The Antropy Ecommerce Blog
— Sep 22, 2017
Computing in 1992 vs 2017
I was recently tagged in an old school photo from one of our IT lessons which I think was taken around 1992, so it's a good chance to have a look back at how computers have changed in the last 25 years. Extra bonus points if you can spot me!
— Sep 19, 2017
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...
— Jul 21, 2017
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...
— Jul 7, 2017
![[Case Study] The Good Care Group Speed Improvements](/files/cache/3f3ae1a2e93d17dfdb620a82042a222e.jpg)
[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.
— Jun 30, 2017
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...
— May 19, 2017
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...
— May 18, 2017
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...
— May 13, 2017
![[Video] How easy is it to edit products in OpenCart?](/files/cache/48236ea0c33173641c7d5505c28734b3.jpg)
[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.
— May 8, 2017
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).
— Apr 27, 2017
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...
— Apr 24, 2017
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.
— Apr 11, 2017
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."
— Mar 13, 2017
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 aganist 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...
— Jan 29, 2017
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...
— Dec 2, 2016
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.
— Oct 21, 2016
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.
— Oct 14, 2016
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.
— Oct 7, 2016
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.
— Jul 15, 2016
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...
— Jul 1, 2016
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.
— Jun 17, 2016
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...
— Jun 10, 2016
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)
— May 6, 2016
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.
— Apr 21, 2016
OpenCart 2.2 Fulfilment By Amazon
OpenCart 2.2 was realeased 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).
— Apr 11, 2016
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 ...
— Apr 1, 2016
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.
— Mar 4, 2016
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...
— Feb 19, 2016
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.
— Jan 14, 2016
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.
— Dec 23, 2015
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...
— Dec 14, 2015
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.
— Nov 27, 2015
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...
— Nov 10, 2015
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...
— Oct 16, 2015
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...
— Sep 30, 2015
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...
— Sep 11, 2015
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?
— Aug 14, 2015
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...
— Aug 7, 2015
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...
— Jul 31, 2015
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.
— Jul 23, 2015
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?
— Jul 17, 2015
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.
— Jul 13, 2015
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...
— Jul 3, 2015
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...
— Jun 26, 2015
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.
— Jun 24, 2015
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.
— Jun 10, 2015
Handy Linux Commands
Just a little page for some regularly used useful Linux commands.
— Jun 5, 2015
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.
— May 29, 2015
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.
— May 19, 2015
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.
— May 18, 2015
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...
— Apr 27, 2015
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,...
— Apr 14, 2015
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...
— Apr 10, 2015
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...
— Apr 2, 2015
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?
— Mar 19, 2015
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...
— Mar 11, 2015
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...
— Mar 10, 2015
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...
— Feb 16, 2015
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.
— Jan 21, 2015
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...
— Jan 15, 2015
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.
— Dec 24, 2014
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.
— Dec 15, 2014
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,...
— Dec 11, 2014
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...
— Dec 11, 2014
Showrooming: How it Feels to get Amazon'd
How big of a problem is showrooming to high street retailers?
— Nov 26, 2014
![OpenCart CAPTCHA not working JFIF gd-jpeg v1.0 [SOLVED]](/files/cache/9edd95c5e6c7fef87a6ff0a33e4c4f3f.png)
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...
— Nov 20, 2014
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.
— Nov 19, 2014
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...
— Nov 11, 2014
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.
— Oct 31, 2014
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.
— Oct 17, 2014
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?
— Oct 2, 2014
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...
— Sep 30, 2014
![The State of Beacons in Retail 2014 [Infographic]](/files/cache/9bfaccbd59912d915037c401fe258811.jpg)
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.
— Sep 23, 2014
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.
— Sep 19, 2014
A Century of U.S. Consumer Purchase Decisions
An interesting look at how consumers purchased products over the last 100 years.
— Sep 8, 2014
How Retailers are Converting on Mobile
What are online retailers doing in terms of mobile marketing and website optimization?
— Sep 2, 2014
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.
— Aug 29, 2014
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.
— Aug 20, 2014
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".
— Aug 15, 2014
10 Ways to Convert More Customers
10 interesting and counter-intuitive ways of increasing sales. 1, 3 and 6 are particularly interesting!
— Aug 14, 2014
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.
— Aug 12, 2014
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.
— Jul 28, 2014
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.
— Jul 18, 2014
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...
— Jul 10, 2014
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...
— Jun 17, 2014
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.
— Jun 13, 2014
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.
— Jun 2, 2014
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...
— May 19, 2014
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.
— Apr 25, 2014
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...
— Apr 11, 2014
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.
— Apr 1, 2014
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.
— Mar 28, 2014
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...
— Mar 21, 2014
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...
— Mar 14, 2014
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...
— Feb 28, 2014
The Importance of Website/Server Monitoring
What is server/website monitoring? And why is it so important for ecommerce websites?
