Stocks & Shares for Free

Whether you're building a business to become financially free and retire at 40 or whether it's to enjoy life to the full and provide the very best for your family, one of your goals should certainly be to accumulate as much capital as possible. Why? Because money generates more money. It's the...

Opencart Emails Not Arriving When Using SMTP

We have mentioned previously about issues which can cause your OpenCart emails to fail when sent using SMTP. Unfortunately this is a fairly common problem that can have lots of possible causes, below I detail another new (to us!) cause.

Computing in 1995 vs 2017

I was recently tagged in an old school photo from one of our IT lessons which I think was taken around 1995, so it's a good chance to have a look back at how computers have changed in the last 22 years. Extra bonus points if you can spot me!

We've Moved to Three Bridges in Crawley, West Sussex

We've settled in nicely to our new offices at Crawley Business Centre, Three Bridges. We needed more space, and to be a three minute walk to Three Bridges station which has excellent links to the design centres of both London and Brighton, opening us up to a exciting new clients and talented...

Are Passwords with Numbers Instead of Letters Secure?

I blogged back in October 2013 about the need to start taking online security more seriously than ever because the amount and sophistication of hacking activity had been increasing and in my view was likely to increase still further. Unfortunately I was correct and we've recently seen attacks such...

[Case Study] The Good Care Group Speed Improvements

The Good Care Group is a UK national company specialising in live-in care for the elderly and disabled. Their website was built using the Concrete5 CMS and we host the site on its own SSD VPS. Unfortunately they weren't scroring highly on Google Page Insights.

What's New in OpenCart 3?

After a fairly quiet period of intense activity behind the scenes, OpenCart 3.0.0.0 was released just over a week ago. There are lots of little changes in lots of places such as a subtle but effective refresh of the admin design, improvements to the layout of admin pages and many admin items have...

Marketing Automation Emails Are Now Free in MailChimp

I've blogged a fair amount about automation in the past because it's one of the keys to a succesful, profitable and scaleable business. The advantages of automation are really game changing and affect all corners of the "Time, Budget, Quality" triangle. Basically once something is automated, it's...

Contact Form Not Sending Email

Most websites will have a contact form of some sort designed to take sales enquiries in a simple way and send them on to the business by email. If the form is well designed, it'll autocomplete the user's name and email address and then they'll usually need to type a little message about what help...

[Video] How easy is it to edit products in OpenCart?

A quick test of a head mounted camera, and a very quick example of how easy it is to edit products in OpenCart.

OpenCart PHP Session /tmp Files Filling Up

When users come to a website, especially an ecommerce website, it's useful for the server to be able to keep track of who they are so it can do things like display their shopping cart. To do this, the server needs to keep a little file on the server (as well as one in the browser called a cookie).

How to Acquire Awesome Customer Reviews & Testimonials

The way we shop forever changed when ecommerce exploded via the internet and delivery services streamlined. How customers respond to the shopping experience and how they think and feel about brands is as important as ever – in fact, with so much online competition, customer approval and advocacy...

Antropy Introduce Hourly Task Reports

Antropy have just released a fantastic new feature for our "hourly" clients that will help keep you on top of your tasks and your budget when working with us.

OpenCart PayPal Standard Error after March 31st 2017 Update

PayPal did an update on 31/03/2017 that has broken a lot of checkouts with customers seeing a message like: "Things don't appear to be working at the moment. Please try again later."

How to Stop OpenCart Emails Going to Spam by Using SMTP

Spam email is a massive problem these days and the best defense we have against it is spam filters. Unfortunately though, they are often not intelligent enough to do their job properly and important email can end up there. When this starts happening to order confirmation emails and other...

The Singularity is Near: How Kurzweil's Predictions Are Faring

Back in 2007 I was very excited to start reading The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil which had been published 2 years earlier in 2005. As someone who'd always been fascinated by computers and technology since I started programming my first ZX Spectrum as a child, through to my teenage years...

Finding and Fixing Bugs in Software

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, computer software is incredibly brittle (as opposed to being flexible). That means that a small change somewhere can totally break something and prevent anything from working at all.

Antropy Ecommerce Website Audits

I'm pleased to announce that Antropy are now offering full ecommerce website audits that help identify areas where online shop owners are missing opportunities or have problems that may be negatively affecting sales.

How do OpenCart Layouts Work?

Once you know how it's actually very easy to adjust the layout of various OpenCart pages to move things around and remove or add items. Here's a quick overview of how it works.

AI in Ecommerce

There's a lot in the news lately about AI (Artificial Intelligence) with names like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking warning about its dangers and Microsoft saying it will use it to cure cancer in the next 10 years.

What's the Quickest Way to Install OpenCart?

If you're looking to get a functional ecommerce website up and running very quickly, one of the fastest ways is to get some web hosting that provides cPanel (such as ours here) and use the Softaculous installer. You'll be able to very easily add your logo and PayPal address and start taking...

What does the Brexit mean for ecommerce?

Whether you wanted the UK to Leave or Remain in the EU, the decision has now been made by the UK public and we will leave the European Union in the very near future, unless of course there is some sort of intervention.

What is the difference between modules and extensions in OpenCart?

In computer software, the terms "module", "extension", "plug-in", "add-on", "app", and even "vQmod" (in OpenCart only) are often used interchangeably. In most cases this is fine and doesn't really cause any problems. In common parlance, all of these terms tend to refer to a bit of computer code...

How to Use Product Tags in OpenCart 2

If you're adding products to your OpenCart 2 store, you're going to want to make sure that everything is done in the best way possible for SEO and the presentation of your site. A very useful but often overlooked field is the Product Tags field which can be seen in Catalog > Products > General (tab)

How to Speed Up OpenCart in 2 Minutes

If you're OpenCart store has a lot of products and categories (especially sub-categories), there's a very quick and very easy way to speed it up by changing 1 setting in the admin.

OpenCart 2.2 Fulfilment By Amazon

OpenCart 2.2 was released recently and hiding amongst the other standard updates such as "cleaner code" is something we think is really quite exciting ... the ability to connect to Fulfilment By Amazon (FBA).

How Cognitive Biases Affect Our Everyday Decisions

I don't always share infographics, but when I do it's because I found them pretty interesting ...

How to Transfer a Busy Ecommerce Website with Next to No Down-Time

As your ecommerce business grows, so do demands on your web server - as you add more products, more categories, more customers, more sales, more channels ... your server will eventually also need more power. Sometimes this can be upgraded "on-the-fly", but often a server move will be required.

OpenCart Automatic Error Log Trimmer

I blogged some time ago about a very elusive but dangerous beast of a problem that can happen to unsuspecting OpenCart sites. Essentially, the built-in Error Log file never clears itself and will continue to grow unless manually cleared. Much like the guests a house party with endless supplies of...

It's time to switch to HTTPS

Very simply, if you want your site to be more secure and your customers to see the lovely green padlock in their browser, then you'll need an SSL Certificate which will allow you to use HTTP Secure or HTTPS.

Don't Forget to Make a Profit!

If you're just starting out in ecommerce, knowing how to price your products is going to be one of the most difficult things to get right. With so much competition and demands from customers for discounts, free delivery, guarantees, refunds etc. it's easy to end up not making any money.

PHP 7 Released

The release of PHP 7 is actually very good news for everyone who uses the Internet because it will speed up the majority of websites out there in one fell swoop! This will include big sites like Facebook, Yahoo and Wikipedia as well as sites hosted on WordPress (which is a lot!), although the...

OpenCart Maintenance Checklist

With Christmas 2015 approaching, it's definitely a good time to make sure your OpenCart installation is as stable as possible. So here are a few things that you can check yourself to help avoid any downtime over the festive period.

Ecommerce Marketing Strategies Overview

If you're running or starting a new online shop, then the most important thing will be getting people to actually go through the checkout process, put in their payment details and buy your products. If you're selling already on eBay or through your site then you've proved that there's a genuine...

The Antropy Software Development Project Management Process

Estimating and quoting can be one of the hardest things in software development, even for the most experienced developers. The problem is that to produce an accurate estimate requires a significant amount of time, and if we spent that sort of time on every quote request we receive, we wouldn't have...

How To Speed Up OpenCart

Your customers are willing to pay significantly more to their Internet Service Provider per month for faster Internet speeds. This makes it clear that page load speed really matters to them. Of course, it's been known since the early days of the Internet that page load speed has a dramatic effect...

Retail Week Supply Chain Awards

Last Thursday Antropy were invited to join the Lengow table at The Hermes Retail Week Supply Chain Awards which took place at the Hilton Park Lane, London. The Supply Chain Awards exist to recognize and reward outstanding achievements, innovations and contributions to the retail and ecommerce...

Always Use WWW

You may have wondered whether it's best to include the www. in your domain name, what's best for your customers and what's best for SEO. For example it's possible to link to http://antropy.co.uk or www.antropy.co.uk - which should you do?

Business Automation with OpenCart

Business Automation in its broadest sense could be said to have happened when the first person delegated a task to someone else. It may have been a tribal chief sending a group of hunter gatherers out on a hunt, or delegating the preparation of tools to be exchanged for food. From his point of...

OpenCart Themes

One of the best ways to get an online shop set up quickly is to start with a theme for your ecommerce platform. By a "theme" of course, we mean something that can be installed to change everything about the look and feel of the front end of the shop. Now if this was all you did, you'd end up with a...

OpenCart Not Sending Order Emails

If you're running an online ecommerce business, you won't need us to tell you how important it is that your customers receive their order confirmation and status emails and that you and your team receive the admin emails to tell you when there's been an order.

Seldom Used Hacks That Will Amplify Your Marketing Productivity

At times, things don’t go well and we may end up having a messed up day at work. Yes, it simply means that we failed to have a productive day. So the next question, that comes to your mind will be like - What is this thing called productivity?

Secure Trading Payment Gateway

There are lots of payment gateways to choose from, but it's definitely worth having a look at Secure Trading. Secure Trading is an integrated payments services company - a single point of contact for merchant services, payment processing, PCI compliance and cyber security services.

Allow your Customers to Finance their Purchase in OpenCart

If you sell high-value items through your website, you may find that customers would rather break the purchase in to on-going monthly payments than pay in one big hit. Although this is now possible in OpenCart, if you use the built-in recurring payments via PayPal, you will take the risk that the...

PayPal Standard Hack Causes Wrong Order Total in OpenCart 1.5.x

If you're using OpenCart 1.5.x and PayPal Standard as your gateway, you shop is potentially vulnerable to an attack that will allow customers to pay what they want for your products. Now I know Radiohead popularized this concept with their "In Rainbows" album, but I suspect the model doesn't work...

php.ini Settings Not Working

Sometimes you need to apply a configuration change to a PHP server and it just doesn't seem to be taking effect whatever you do. Usually it will be something like increasing the max post size or memory limit in php.ini, but a subsequent check with phpinfo() isn't showing the value you set.