— Feb 21, 2014
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.
— Feb 14, 2014
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.
— Feb 11, 2014
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.
— Jan 31, 2014
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?
— Jan 28, 2014
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.
— Jan 23, 2014
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...
— Jan 14, 2014
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.
— Jan 3, 2014
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...
— Dec 20, 2013
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.
— Dec 11, 2013
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...
— Dec 6, 2013
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.
— Nov 28, 2013
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...
— Nov 22, 2013
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...
— Nov 15, 2013
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.
— Nov 8, 2013
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...
— Nov 5, 2013
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.
— Oct 25, 2013
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.
— Oct 18, 2013
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.
— Oct 11, 2013
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.
— Oct 4, 2013
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.
— Sep 20, 2013
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.
— Sep 13, 2013
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...
— Sep 6, 2013
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.
— Aug 30, 2013
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?
— Aug 27, 2013
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...
— Aug 16, 2013
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.
— Aug 13, 2013
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...
— Aug 5, 2013
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.
— Jul 29, 2013
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!
— Jul 19, 2013
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.
— Jul 12, 2013
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.
— Jul 8, 2013
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...
— Jun 28, 2013
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.
— Jun 21, 2013
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...
— Jun 14, 2013
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.
— Jun 7, 2013
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.
— May 31, 2013
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.
— May 29, 2013
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.
— May 17, 2013
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...
— May 10, 2013
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...
— May 8, 2013
7 Ways to Boost Your OpenCart Sales
Here are 7 things you can do relatively quickly to boost sales on your OpenCart website.
— Apr 26, 2013
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.
— Apr 19, 2013
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?
— Apr 12, 2013
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.
— Apr 5, 2013
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.
— Mar 22, 2013
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...
— Mar 15, 2013
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.
— Mar 8, 2013
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.
— Mar 1, 2013
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...
— Feb 22, 2013
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!
— Feb 15, 2013
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.
— Feb 8, 2013
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.
— Feb 1, 2013
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.
— Jan 28, 2013
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...
— Jan 18, 2013
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.
— Jan 11, 2013
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.
— Jan 3, 2013
The Future of Programming Interview
Sean Morris, Implementation Executive at TradeDoubler Interviews Paul Feakins, Managing Director at Antropy.
— Dec 21, 2012
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.
— Dec 14, 2012
Is the Face of Business Changing Forever?
I read a very interesting article recently, here's a summary.
— Dec 7, 2012
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.
— Nov 16, 2012
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?
— Nov 9, 2012
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...
— Oct 31, 2012
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.
— Oct 9, 2012
EU Cookie Law
So what’s all this fuss about the Internet cookies? And what are they anyway?
— Sep 28, 2012
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...
— Sep 23, 2012
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.
— Sep 19, 2012
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.
— Sep 19, 2012
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.
— Sep 17, 2012
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.
— Sep 14, 2012
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.
— Sep 13, 2012
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.
— Sep 3, 2012
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.
— Aug 13, 2012
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!
— Aug 8, 2012
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.
— Aug 7, 2012
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.
— Jul 20, 2012
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.
— Jul 17, 2012
Hanah UK Ecommerce Website Goes Live
Our latest website went live this week, a trade-only wholesale ecommerce website built with OpenCart.
— Jul 10, 2012
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.
— Jun 29, 2012
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.
— Jun 8, 2012
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.
— May 18, 2012
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.
— Apr 25, 2012
UK Enters Double-Dip Recession
As the UK enters the double-dip recession I'm glad we operate in the services sector.
— Apr 17, 2012
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.
— Apr 11, 2012
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.
— Mar 30, 2012
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.
— Mar 27, 2012
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.
— Mar 16, 2012
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.
— Mar 8, 2012
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.
— Feb 24, 2012
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.
— Feb 21, 2012
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.
— Feb 10, 2012
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?
— Jan 27, 2012
3D Processors
EPFL scientists have developed a new generation of 3D computer chips, stacked vertically rather than placed side by side.
— Dec 23, 2011
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.
— Dec 15, 2011
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.
— Dec 9, 2011
The 4 Variables of a Project
In most projects, including web projects, there are just 4 variables:
— Oct 21, 2011
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.
— Oct 14, 2011
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.
— Oct 7, 2011
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:
— Sep 23, 2011
Faster Than Light
Interesting news today that scientists believe some particles may travel faster than the speed of light!
— Sep 16, 2011
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.
— Jul 1, 2011
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!
— Jun 20, 2011
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?
— Feb 17, 2011
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.
— Jan 11, 2011
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"?
— Dec 30, 2010
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.
— Nov 4, 2010
Website Features vs. Business Benefits
A table to show what the business benefits are of each technical feature.
— Aug 18, 2010
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.
— Aug 18, 2010
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.