Speed-Up Ecommerce Websites with a CDN

You may have heard people talking about CDNs. You may not have. But essentially what you need to know is that they can very quickly, easily and cheaply, increase your Google ranking, conversions and therefore sales.

Handy Linux Commands

Just a little page for some regularly used useful Linux commands.

Perception of Value

Well this is quite a fascinating infographic on the perception of value. Especially useful if you're selling on eBay, Amazon and especially your own site and still believe the only way to sell more is to be the cheapest. This one is well worth bookmarking.

A Fantastic Ecommerce Experience

As an ecommerce professional, I'm always paying extra attention when buying online. I look closely at the websites I'm using, their marketing and introspectively at my own buying processes. So when I see something particularly good, it makes me want to share it with our clients.

Mobilegeddon

On 21st April 2014, Google made a change to their search algorithm that meant websites that aren't very well optimized for small touch screens will be less likely to appear in searches from mobile phones.

How do OpenCart Multi-Stores work?

If you have more than one ecommerce website as part of the same business, it may make sense to put them all together in to one OpenCart install as sub-stores. I'll talk about the main features and things to watch out for in this article so you can be clearer on how multi-stores work and whether...

Top Reasons Why People Migrate to OpenCart

Due to the astonishingly rapid expansion of e-Commerce around the world, the digital marketplace is becoming flooded with modern, cheap and advanced shopping carts. Various platforms are constantly trying to excel one another by expanding feature range, adding extra customization opportunities,...

Importance of Being Close to Early Customers

What is the most common mistake made by startups? There are a couple of contenders, but arguably the most important one is forgetting to stay close to your early users/customers. It’s not only a common mistake, it’s also a fatal one. Yet it is also easy to understand why it’s being made over...

The Lure of Magento

Magento. The name conjures up the image of a big, successful ecommerce operation, full of features and doing a lot of business - or at least it does for me. But it also evokes the spectre of an incredibly complex, bloated system that causes webservers to creak and groan under its gargantuan weight...

Personalization – Getting Closer to Your Customers

Personalization has become one of the leading trends in e-Commerce. But what is it exactly and how it can be implemented?

Why You Need to Aim for a "Frictionless" Checkout

If humans were purely logical creatures, buying decisions would be cold and calculated. Before buying a product a customer would assess their needs, determine what product would fulfil those needs for the lowest cost and proceed to purchase it from the cheapest supplier. Ecommerce websites would...

Why Hourly Charging can be a Win-Win for Client and Agency

Along with writing documentation, quoting and estimating on complex programming work are some of the most time consuming and difficult tasks a developer has to undertake. Although often a necessary evil, estimating usually lies outside of the type of work a programmer is best at and often doesn't...

Kiva Robots for an Automated Warehouse

With the revolution in e-commerce, vouchers sites are a hot topic. Many people use sites like voucherbin.co.uk to get discount codes and offers to save money but most consumers aren't aware of the amazing technology that goes on behind the ecommerce websites that they use. This article will take a...

How to build personal relations with the visitors of your website

Relationships are the basis for business. This is true for all industries and sectors, including eCommerce. They are the vital asset for the sustainability of a company and essential for growing. They add value, improve customer satisfaction and helps you win their loyalty.

ASOS is 15 Years Old

ASOS.com is a British online fashion and beauty store. Primarily aimed at young adults, ASOS sells over 850 brands as well as its own range of clothing and accessories. Sales for the financial year ending 31 August 2013 were £753.8 million. As of August 2013, ASOS PLC has an estimated net worth of...

Shopping Cart Trends

It's always good to be aware of industry trends and "Google Trends" is a great tool for this. Assuming that the number of searches on a given topic is a good indicator of interest in it, which is probably is, it's a great tool for seeing how certain technologies/companies/platforms are doing.

eBook: How to Take Your Retail Business Online

If you're part of a successful retail business and sales are okay but not really growing like they used to be and you've got that nagging feeling at the back of your mind that you really should be selling online then this ebook was written for you.

Amazon's Retail Revolution Business Boomers BBC Full Documentary

This episode follows the fortunes of the ultimate online retail success story - a business that was born in a garage twenty years ago and grew into a 100 billion pound global giant. Along the way, the Amazon phenomenon has inspired, shaped - and sometimes squeezed - the rest of the retail sector,...

New EU VAT Rules 2015

You may be aware that some rather onerous new tax rules will come in to force from January 1st 2015 to do with the way that VAT is charged in the EU. Unfortunately, whether you're VAT registered or not these will apply to you if you sell digital downloadable products or provide digital services...

Showrooming: How it Feels to get Amazon'd

How big of a problem is showrooming to high street retailers?

OpenCart CAPTCHA not working JFIF gd-jpeg v1.0 [SOLVED]

I came across an issue with OpenCart CAPTCHAs recently for the about the third time, which was difficult to fix each time. Unfortunately for me, the fix I'd applied previously didn't work! The symptom of this issue is that on pages where you need the user to solve a CAPTCHA before posting such...

Shipping Software – How to Know When Your Business Needs It

Coming in a variety of forms, shipping software is a computer program that is specifically designed to process labels (with your customer addresses), track deliveries, access and manage a range of carrier services.

Cyber Monday 2014 Infographic

This year, Monday 1 December is Cyber Monday! Hundreds of retailers will be slashing prices for 24 hours as consumers scramble to find a bargain for the start of the festive season. For both consumers and ecommerce retailers alike, it's important to be prepared, either to know how and where...

What emails does your store send?

During the buying process, your customers will receive various email updates about the status of their order. Are you making the best use of these opportunities? Here are some things you could implement that will increase revenue.

A Quick Look at OpenCart 2.0

Finally the long-awaited OpenCart 2.0 has been released to the public for use. The new version of our favourite ecommerce platform has a whole host of major new features and improvements. Here are some of them.

10 Years in the Web Industry

It occurred to me this month that I've been working in the web industry for just over 10 years. How time flies! And what better occasion to look back over the changes we've seen in the industry over that time?

How do nameservers and DNS Records work?

If you've bought a domain and you need to point it to a web host, or you'd like to set up your email with a different mail server then you'll probably be thinking DNS is pretty complicated. Luckily it's not actually that tricky to configure and here's a simplified description of all you need to...

The State of Beacons in Retail 2014 [Infographic]

iBeacon is the trademark for an indoor proximity system that Apple Inc. calls "a new class of low-powered, low-cost transmitters that can notify nearby iOS 7 devices of their presence." The technology enables a smart phone or other device to perform actions when in close proximity to an iBeacon.

OpenCart Orders to Tradebox to Sage 50

After many long evenings and far too much caffeine to be considered safe, we have released our OpenCart to Tradebox extension in to the wild to roam amongst the other OpenCart modules.

A Century of U.S. Consumer Purchase Decisions

An interesting look at how consumers purchased products over the last 100 years.

How Retailers are Converting on Mobile

What are online retailers doing in terms of mobile marketing and website optimization?

How Do Colours Affect Purchases?

There are many factors that affect website sales and, as ecommerce experts, all of them are of great interest to us.

What Are People Really Buying Online?

There are some pretty surprising findings below that may have an effect on the product ranges that you choose to stock and sell online.

The Growth of Online Shopping

It's interesting to see such strong growth in ecommerce, but also that while bricks and mortar stores worry about "showrooming", such a thing exists as "webrooming".

10 Ways to Convert More Customers

10 interesting and counter-intuitive ways of increasing sales. 1, 3 and 6 are particularly interesting!

Flubit the Online Marketplace with a Difference

There's a new marketplace in town that's free to join, has 5 million UK shoppers, is easy to connect to your online shop and has a massive conversion rate.

Portrait of a Mobile Consumer

In 2018 90% of mobile traffic will come from cloud applications, compared to 82% at the end of 2013. It is expected to grow at an annual compound rate of 64% between 2013 and 2018. The increase in the use of 4G allows for easier access to all forms of content from anywhere, across multiple devices.

Tablet Growth: What to Expect

The trends are clear, desktop is diminishing and tablets are becoming ubiquitous. Essentially, tablet and mobile can no longer be ignored. They can't be considered a "nice-to-have", they must be considered a main, essential feature of any new website project.

Tracking the Path to Purchase

The path to purchase has dozens of points where retailers can collect valuable data, enhance the shopping experience, and convert browsers into buyers. But beware: The volume of data can be overwhelming, and it's easy to veer off course. By steering clear of "data detours," retailers can focus on...

Benefits of Live Chat for e-Commerce

Imagine going to your local grocery store only to be surprised by an empty counter. No sales assistants, no cashiers or anyone to support you during your shopping. What to do when you cannot find something or the help-yourself checkout counter isn’t working properly? You will leave the store...

Google's 200 Ranking Factors

Although the ranking algorithm is one of Google's most closely guarded secrets, this very extensive infographic must cover almost all of the most important factors.

How to Report a Bug the Right Way

In order to get the best out of any web agency when you have a problem with your website, you'll need to give them a very clear description of the problem.

Calls to Action Without Transaction: Squeezing Value Out of Every Click

In an ideal world, every single visitor that makes their way through your ecommerce store’s virtual front door would like what they see enough to make an order. Unfortunately, the reality is that conversion rates will typically hover between just one and three per cent of your total unique...

OpenCart Currencies

There seems to be some confusion about how multi-currency works in OpenCart, so here's a short article to clarify some of the main points.

How do you approach your ecommerce marketing?

Let's be blunt - the way in which you approach the marketing of your online business will be one of the most important factors in your success or failure. Are you following a structured, well-thought-out strategy? Or are you doing random little bits here and there without knowing for sure if...

What is The Heartbleed Bug?

The Internet has been panicking this week at the discovery of a serious vulnerability that may have compromised passwords and data on many of the most popular sites.

Facebook buys Antropy for £12 million

Mark Zuckerberg reveals plans to expand the ecommerce on facebook (f-commerce) after announcing the purchase of Antropy for £12 million.

Add to Cart Popup Confirmations in OpenCart

Maximising sales in ecommerce is all about delivering the simplest and best user experience possible. This means a simple, intuitive interface where the customer can easily go through the online buying process of finding their product, adding it to their basket and checking-out. Popup Confirmations...

Using a CRM with your Ecommerce Website

We really love open source software at Antropy, not just for the cost savings but for the flexibility of being able to change the software to do exactly what you want and interface with other systems. Obviously we're big fans of the OpenCart ecommerce platform, but what other ways are there to stay...

RC Geeks Website Re-Design Case Study

Lots of companies invest heavily in the design/branding of their websites. It takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money to get a website looking as slick and professional as those of the big boys. So is it really worth it? And by worth it, I mean does it give an ROI (Return On Investment) worth...

The Importance of Website/Server Monitoring

What is server/website monitoring? And why is it so important for ecommerce websites?

Canonical URLs in OpenCart

If you've looked in to SEO on any level you'll probably have heard of canonical URLs. So we'll try and answer a few questions about them.

Ecommerce Guest Blogger Needed

We're looking for ecommerce guest bloggers, to help with guest posts and articles. We're keen to feature thoughtful and creative articles about OpenCart or ecommerce in general. If you know your stuff, write useful articles and enjoy putting finger to keyboard, get in touch to find out more.

Comparison of Multi-Channel Selling Platforms

If you're serious about selling online, you need to be selling across multiple channels and if you have any number of products at all, you need to be synchronizing stock levels, managing orders in one place and ideally managing your listings automatically across the channels.

Do you have backups of your ecommerce site?

It never fails to surprise me how many companies have their ecommerce website at the centre of their business but fail to have a proper backup solution or disaster recovery (DR) process in place. Are you one of these?

9 Reasons Your Bricks and Mortar Shop Must Master Online Selling or Die

Some of the most compelling reasons why the time is now to take your business online. If you're wondering why sales are lagging off-line and haven't yet become an ecommerce seller, this is a must-read.

Benchmarking Your Google Adwords and Product Listing Ad Metrics

If you are going to be pumping you’re hard earned cash back into advertising and promoting your business, you will certainly want to know whether that’s cash is doing its best for your bottom line. While Google AdWords and Google Shopping provide excellent reporting facilities that make you...

Consumer Psychology at the Ecommerce Checkout

This detailed and informative image looks at the motivations underlying customers' behaviour during the checkout process on e-commerce sites.

Why have Debenhams not done as well as John Lewis?

Many retailers and online shops saw the Christmas surge come later this year, with more customers leaving their shopping to the last minute. Increased trust in online shopping delivery times may have been a factor in this, but either way it seems the Christmas rush came later for almost everyone...

Ecommerce and the Christmas Holidays 2013

This year many online retailers have seen the Christmas rush come later than ever with more and more people leaving their online shopping to the last minute. It seems the reason for this is partly increased confidence and trust in buying online and in the speed and reliability of deliveries.

Why the Telephone Will Still be Vital to E-commerce in 2014

You might think that telephone sales have been kicked to the sideline after the explosion of E-commerce sites over the last 15 years, but you would only be half right. New research produced by call tracking provider Response Tap shows that not only do consumers appreciate a well executed telephone...

Amazon Prime Air

This week Amazon.com announced that it's working on technology that will make deliveries by drone aircraft (hexacopters) straight to the customer's home.

Advertising on Amazon: How it Can Help Your Business

Amazon.com, Inc. is undeniably one of the giants of e-commerce. The Best Retail Brands Report 2012 last year placed Amazon as the top riser in terms of brand value. The trend continued in 2013, seeing Amazon move from 9th place to 4th in the US. Meanwhile, in the UK the company reports more than 20...

Email Customers Who Bought Certain Products in OpenCart

Usually we'd recommend sending your marketing email to previous customers via MailChimp or other similar web-based service. This ensures better delivery rates and better tracking. But if you want to target only customers who have bought a certain product then it can be easier to do this from...

How To Get more Facebook Followers

If you're looking to sell more (and who isn't?) then it won't have escaped your attention that having a facebook page for your business with a lot of "likes" is a great way to get your products in front of your target market.

Selling on Google Shopping with OpenCart

Google have been trying to list products for quite some time. They started off with their product search called Froogle which became Google Base and now just Google Products. To get listed on these you used to just have to submit an XML feed but now they're changing again to Google Shopping and...

Delivering an Exceptional Ecommerce Experience

Well I was so impressed recently when placing an order on overclockers.co.uk that I thought it would be worth highlighting some of the things they've got spot on and how they're going above and beyond customer expectations on a daily basis.

Securing OpenCart

No computer system can ever be 100% secure, as proven recently by security breaches at Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Microsoft. But there are some simple steps you can take to deter all but the most determined hacker.

Ecommerce Website Breakdown of Costs

Before starting a new online business, it's important to have a clear idea of the numbers involved in terms of initial investment, fixed monthly/yearly costs and likely return. So here's a brief overview of some numbers.

TrustPilot and OpenCart

If you're not aware of TrustPilot already, it's an independent platform that allows customers to review the service they receive from your company online. It presents these reviews on your website in a little widget that you can add.

eCommerce Expo 2013

We went to London yesterday to check out the eCommerce Expo and had a great time meeting some of the key players in the ecommerce industry. The highlight for us being the OpenCart stand where we met the developers behind OpenStock, OpenBayPro and the man himself behind OpenCart, Daniel Kerr.

Hosted vs Self-Hosted Shopping Carts

Whether you sell online via eBay and Amazon already or whether you're looking to start selling online for the first time, at some point you're going to want a website on your own domain name that sells.

eBay is No Longer Bargain Basement

Ebay was once seen as the place to go for those seeking rare or specific second hand items at bargain basement prices. Ebayers were often hunting for bargains, cheap deals and looking to save pennies. As a consumer-to-consumer platform, people would buy and sell from each other in something akin to...

OpenCart Customer Review Email

Selling online is all about trust. If you can increase the trust your users have if your site, your company and your products, you will increase your sales in turn. There are many ways to do this but customer product reviews are one of the most effective.

How to Add Video to Products in OpenCart

If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video must be worth a thousand pictures. And pictures are very useful when selling online. So how can you add video to your OpenCart product descriptions?

Why Your Web Host Should Know OpenCart

When choosing a web host there are a lot of things to consider, especially if you're an online only ecommerce business. In this case your ecommerce website itself will be one of the most important assets your business. Making sure uptime is as close to 100% as possible and that support is excellent...

New Antropy Offices!

The Antropy team are settling in nicely to our new offices in Crawley, West Sussex, in the same building as successful ecommerce company, RC Geeks.

Setting Up Recurring Payments in OpenCart

One of the most exciting new features in OpenCart 1.5.6 is the ability to allow customers to set up recurring payments or subscriptions. There are two main uses for this this. Firstly subscribing to an on-going service such as a "discount club" for your online store and secondly allowing a customer...

Improving Title Tags for SEO in OpenCart

OpenCart is very well optimized for search engines by default, but there are certain things that can be done to improve the on-site SEO still further.

Latest OpenCart 1.5.6 Connects to Ebay, Amazon and Play

The latest OpenCart has been released, version 1.5.6 and it has several really great new features!

OpenCart PayPal Orders Not Showing IPN

Various OpenCart websites that use PayPal Standard have been seeing a problem recently where orders are being placed and appearing in PayPal but they aren't appearing as completed orders in OpenCart.

Showing Sale Prices in OpenCart

You may have seen on some ecommerce websites a price of a product that's crossed out and discounted for a sale. It's a very good visual way to show how much a customer is saving.

How to Get More Traffic with a Press Release

So we're not talking about the old fashioned kind of press release that goes in a printed newspaper. These days there are lots of press release websites that allow you to submit a press release, often with a link, as long as it is well-written and newsworthy. The amount of traffic these can...

OpenCart Abandoned Cart Reminder

Abandoned shopping carts are where someone has added a load of items to their shopping basket on your website and then for whatever reason they haven't proceeded to place the order.

PayPal Standard and Credit/Debit Cards

You can use PayPal Standard to take payments by credit card, but do your customers know this? Displaying PayPal as your only payment method can be dangerous because a lot of potential customers will think that they have to go through a lengthy sign-up process to get a PayPal account before they can...

How to do Refunds in OpenCart

A frequent question that comes up amongst OpenCart users is how are refunds and returns are processed. Even long term users of OpenCart often process refunds outside of OpenCart but there is a built-in way for doing this.

How to Fully Backup OpenCart

If you've used OpenCart for any length of time, you've probably seen the Backup/Restore buttons in the admin area of your website. You may, like many others, have assumed that clicking backup will give you a full backup of your site should anything go wrong or should you want to move web hosts.

freshindulgence.com Goes Social

Our latest website to go live combines social media and ecommerce in a new and innovative way that provides a better, more immersive shopping experience and brings customer loyalty back to retail.

PayPal Pro as an OpenCart Payment Gateway

There are lots of payment gateways available for OpenCart and it's important to choose one that will suit your needs. Some of the most popular include PayPal, SagePay and CardSave and all have their place.

Managing Online Orders in One Place

If you're selling online via multiple channels such as eBay, Amazon, Play.com, phone orders and your own website you'll know that it can get quite time consuming monitoring each channel to process the incoming orders. As your volume of sales grows this can start to become a barrier to the grown of...

Uploading Multiple Images in OpenCart

If you've used OpenCart for any period of time with a reasonable number of products you'll probably know that you can't upload multiple product images at once. So while a single product can have as many images as you like, you can't add more than one at a time. You have to click add image, browse...

7 Ways to Boost Your OpenCart Sales

Here are 7 things you can do relatively quickly to boost sales on your OpenCart website.

The Problem with Outsourcing

When considering a new web project, it can be tempting to look for the lowest price, which often means outsourcing to a developing country.

Printing Shipping Labels from OpenCart

As you start to sell more and more from your OpenCart store, you may find yourself printing a lot of invoices and shipping labels. Wouldn't it be great if this could all be automated?

12 Essential Ecommerce Website Features

Whether you're looking to build a new ecommerce website or review your existing one, here are some of the features to look for that will get you the best return on your investment.

Coupon and Voucher Codes in OpenCart

We've been asked a couple of times recently about how the coupon codes work in OpenCart. Well here's a brief overview.

Amazon vs eBay

Amazon and eBay are the biggest online sales channels by far. If you're serious about selling products online you'd need to have a very good reason indeed not to be selling via these channels. It no longer makes sense for retailers of any size to shut their eyes and hope these rapidly growing...

Linnworks and OpenCart

If you're selling any volume of products online, you're probably selling on multiple channels already. The three most popular channels are eBay, Amazon and direct via your own website. There are others of course but these are the main ones.

OpenCart 1.5 Virtual Memory Usage and CPU

We were seeing an issue on one of our sites recently where occasionally and without warning it would throw an Internal Server error. The site did have a pretty large number of products and categories but not too many more from some of our other sites that were fine.

OpenCart vs Prestashop

OpenCart and PrestaShop are both great systems, both are free and open source and come with pretty much all of the features you'd need to get your ecommerce business off the ground and it would only be the biggest online shops with very complex requirements that start to outgrow them (we're talking...

Setting Up Your OpenCart Product Feed with Google Shopping

One of the best ways to increase sales through your OpenCart shop is to get your products automatically listed on Google Shopping. It's pretty easy to do and will probably only need about 30 minutes, yet many OpenCart store owners don't know they should be doing it!

Google Webmaster Tools Connectivity Errors

We're pleased to be able to say that since moving to us, our client has reduced the errors they were seeing in Google Webmaster Tools down to zero.

Custom Code or Existing Platform?

It should go without saying that before starting any new software development project, it's essential to think carefully about the requirements and plan the best way to design the application. This is true whether your web app will be an ecommerce platform, a CMS or a company Intranet.

Retail is Dead. Long Live Etail!

The economy is changing fast. The global credit crisis has been hard on any inefficiencies and some of the old retail business models are dead. Meanwhile, ecommerce is booming.

Web Design Trends: Flat Colour

I've noticed a new trend (aesthetic, style, paradigm) in web design which I think is rather nice. There was a time when websites were fairly text heavy and animated gifs were the pinnacle of cutting edge design and showed real prowess in design skills. Things moved on quickly and it was all about...

One Quick OpenCart SEO Tip to Avoid a Duplicate Home Page

So here's a quick code change that you can do to your OpenCart shop to improve its Search Engine Optimisation.

OpenCart 1.5.x Internal Server Error 500

We've seen a problem recently which will cause an OpenCart website to suddenly start causing an internal server error.

The Future of Programming Interview

Sean Morris, Implementation Executive at TradeDoubler Interviews Paul Feakins, Managing Director at Antropy.

OpenCart Cost Price Has Disappeared

In business, the bottom line is everything. So it was nice that versions of OpenCart prior to 1.5 could calculate gross profit and produce reports if you entered in the cost price of the items you sold.

Is the Face of Business Changing Forever?

I read a very interesting article recently, here's a summary.

Integrating OpenCart with other Software

OpenCart is an absolutely fantastic ecommerce platform. It is not, however, a blog, CMS or forum - that's not what it's designed for as those are platforms in their own right. Many people try to use blog software (such as WordPress) to build CMS websites and then bolt on ecommerce.

osCommerce vs OpenCart

Not so long ago, osCommerce was the platform to be on when it came to open source ecommerce solutions. How does it compare to OpenCart, our favourite ecommerce platform?

How to Find a Web Host

If you're planning on setting up a new website of any kind, it will need to be hosted somewhere. For the uninitiated this just means that it will need to exist on a computer somewhere that's always on and always connected to the Internet so that it can send the website pages to your visitors when...

Using Facebook to Sell More Products is Easy

If you're already selling on eBay, Amazon or through your own website, increasing your sales through Facebook is actually pretty straight forward.

EU Cookie Law

So what’s all this fuss about the Internet cookies? And what are they anyway?

How to set up affiliates in OpenCart

Setting up affiliates is a great way to increase traffic and sales on your OpenCart store. The best affiliates are people with popular blogs, popular social media profiles, or other high-traffic sites. To get any sort of good conversion ratio affiliates should be blogging on a topic that's related...

Monitor Makes High Pitched Noise When Off

I've just found the solution to an irritating problem with one of my computer monitors that makes a high-pitched sound when the computer is in sleep mode.

Is this the future of input devices?

It’s more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.

10 Fantastic Web Design Principles from the UK Government (No less!)

Government websites aren't usually known for excellent design in terms of both graphic design and software design but I came across this the other day and it's absolutely spot on.

Quick Overview of Online Marketing Methods

How can I get more traffic? How can we make more online sales? Here's an overview of some steps you can take today.

A Great Piece of Online Marketing

I saw a really great piece of online marketing the other day that instantly made me want to click it.

Shopify vs OpenCart

Shopify is a hosted shopping cart solution that can be set up by almost anyone with basic IT skills and an internet connection. It’s easy to set up and has some well-designed themes. The idea is that everything can be set up and managed through a web browser, right down to the domain name.

Matraxis Goes Live!

Matraxis identified the need for a new website that not only looked highly professional and befitting of a digital company but was easy to administer and update with their substantial amount of content.

OpenCart vs Magento

Which shopping cart should I use? OpenCart or Magento?

A Closer Look at the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi is a very small and very cheap (£22) computer, designed to get more people in to programming, which can't be a bad thing!

Google Apps Free/Standard

Google make it hard to find the Free/Standard version - they'd rather you went for the paid version which does have some further benefits, but if you're after the free version, the link is here.

deadmau5 Lights Up London with 3D Projection Mapping

On Monday 28th November Nokia brought deadmau5 and the world's most advanced 3D technology together and created an amazing free light show at Millbank Tower, London to showcase their new Lumia 800 phone.

Manage Your Products Quickly and Easily in OpenCart with Product Manager

There's an extension called Product Manager which dramatically speeds the process of administering your OpenCart store.

Hanah UK Ecommerce Website Goes Live

Our latest website went live this week, a trade-only wholesale ecommerce website built with OpenCart.

How to Sell Products Across Multiple Online Channels

Having your own ecommerce website is great, but you'll generate significantly more sales if you're also selling on ebay and amazon.

SEO Toaster

SEO Toaster is a relatively new ecommerce platform that includes a B2B quote engine. It's built from the ground up with SEO in mind at every stage.

Developing iPhone and Android Apps with Flash

A lot of developers are put off creating iPhone and Android apps because of the time an difficulty of learning a new programming language, Objective-C for iPhone and Java for Android.

Why You Should Also Be Selling On Ebay

If you're already selling online with OpenCart or another shopping cart platform, it may be worth also selling through ebay to increase your sales.

UK Enters Double-Dip Recession

As the UK enters the double-dip recession I'm glad we operate in the services sector.

How To Use the Meta Description Tag

Here are a few quick, simple ways to make the best use of the meta description tag on your website.

Monitor Your Web Traffic

I'm often surprised when I ask people how many visitors they get to their website and they're not sure. They could be getting between 1 or 1,000 per day but they really don't know which.

One Simple OpenCart Tip to Increase Sales

Here's something you can do right now in about 10-20 minutes that will increase traffic and sales on your OpenCart store.

OpenCart Support Service

Antropy has been designing and developing OpenCart websites for quite some time now so it makes sense that we're now offering help and support to those who already have online businesses built on OpenCart.

No Photoshop No Problem

A trend in IT is towards hosted software applications where software exists in the cloud and is access and used through web browsers.

Concrete5 vs Joomla

Concrete5 or Jooma. Which is better? Both have different properties. Joomla has been around for years and according to www.opensourcecms.com is the most highly rated CMS there is (Concrete5 comes a close second) based on user feedback.

Mozilla App Store - Mozilla Marketplace

Mozilla, the non-profit behind the legendary Firefox browser have announced plans to build their own app store called Mozilla Marketplace in direct competition with the Apple and Android stores.

Why You Should Be Sending Email Newsletters

For a few reasons - first and foremost, they bring in work, which is of course their aim. If your recipients are previous clients or potential prospects it may be they were thinking of kicking off a project and seeing your company name is the reminder they need to get going.

The Future of Flash

So... the Adobe Flash player seems to have a bit of an uncertain future at the moment, what's going to happen?

BMW Drives Itself

Cars that drive themselves are getting closer!

3D Processors

EPFL scientists have developed a new generation of 3D computer chips, stacked vertically rather than placed side by side.

3D Printing Makes New Shapes Possible

Besides making it more efficient to produce existing parts, 3D printing techniques make it possible to produce things that weren’t even conceivable before — like parts with complex, scooped-out shapes that minimize weight without sacrificing strength.

HTML5 Geolocation

One of the exciting new features in HTML5 is Geolocation. This allows any website you visit to ask you to share your location, much like an iPhone app.

The 4 Variables of a Project

In most projects, including web projects, there are just 4 variables:

Microsoft Office Word vs. OpenOffice Writer

Open source software can prove to be better than its closed source counterpart. Firefox vs. Internet Explorer being just one very clear example.

You built your own website? I'm out!

As a start-up you have to keep your costs to an absolute minimum. You also need a website to refer people to. So it's tempting to have a go yourself.

Why Picking Up a Software Project Half Way Through Can be Tricky

Most software developers prefer to start a project from scratch rather than pick up an existing project. Here are a few reasons why:

Faster Than Light

Interesting news today that scientists believe some particles may travel faster than the speed of light!

Which credit card payment gateway should I use?

There are a few things to consider when choosing a credit card gateway... how easy is it to set up, what are the transaction fees like, and what's the support like.

Tesco Trial Augmented Reality for Online Shopping

3D Computer Games in Your Living Room

Steve Jobs Resigns from Apple

The Pros and Cons of PayPal

3D Products for eCommerce

Drive a BMW Z4 with a Webcam and Adobe Flash

How to Start Selling Online

What to look for in an eCommerce Platform?

eCommerce vs. mCommerce

When Saving Money Can Cost You Money

How to Restore Accidentally Deleted Files in cPanel

However careful you are, mistakes happen. Sometimes surgeons remove the wrong kidney. Sometimes pilots fall asleep while flying a plane. Sometimes those files you thought you could delete... you needed!

Does social media work?

What is "Open Source" and Why Do We Love It?

There's a lot of interest in open source these days, and not just from the software developer community. Many average PC users would be able to tell you that the popular Firefox browser was "open source"... whatever that means?

RC Geeks Goes Live!

Kent 2020

New Ecommerce Website Goes Live!

Agile Project Management with Backlogged

What Website Layout Should I Use?

Using Animoto to Create YouTube Videos

How To Make a Digital Microscope for £15

concrete5 CMS

When it comes to features, ease of use, speed, in fact pretty much all the criteria we'd use to assess a CMS, concrete5 is way above the competition.

3D Projection Mapping Creates Stunning Visual Effects on Buildings

IBM Computer Beats Humans at "Jeopardy"

CMS Review

One of the first decisions that needs to be made when building a content managed website is "which content management system to use"?

Shopping Cart Review

There are plenty of open source shopping carts written in PHP and a very common question is "which one should I use?" Well here's our review of the most popular ones.

CameraMouse

Website Features vs. Business Benefits

A table to show what the business benefits are of each technical feature.

HubSpot Website Grader

CSS Basics

I remember my early "adventures" while learning CSS and with the benefit of a few year's hindsight it's now easy to see which of the rules in the many tutorials were the most useful. Here are a few of them.

Software Design Patterns in Adobe Flex

It's been well over 10 years since "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Software" was first published by the so called "Gang of Four" an allusion to the "Greek Gang of Three" who were also concerned with logic.

GoboLinux